by Steve Gottlieb
While I started to set up my twin 18-inch Starmaster, I commented to Bob that I forgot to bring along a finder chart for Comet Machholz (C/2004 Q2), though hopefully it would still be easy to spot naked-eye. After peaking last month around mag 3.5 (even visible through thin clouds from my badly light polluted skies in the east bay), it's down about a magnitude now, but still easily visible naked-eye about 9 degrees NNE of the double cluster and now circumpolar. This comet was the 10th found by amateur Don Machholz last August 27th with a 37-year old 6-inch f/8 Criterion Dynascope from his home in Colfax.
Lower's nebula (Sharpless 2-261) was discovered on photographs taken in 1939 by Harold Lower and his son Charles (amateur telescope makers from San Diego) using a homemade 8-inch f/1 Schmidt Camera (that's right, f/1). With my 18-inch, Lower's nebula was not initially noticed in a rich star field using the 31 Nagler (63x). Adding an OIII filter, much of the field took on an irregular patchy appearance (partly due to the unresolved background milky way glow), but in addition a 10'x8' oval glow (only part of the entire complex which shows up strikingly on images) was locally brighter surrounding a group of stars south of the geometric center of the nebula. The highest surface brightness region (still faint) was an extended patch situated south of mag 8.4 HD 41997 by a few arc minutes.
Lower's discovery was likely the last amateur discovery of a nebula for 65 years. But on January 23, 2004, amateur Jay McNeil (well-known for his encyclopedic knowledge of planetary nebulae) took a wide field CCD image of the M78 region using his 3-inch Takahashi FTGC-76 and ST-10XME CCD from his suburban site in Kentucky. Carefully examining the image he noticed a new reflection nebula near M78, apparently illuminated by a young eruptive variable star. After viewing M78 and several other faint reflection nebula in the vicinity, I moved to the vicinity of Jay's discovery using 225x and noticed an extremely faint glow, ~30" diameter, about 1' W of a faint double star. Initially I glimpsed the nebula without reference to the discovery photo, but once the object was confirmed it could almost be held continuously with averted vision although no structural details were visible. I'm guessing a 10-inch scope or so may be necessary to glimpse this object, though first check if you can spot nearby NGC 2064 and 2067 which are easier targets. This faint object is located ~12' SW of M78 in a region of numerous reflection nebulae and young Herbig-Haro objects. For a labeled image see http://www.seds.org/messier/Pics/Jpg/m78mcn1l.jpg or the SEDS page at http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m078_mcneil.html
Last year, David Kingsley posted an observation of an extremely distant quasar in Lynx, APM08279+5255, so this object immediately went to the top of my observing list. At a redshift of 3.9 (and one of the intrinsically brightest known objects in the universe!), this object makes QSR 3C 273 in Virgo (z = 0.16) appear to be in our neighborhood by comparison. This object was discovered accidently just a few years back in 1998 during a survey of distant carbon stars in the galactic halo. See http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~pkondratko/Astro208/paper/frame2.htm for the technical details. It was also featured on APOD (see http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980818.htm)
I had previously observed another very distant quasar, HS 1946+7658, in Draco at z = 3.05), but it's still mind boggling to contemplate that the tired light from APM08279+5255 left roughly 11 billion years ago! To be visible at this distance (and relatively bright) it may benefit from significant gravitation lensing, although a lensing galaxy or cluster is not evident on the images I've seen. In any case, this will likely be the most distant object I'll ever see visually. Using a photographic finder chart (the 15th-16th magnitude QSR is not plotted on the GSC, so it may not show up on amateur sky-plotting software). At first, I picked up a 15th magnitude star near the position, but carefully I realized the QSR was situated about 1' NE of the star I had identified. With averted vision, the target popped into view. I would have estimated the magnitude as ~16 (the R-band is given as 15.2), after finishing up I realized that clouds had drifted into that portion of the sky and probably detracted from the view. Although we only viewed for a few hours, it was great getting out under dark skies again and seeing several unusual objects.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Feb 05, 2005 09:03:38 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Feb 05, 2005 14:54:41 PT
