by Jamie Dillon
40 scopes easy, clear skies horizon to horizon, well into Puppis in the South, transparency past 6.0, around 6.2 in most of the sky thru the night, seeing good 4/5. Serious fun.
Nilesh Shah, Bob Czerwinski, Leonard and Alex Tramiel, Marsha Robinson and I on our end did a lot of comparison and discussion. It was just a rich night.
I started with those spectacular open clusters in Puppis that I'd been hypnotised by in Huatulco, still hadn't seen in a telescope. 2477 is dense! Looks like a dispersed globular, which it's not but you get the idea. Has a trail of stars off one end so I thought it looked like a tree. Gorgeous, high marks. 2451 has a bright orange carbon star, c Puppis, amid a bed of bright blue-white neighbors. Then we ambled off to Thor's Helmet, which I'd never seen at all. Big, bright in the OIII, arms spreading off in 3 directions that I saw. Interesting too in not being associated with bright stars, just this distinct bright nebula. I'm assuming it's an emission nebula; none of my books specify further than 'bright nebula'.
Then went off into Ursa Major hunting the elusive 3027, which I'd been chasing since last summer. Albert had given me a tutorial in methods of hunting dimmer galaxies, and it paid off. Got that big diffuse sucker, surface magnitude 13. For a prize caught 3065-6, two pretty galaxies very close to each other in the eyepiece, just north of 3027. This is all in the area of 2985, an interesting bright disrupted-looking spiral north of M82. 3065 and 3066 aren't in SkyAtlas which was an extra bonus. Played with them for a solid hour, looking in different eyepieces and admiring their dance.
Spit on my hands and headed into Leo, tracing the chain of galaxies heading off M105, also a new spot once I moved past thr trio including M105. Past 3412, 3377 with 3367 and 3338 do a cool dance around the bright star 52 Leonis. 3338 at the end took the prize, bright and fat spiral with a long dust lane, by another distinct star, 8th magnitude.
Watched that big lovely cluster, Berenice's Hair itself, wheel across the sky all thru the night. Symbolises spring and dark skies to me
Spent dunno how long back in Markarian's Chain just playing, first time since fall. Captivating. Bigtime highlights later in different scopes: M5 in Rashad's SCT; 2841, new to me, in UMa, a shapely spiral in Nilesh's Alfani. M13 was devastating in Mark Wagner's scope, as was M51 in Jim Everitt's new pride and joy, and M3 and the Sombrero in Bob's 15. M3 and M5 looked deadly in Felix as well, by the way. Ended up the night, just before Marsrise, in the bowl of the Dipper, without marking the chart, on purpose just fishing for galaxies. They're all over the place! Just like they'd been scooped up. That's gonna be bigfun this spring.
(Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, a 6mm Radian and a TV 2x Barlow, with a Lumicon OIII.) The 22 on a Barlow turns out to be a handy combo for picking up faint fuzzies at 114x.
San Antone or bust!