LSA 3 Dec 2005

by Sean McCauliff

I was joined by Robert Armstrong, Chris Patel, and two other people I think where named Jeff and Jeb. I believe they where members of the Mt. Diablo astronomical society. The transparency seemed very good most of the night. The seeing was OK. Nighttime temperatures started at 45 and went down to 26 by midnight when I turned in. Sleeping in this weather was challenging and I high tailed it out of there at 3am. Humidity started to pick up later in the night. By midnight I had frost on charts and eye pieces.

EPs and filters needed some warming, but the secondary and primary stayed dry. I needed to warm up once with Chris' catalytic heater. Early on there was some lightwind.

I had my 15" (381mm) f/5 Plettstone with me. The evening started out with Venus and Mars. Venus was a large, very bright crescent. Despite the seeing I had a very good view of Mars through my scope and later Robert's 20" f/5. If Mars previewer II is to believed the regions visible where : Xante, Mare Erythraeum, Pyrrhae Regio and Argyre I.

Later there were some white splotches visible in Robert's scope, but MPII does not name them.

NGC 6907	An uninteresting diffuse fuzz. Seems brighter on one side.
NGC 7023	Nebulosity concentrated around a star.Elongated. Seems wispy at low powers. Ultra block seems to increase contrast, but yield no additional details.A dim fuzz seems to be broken off of it on one side.
Abell 426(?) Perseus Galaxy Cluster	At 112x I can see about 10 members of this galaxy cluster. At 370x centered around NGC 1275 I can see 6 members. 1275 it self seems like an oval that gradually grows dimmer from the core.
NGC 1097	Seems like an edge on galaxy. Bright circular core with a dim halo on each side of the core.
NGC 1049	I found the star field, but I'm not sure I saw this extragalactic glob. Need better charts to confirm.
NGC 1365	Seems like a barred spiral with triangular shaped arms to each side. Very bright. Add this to must see list.
NGC 1365 - Fornax Galaxy Cluster (of which 1365 is part)	A collection of fairly bright galaxies. They spill out of the fov the 31mm Nagler. I think I could see about 8 members.

Plus some of the usual suspects like M42, etc.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Dec 04, 2005 19:06:14 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 16, 2006 22:21:30 PT