For once...

by Jeff Blanchard


It actually stayed clear on a night when I planned to observe, no moon (well at least for a few hours), no other plans and I don't have to go to work today. The wind even died down as predicted at dusk. I continued working on my Hershel 400 from home and had a fine time of it. I'm almost embarrassed to say I'm working with 14.5" of aperture after listening to the feats of Jay and Refractor Red, but I am seeing lots of new objects, honing the star hopping and logging skills and given the murky skies so far, there have been some challenges.

N2194 a bright, rectangular open cluster in Orion was my first stop. I always like to start with something new that should be easy. Not completely resolved the easily detached cluster gave a pleasing view at 90x. I gave the nebula N1788 a quick shot but it was sinking swiftly into the city glow to the west and left it for a night with less moisture in the air or perhaps next Fall. Next on the list a bit higher and in a darker area of the sky was Thor's Helmet (N2359). Above the head of the dog, this faint nebula was barely noticed as a small thin arc of brightened sky w/o the Ultrablock filter. I wasn't even positive I had seen it. With the filter and a bump up in magnification to 130x there was more detail to be seen the longer I waited. I logged it as bipolar/hourglassish, the northern half being larger, the southern half suddenly bright at S most edge. My guess is the northern part's winged appearance gives the nebula the name. I look forward to returning to this object with dark skies in Big Sur this weekend.

Feeling full of myself I gave Abell 21 in Gemini a try. Not marked in the HB atlas I plotted the coordinates and scanned the area with and without filter at various magnifications to no avail. I'll probably leave the uncharted objects to darker skies in the future. I found success again with the 3 Hershels in Corvus. First the fairly large planetary N4361 was centered in the eyepiece after eyeing the location in the finder. Round and bright (much brighter than the 10.9m listed) and mottled in the middle the nebula quickly faded at the edges. At 300x the central was seen. The antenna galaxies (N4038-9) first appeared as a large, evenly dim ellipse 7'x3' with the major axis running roughly N-S between 2 stars. Increased magnification and a hood to block out light showed a slightly brighter middle area with uneven dark patches. Checking with the photo in Burnham's matched the bright and dark areas and separation between the interacting pair. No extensions were noted, but I seem to remember seeing them last year. Is this possible? The small, dim averted vision haze of galaxy N4027 (11.1m) was a satisfying closer to my list for the night as an orange moon peaked over the Santa Cruz Mountains. After closing down and poking through Burnham's I stepped outside for a final look at the sky to find a blanket of clouds. For once the weather had actually worked in my favor :-).