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Just a few highlights from the a night of superb seeing from the Sierra foothills near Fiddletown (naked-eye limit 6.5).
To start the evening off I headed straight for M88 (after drooling over the images of Venus and Mars in John Gleeson's AP refractor). A beautiful galaxy in its own right, it now harbors a supernova (SN1999cl) that was discovered a week ago and was easily visible as a 14th magnitude superimposed "star" just outside the brighter core. Should be getting significantly brighter in the coming weeks.
Abell 36 is a huge ancient planetary in Virgo discovered on the Palomar Sky Survey. The photographic appearance is really strange with multiple shells. The surface brightness is quite low so I used 100x (20mm Nagler) in combination with an OIII filter. A very large, irregular, weak glow was immediately noticed surrounding a bright mag 11 star central star. With averted vision the PN could be held steadily and appear roughly circular and 4'-5' in diameter (ill-defined edges).
Near the opposite end of the surface brighness continuum is the bright planetary NGC 6369 - the "Little Gem" in Ophiuchus, which came up on Marsha's list. At 380x this was a beautiful annular planetary about 30 arc-second diameter with a well-defined 15 arc-second dark central hole. The rim was clearly brighter along the N edge and slightly weaker on the following edge.
John Gleason refers to the popular target NGC 4631 as the Millenium Falcon starship - complete with scout craft off the north edge. At 280x (14' field) this remarkable galaxy literally ran edge to edge across the 14' field. The surface brightness was unusually irregular with bright and dark mottling across the surface. There was no well-defined core but a prominent knot is close E of the geometric center along the north side and a second weaker knot is along the W side. The N edge has an unusually "scalloped" appearance particularly along the W side due to dust and brighter splotches. The galaxy gradually bulges towards the center and tapers at the tips, particularly along the W end. A mag 13 star is situated just N of the edge at the geometric center and N4627 appears to hover over this "starship" a couple of arcmin NW of center.
Marsha enjoyed the view of M57 at 380x (5.2 Pentax XL) with rock-steady seeing. The 80" by 60" halo was elongated WSW-ENE and clearly brighter along the N and S sides (ends of minor axis) and slightly "denser" along the N rim. The ends of the major axis are clearly "thinner" and slightly fainter at the following end. The interior has a pale gauzy appearance. Surprisingly, the edges of the ring had a "wooly" appearance with a strong impression of small irregular wisps hinting at the extremely faint outer halo. The central star did pop in and out of view a few times. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring along a barlow for higher power.