Observing Report from MB, 02-09

by Robert Sheaffer


There were just four of us set up at Montebello Saturday night. Jim F. was working on imaging the supernova with his Pronto. I had set up my Celestron GPS-11. Some highlights of the evening:

Comet Ikeya-Zhang C/2002 C1: At 60x a large, bright fuzzy ball, very low in the sky at 7:20. A bright star was next to the nucleus. A faint hint of a tail was seen, not bright.

M74: I probably saw the supernova, but was unable to determine which one it was!

M 46 PUPPIS OPEN CLU ALTITUDE= 26.6 ø LOCAL TIME=19:57:06
Very large and beautiful open cluster, containing mostly stars of uniform brightness. Fills the 38mm erfle EP. Contains a planetary nebula that is easily seen. Using the UHC filter in the 22mm Panoptic, the planetary looks almost like the ring nebula.
NGC 2232 MONOCEROS OPEN CLU ALTITUDE= 42.5 ø LOCAL TIME=19:40:09
A very large, spread out cluster containing numerous bright stars. Much too large for any eyepiece. More appropriately a binocular object.
NGC 1647 TAURUS OPEN CLU ALTITUDE= 69.7 ø LOCAL TIME=20:15:01
Nice, bright, widely-spread collection of stars.
NGC 2217 CANIS MA GALAXY ALTITUDE= 24.8 ø LOCAL TIME=20:30:28
Mag. 10.2. Small, bright, round central core is easily seen. Larger disk and/or arms are suspected.
NGC 2362 CANIS MA "JUMPING CLUSTER" ALTITUDE= 26.2 ø LOCAL TIME=21:07:19
A very nice collection of uniform-brightness stars surrounding a bright member. I like this one. But why is it called "jumping"?
NGC 2298 PUPPIS GLOBULAR ALTITUDE= 16.7 ø LOCAL TIME=21:40:47
Low surface brightness object, nice. Barely resolved. Pretty far south. Using a borrowed image-intensifier eyepiece, the globular is resolved quite nicely!

I did see the Zodiacal light extending up through Aries after sunset. In fact, it was easier to see than the winter Milky Way!