Arriving
On September 19, 1998, the Sacramento Valley Astronomical Society held its monthly star party at the Blue Canyon airport just off of highway 80 about an hour and half north east of Sacramento, and most of the usual suspects were present with their instruments to spy the stars and planets.
My observing partner drove us up in his large truck. We were both packing 10" dobs, mine a mass-produced closed-tube f/5.6, his a recently acquired finely hand-crafted f/6 truss tube design, built by Tom Osypowski, of hand-made equatorial platform fame.
He was very eager to test out his new scope at a dark site.
This was my 4th time at the star party, and I've gotten to know several of the folks who usually set up on the Far Side [of the tarmac].
When we arrived, there were two aircraft on the tarmac, an increase of 1 since August.
The usual wide range of scopes was present, ranging from very small to very large. My 10" mass-produced, but very able dob was definitely on the small side.
The crowd seemed a little thinner than August, but that was probably because of the persistent cirrus clouds in the north, which periodically encroached and receded all evening long. Bands of cirrus clouds would periodically block out portions of the sky, and at times the whole sky was blocked from view.
Sometimes thin clouds would cover an area, but still permit viewing, though with diminished light. Sometimes this caused me to judge an object as being much fainter or more difficult than it might otherwise have been.
I had expected it to be significantly cooler than August, and I was anticipating temperatures in the 30's, but I was pleasantly surprised as the low temperatures seemed to bottom out in the low 50's. There was absolutely no dew.
I was eager to resume my stalled Herschel 400 observing program, so I was planning in advance to be anti-social, and attempt to observe as many objects as I could.
The Herschel 400 is not a stock car race. It is a list of 400 objects compiled by the Astronomical League from a set of over 2500 objects observed by Sir William Herschel (an amateur astronomer, ATM and court composer from the late 18th century), and which formed the basis of the New General Catalog (NGC).
I started working through the Herschel 400 list from my backyard in April. While still relatively bright, many of these objects are considerably fainter than the dimmest Messier objects, so I knew I would probably not be able to do the whole survey from my back yard.
Anticipating doing a fuller Herschel 2500+ survey at a later time, I decided this night that I would use the Herschel 400 as guideposts, and then look for targets of opportunity which were not on the Herschel 400 list, but were nearby, as indicated by my charts. I had done this during my Messier survey, and had observed quite a number of NGC objects nearby, especially in the dense galaxy jungle at the border of Coma Berenices and Virgo.
It was nowhere near dark yet, but I thought I would be able to see some of the brighter objects in the rapidly disappearing south, so I began paid my final respects for the season to M22 at 7:50pm, a spectacular globular cluster in Sagittarius, The Archer. I quickly moved to M28, a much smaller but equally bright globe of hundreds of thousands of stars.
I never get tired of looking at globulars, though at first glance many of them seem the same.
Nobody else was observing yet as I continued working my way westward and southward. Antares, the Rival of Mars and the Heart of the Scorpion was shining brightly in the western glow, and I was able to pick up another sparse, but large and bright globular, M4.
Moving south and east, I followed the beautifully curving tail of Scorpius to the stinger, which points right at M7, a large, bright open cluster. M6, a somewhat dimmer and sparser open cluster was a short distance away.
It was now getting dark and at this time one nearby observer fired up his car radio playing rap music and another observer across the tarmac trotted out some music from that Consummate Professional, Frank Sinatra.
It was an eerie experience listening to Frank's vocalization of "The Lady Is A Tramp" coming over a rap beat which didn't quite align, as I looked at M13, the Great Cluster in Hercules.
I had first spied this cluster for myself at the tender age of 13 or 14 through a cheap Japanese 60mm refractor, back in the days when "Japanese" and "cheap" were synonymous. Those days are long gone!
My partner and I compared views of M13 at this point -- his was noticeably superior: His scope gave better definition and resolution of the stars at the center of the cluster. The difference was a bit subtle, though. I noticed it most when I went from my scope to his (taking my 26mm eyepiece with me). When I went back to mine, it was harder to tell.
Next, I looked at the big, bright, dense, lovely open cluster M11. A Wild Duck it is not, at least to my eyes.
"I want to look at a couple of bright planetary nebulas I haven't seen for a while," I said to my companion as I swung my scope around and quickly found the Saturn Nebula, NGC 7009, and my first Herschel object for the evening.
The blue-green color of this object is very intense. Using averted vision, the object was relatively large and bright gray. Using direct vision, it became very small and intensely blue-green. There seemed to be some mottling in the disk, and it was definitely very much brighter in the center than at the edges.
I uncovered a problem in my logs: I never recorded my first observation of the Saturn Nebula. I know that I tried to find it once when I was searching for M72, without adequate charts two years ago, but I know I saw it last year. Apparently I didn't log it! I can't believe I only saw it once (I think I would only have not logged it once, but this may not be true -- for a while I was only logging Messier objects, which was stupid).
Next was the very large Helix Nebula, NGC 7293. I had only seen this from my backyard before, when it was low in the Sacramento light pollution. This object is so large that its brightness is all spread out, and therefore it appears very dim. I'm amazed I saw it from my backyard at all.
Just then my observing partner received a number of visitors. I showed them the Helix Nebula, and then I decided to put on the Orion Ultrablock filter, which as far as I can tell, is approximately equivalent to the Lumicon UHC filter. This filter significantly dimmed the sky, while dimming the nebula only a little, and thus the nebula became very much easier to see.
The visitors remarked at how easy it was to see with the filter. I had been talking about color, and they wondered what color the filter was, so I swung the scope over to Jupiter (the nearest source of bright and big white light), and showed them Jupiter in blue-green wavelengths.
A nearby deep-sky observer laughed as if I was crazy to use a "nebula" filter on a planet, but my visitors wanted to see what color the filter was imparting to the light, and I also think the filter accentuates the presence or absence of oxygen, and is thus useful in viewing the atmospheres of planets and comets. I think it enhances limb darkening on Jupiter.
When I used it on Hale-Bopp last year, the magnificent spiral streams all but disappeared, proving that the streams were dust, not gas.
Shortly after this, Matt and Belinda Tarlach, TAChyons, stopped by. We talked for a short while, and then I showed them the Double Cluster in Perseus.
I was finally ready to do some earnest Herschel Hunting, so went to my list of Herschel 400 objects which was sorted by right ascension hour, then by declination. Using the list sorted this way, I could pretty much move down the list as the night progressed, zigzagging across the sky and migrating slowly eastward.
I quickly decided to do galaxies only. The last galaxies I had seen were M51 and M101 in August, but the last time I had been able to focus solely on galaxies was at the end of June, and I had developed a ravenous appetite in the mean time.
Looking up at the cloud situation in the sky, I elected to begin the hunt in the northwestern corner of Pegasus.
NGC 7217 was pretty bright, but small and globular in appearance. A bit east and north lay 7331, a bright oval with a very bright condensation in the center.
Soon clouds covered this area, so I decided to take a peek at the biggest, brightest, closest spiral galaxy, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, aka M31, 32 & 110.
After spending some quality time on this fabulous object and bantering with my partner, the clouds cleared, and I resumed the hunt, just northwest of Markab, the star in the lower right corner of the Great Square of Pegasus.
In quick succession I found 7463/7465, 7448 and 7479. When I looked at 7463/7465, I only saw one galaxy. It was not dark enough to distinguish which one I was seeing, or whether I was seeing a combination of the two. I'll have to look at this another time when the transparency is better.
Presently the drone of a lone aircraft could be heard, but I didn't think much of it. Suddenly at 11:17pm the rotating airport search light came on. Within a few minutes, the plane (which apparently turned it on) was directly overhead. I happened to be in the shadow of a tree, but many other astronomers weren't and there was general consternation amongst the assembled throng as the powerful light beam swept across everyone every 30 seconds or so. There was a lot of griping. After about 15 minutes the light finally went out.
It was strange to see lots of people manning their scopes under full illumination. As far as I know, nobody was doing any photography.
On the same page of my chart (Herald-Bobroff Astroatlas, chart C40), I noticed a knot of galaxies about 5 degrees SE of NGC 7479. I didn't care whether they were in the Herschel 400 or not -- I love groups of galaxies.
I quickly found the pair of bright ovals, NGC 7619 and 7626. Next, I found the dimmer 7611 a bit to the west. North of the bright pair was 7623, about the same brightness as 7611. A bit to the northwest lay the fainter 7612. Finally, returning to 7623, about twice the distance NE lay 7634 and a nearby star.
Looking back at the chart, I can see there are just heaps of galaxies all over the place -- I just hit two or three spots. I will have to return to this area!
At this point, clouds invaded again, so I took an opportunity to look at Jupiter and Saturn, which were both showing a wealth of detail. The seeing was superb.
I resumed hunting Herschel galaxies in an area about 18 degrees south of where I had taken my little non-Herschel 400 detour.
NGC 7723 was round and dim, 7727 was round and bright in the center, 7606 was oval with a bright center, 7600 was very faint and 7585 was brighter.
On the way up down to 7585, I searched for 7596 (on H-B charts C39 and C40), not a Herschel, but a target of opportunity. I spent many minutes alternately searching for it, and looking at the chart. I repeatedly verified all the star patterns and the galaxies I had already found. Everything was matching and falling into place, except for this one galaxy.
I went on to 7585, saw it, then came back to the area where 7596 was supposed to be. I spent many more minutes trying different eyepieces and shaking the scope and using averted vision. I tried averted imagination, but even that failed.
Finally, I gave up.
Later I recalled a quote from a famous TAC Deep Sky Nut:
"There is nothing worse than hunting for 40 minutes for an object that turns out to be a dud 'almost-ain't-there' smudge." -- Mark Wagner, April 4, 1997
I thought I should update this quote as follows:
"The only thing worse than hunting for 40 minutes for an object that turns out to be a dud 'almost-ain't-there' smudge is hunting for 40 minutes for an object that turns out to be not there at all." -- Randy Muller, September 19, 1998
I immediately thought that there might be an error in the atlas, so I checked the magnitude of the galaxy.
The visual magnitude is not given in NGC 2000.0. I found a photographic magnitude at http://www.ngcic.com of 15 for the object, which agrees with my experience that night that it was a lot fainter than a nearby mag 13 galaxy, which I could barely see.
The Herald-Bobroff Astroatlas misrepresents it as being far too bright.
My final object for the evening was a dud "almost ain't there" smudge from my backyard: M74. At this dark site on this evening, M74 shone like a beacon, and showed quite a bit of detail and not-quite-spiral mottling. It was very beautiful and detailed compared to most of the other galaxies I had observed this night.
Finally, the clouds made a final onslaught and covered the whole sky. I thought they might dissipate after a while, but it was late, and I had things to do on Sunday, so we regretfully packed everything up. When we got back to Roseville an hour later, it was clear as ever.
In spite of the clouds, I was very pleased with my Herschel booster, and I look forward to pursuing this project with more intensity in the coming months.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sept 19/20, 1998 7:50pm-2am (0250-0900 Sep 20 UTC) Location: Blue Canyon (near Sacramento), CA 120W 50', 39N 11' Altitude: 5000 ft. Instrument: Orion DSE 10" f/5.6 dob-newt Oculars: 7.5, 10, 26mm Sirius Plössls, Orion 2x barlow. Seeing: 10/10 very, very steady, no fuzz Transparency: 6/10 partly cloudy Visual limiting mag: ~6 (?)