Coe was good enough last night for the desparate

by Mark Johnston

Since I am only a bit over a quarter of the way into the H400 list I spent time taking the observations as cloud cover allowed. Started off with a couple clusters in Monoceros but have to say most of the H400 globs are about as boring as boring can get so soon switched to the gals in Ursa major (which float my boat better). Was able to easily see shape to assorted goodies there. Tried in vain to see a few Virgo gals later but as was noted, virgo was really not open much at all and was a disappointment.

Highlights out of the 22 objects I was able to see last night at Coe between clouds: NGC3998 and NGC3982 are all easily in a 1 deg fov. 2 other ngcs are there as well but 3980 is mag 14 and 3972 I should have caught but gave up on this area due to haze setting in. Will go back later as I think 3972 should be easy to see in better skies.

Ngc2742 and Ngc2768 are also within 1 deg and another mag 13.3 gal, ngc2726 could only just fit in 1 deg but 1.5 deg would catch them all.

As a general note there was a lot of easy finds and nice gals very much in the area of M81 and M82 so naturally these 2 eye candies were a nice 'home base' to hop to the others. Both were very nice (of course). Ursa Major proved to be generally clear in one place or the other very often due to it's size.

Had to clean up before getting to 3613 and 3619 but look forward to that as there is also a 3rd one, 3625 (close to mag 14) that I would like to try for but with 11" sct is not real likely.

And Mark(W) ... we can now say ... 'nobody' is observing any longer for Friday, 2-16-2007.

'Clearer skies' next time.
Mark