by Albert Highe
Equipment: 12.5" f/5 ultralight.
As already mentioned by Rich N. and James T., the three of us observed from Dinosaur Point Monday night. The sky wasn't quite as dark and transparent as last Saturday, but still very good. There was no hint of clouds in the sky, and seeing was much better, providing good views at 256X of Jupiter, already low in the sky near Sunset. The wind was light to non-existent. At Sunset, the lake was like glass and only a few windmills were turning lazily.
The temperature was 10+ degrees warmer than Saturday, making for a very pleasant evening. At 8:40PM, the temperature had only dropped to 64F and the RH was 58%. At Midnight, the temperature still was 58F, and the RH was 72%. There was no dew anywhere.
My observing program is to find everything plotted in the Sky Atlas 2000 (well, at least everything north of some reasonable latitude). I don't just check off objects. I study each one and write a brief description in my notes. I then scan the immediate area for other objects. Consequently, I view the SA2000 more as a guide rather than just a list. Frequently I run across objects not plotted in it. Whenever that occurs, I use Uranometria to identify them.
Although I am not specifically targeting the Herschel 400 list, I periodically check my list of objects vs. that list. This weekend I discovered that I only had 20 left to complete it. So, I planned my observing to include these. I had a productive night, finding and observing 58 new objects, including the 20 from the Herschel list. The Herschel 400-1 is now complete. By the way, the SA2000 includes 399 of the Herschel 400 list. For those who like to write in their atlases, the one missing is NGC4250, on page 2. I drew it in on mine.
With the Herschel 400-1 complete, I finally downloaded the Herschel 400-2 list from the TAC site and compared it to my list of objects. My observing program has already led me to find 236 on this list.
Below are a few highlights of the night.
While hunting for galaxy NGC4073 (Mag 11.4, 2.1'X1.6') in Virgo, I saw another, quite a bit fainter galaxy in the same f.o.v. at 113X. Uranometria identified it as NGC4077 (13.1, 1.0X0.7). While bumping up the magnification to 175X with my 9mm Nagler in order to get a better view, I also saw a third galaxy, NGC4063 (13.9, 1.0X0.5) with averted vision in the same f.o.v. Just outside the f.o.v. is another (slightly brighter than NGC4063) galaxy, NGC4075 (13.5, 1.3X0.6). Nearby is galaxy NGC4045 (12.0, 2.7X1.8) with a very faint companion NGC4045A (14.4, 0.7X0.4). I studied this pair at 175X for a while and believe I could glimpse NGC4045A with averted vision about 30% of the time.
A little later, I hopped over to galaxy NGC4517 (10.4, 9.9X1.4), also in Virgo. This is a nice, large, edge-on galaxy. It is quite bright and its shape is unmistakable. Nearby, SA2000 lists a galaxy with the designation R80. What's up with that? With averted vision I could detect a fairly large oval with near uniform brightness. Uranometria identifies this as galaxy NGC4517A (12.5, 4.3X2.8).
The best galaxy grouping of the night was south of Spica, around NGC5044 (10.8, 3.0X3.0). I could see six other galaxies in the same f.o.v. with NGC5044: NGC5046 (12.9, 0.8X0.7), NGC5049 (13.0, 1.7X0.8), NGC5047 (12.7, 2.5X0.5), NGC5035 (12.8, 1.3X1.2), NGC5037 (12.2, 2.2X1.0), and NGC5030 (12.4, 1.7X1.3). And just outside the f.o.v. were NGC5054 (10.9, 4.8X2.8) and NGC5017 (12.6, 2.0X1.2).
The farthest south I viewed was -21 degrees in order to catch one of the H400 objects: the globular cluster NGC5897 in Libra. At this low elevation, poor seeing prevented high magnification. At 113X it was a soft glow with some faint resolvable stars about half the time.
Finally, the view of M51 had been so good on Saturday, I returned to make a comparison. Again, I could see a lot of detail, including spiral structure with direct vision at 175X. However, it wasn't quite the view I saw on Saturday.
The three of us packed up and left by 2:00AM.