Coulter Row Saturday night

by Jamie Dillon


Wags went -
So, how were things at the Peak and other sites?

Cool that New Moon was fun all over the region. Conditions were highly acceptable at Coulter. The dew never really got to my optics, but sure made the charts wet. Water's strange stuff. Limiting magnitude for me was 5.7 at best (13 stars in the Finnish Bootie). Seeing was moderate 3/5, which can pass as a euphemism for mediocre. Plenty of missing details in familiar objects. In all, though, much better observing than in town.

My mini-project was real atypical for me, going after Messier galaxies. The big spring Messiers are all dazzlers, and there are several I hadn't seen in a while. It was fun and refreshing. Spent a whole chunk of time staring at the big 3 that sit by 6 Coma, at the western jumpoff point for downtown Virgo. M98 is especially something, a long sharp-ended lens with a stellar core and bright surrounding nucleus. Mottling throughout. Saw a bright patch halfway out the SE arm. Measured to be about 9' long in the 10mm.

Another highlight was the Blackeye Galaxy, seen for the first time in years. Impressive, very bright flashy galaxy with a big bright core, with that arc of dark lane just east of the core. Fun to see these with fresh eyes.

Did pick up some new galaxies in Coma. The most interesting was remarkable by virtue of its absence. Over to the west of Berenice's Hair among others is 4136, which last night was real dim, took jiggling the scope to make it stay in sight, big and round. Obviously low surface brightness (13.8 as it turns out). It's not far from galactic north and not in an area known for intervening dust. Nor is it far away, only 19 mly. Just plain dispersed.

Got one more NGC globular that I'd somehow missed, and that's been sitting on the chart going yoohoo at me for years. 4147, also in Coma, showed a bright core, plenty of resolution, with at least 15 brighter stars sticking out across the disk, and swirls across the face. Cool one. Have some 6 globulars left that will reasonably show in an 11" from these latitudes. 81 seen. Right, 82 now! (That 11" is Felix, a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with optics made by Discovery Telescopes. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians.)

Revisited M53, a bright spangly globular with very bright core, diamond shape and bright outliers. Turns out M53 is some 70 kly from here, almost 3x farther away than M13, and 9x farther than M4. Some cluster. And yes I went over to see NGC 5053, its dim neighbor, which was barely there in last night's seeing. At 50 kly away a lot closer. Strange tenuous cold-looking cluster. ZZ's favorite from Scotty Houston's comment, "little gem of woven fairy fire." Children, stay away from mind-changing drugs and purple prose.

Made a fun mistake that'll be a good warning about making clinical decisions after midnight. Was still cruising Coma Berenices and hopped over to a close pair of galaxies that weren't marked as seen in my SkyAtlas, 4874 nad 4889. Don't laugh yet. Got onto the field and murmured, "Man, there's a lot of galaxies in there." Was up from the eyepiece and two steps along toward hauling out Uranometria and then chuckled. Yes, I was onto the Coma Cluster. Lot of galaxies indeed.

Saw an Albert Highe design scope in the SW lot, a Plettstone product, with its people gone for the moment. And along with enjoying Peter's company and catching up with Marek, got to meet Gator Chaser, the man who came with his own nickname. He's really chased gators. Exotic.

Pacheco next Saturday!


Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 10, 2005 23:16:42 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Apr 11, 2005 20:03:37 PT