by Matthew Marcus
The seeing was pretty good when we were looking at planets, but deteriorated so that by midnight I couldn't get a split on epsilon Lyr. Good thing I was doing galaxies and not GCs or planets after the horsy set left.
I didn't see the curvature of the tail or mottling in the head that some of the Coyote pack reported. Odd, since the sky at Lake Sonoma was better than it usually is at Coyote. Unfortunately, I didn't think to sketch the comet until it was within half an hour of setting, so I couldn't include the fainter tail. It will be interesting to see which tail is which (ion or dust). I did get an impression of a bluish color in the coma. The nucleus (actually, pseudonucleus) was stellar. It was great seeing a bright comet after a year or so. We reminisced about Comets We Have Known and Loved.
Venus just keeps getting better. The crescent is easy at 36x, and very nice at higher powers. Jupiter showed detail in the NEB. It also showed only three moons, which Steve thought might be due to one of them being in shadow. Sure enough, he saw the fourth one later, far enough from the disk so that it wasn't just hiding behind the planet. He said that when he first spotted it, it was about half as bright as usual. Saturn is rapidly going down into the boiling oatmeal. Cassini's division is starting to get difficult. See you next year!
My main project was crunching through NSOG's list in Virgo. Most of the objects I had left to do are mags 11-13, so it was a night of faint fuzzies. I did pull in a 13.1, which isn't bad for a C8. Shows how good Lake Sonoma is compared to some of the other sites. Here's the galaxy roster:
| 3952 | M13.1 Small round blob between a bright star and a small triangle of faint ones. |
|---|---|
| 4045 | M12.0 Small elongated glow next to a y-shaped asterism. Didn't see 4045A. |
| 4116+4123 | M12+11.4 These fit nicely in a 1deg field at 36x. The pair is framed by clumps of stars to N and S. 4116 is edge-on, but I only saw the core region. |
| 4129 | M12.5 A streak with no obvious core. |
| 4178 | M11.4 A large, elongated glow. Not as difficult as the SB of 13.5 would indicate. It sits inside an isoscalese triangle of brightish stars. I didn't see the thin core NSOG describes for the 16"-scope view. |
| 4189+4193 | M11.7+12.3 This pair fits in the FOV at 125x (about 1/3 deg). Both are oval, pointing in different directions. A faint star lies off the tip of 4189. Since 4189 is actually in Coma and 4193 in Virgo, this pair is separated in NSOG. The writeup for neither galaxy mentions the other. Navigate from 4216. |
| 4206+4215 | M12.2+10.0 Both edge-ons, oriented maybe 30deg different. The fainter, 4206, is a uniform, thin streak. The brighter, 4216, is a nice spindle with a bright bulge. 4206 sits between two stars, like a compass needle between the N and S marks. A pretty pair. |
| 4234 | M12.7 Very faint, round glow. |
| 4260+4261+4264 | M11.8+10.4+12.8 These three form an acute triangle within one 125x field. 4261 is clearly bigger and brighter and is handy for navigation. At low power, it sits inside a conspicuous arc of stars. An easy field to recognize with reference to the supplemental charts in the new Uranometria. |
| 4267 | M10.9 As the moon was brightening the sky, I hit one last Virgoid, the relatively bright 4267. A round glow with a stellar nucleus. |
I started packing up at around 1:30 or so. It was amazing how quickly the moon brightened the sky once it was above the horizon, even though it was blocked from direct view by a hill and some trees. I copped quick views of M3 and M11 and beat it for home. Now I remember why Lake Sonoma has been a favorite site of mine.
Posted on sf-bay-tac May 09, 2004 14:39:18 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 16:22:35 PT