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Last night, the night of June 18th 1999, was a keeper! Even with the 34% illuminated moon some 50 degrees away in Leo, M51 was a complex spectacle of arms and knots in Ka'Imi'Iki', my 18 inch LITEBOX. This was a first for me seeing it like this and I savored the view using 22mm Panoptic, 16mm Nagler, 12mm Nagler, and 8.8mm UWA eyepieces. The 16mm Nagler was the best view and is rapidly becoming my favorite eyepiece for reasons I can't really quantify.
However I spent a long time trying to track down the nearby NGC5198. I get anal about these faint fuzzies even though there were 100's of better objects to see that I have not yet seen at all, or with Ka'Imi'Iki'. Anyone else like that? 8)
I kept seeing an easy to view sliver of light but could not exactly match the star field using MegaStar nor SkyMap Pro. Either I found it and don't know it, or I am brain dead. Probably both. Anyone else ever spend 45 minutes (or more) looking through the eyepiece, then the charts, the eyepiece, the charts, the eyepiece, the charts, etc... I still never got what I thought was a "match" and the night was just too good to 'waste' anymore time... But today I am still digging though atlases trying to figure out why I could not get MegaStar and Skymap Pro to match what I saw. Unless I tell them to mirror the image and my Newtonian does not have mirrored images, they don't appear to match the printed atlas. Anyone? Is this because of working near the pole? Both my Uranometria and Herald-Bobroff AstroAtlas, when turned upside down do not match what the computer programs show... unless I mirror the image... hmmm... Guess this is why printed atlases are still a good thing (and I have ALL of them except the Millennium)!
As the moon set the North American nebula was visible naked eye as was the "false comet" in Scorpius. I had never noticed this wonderful cluster/asterism until S&T mentioned it this month. M8/M20 in Sagittarius was visible as it boiled off, as was barely M13 in Hercules (at least I thought I glimpsed it? Possible?), and the knots trailing the Scorpion's stinger NGC6416 and 6475 were prominent. The Milky Way was a gorgeous mass of mottled star clouds steaming from Sagittarius' spout cooking the swan and warming the abodes of Cassiopeia and Perseus. The Cats Eye Nebula actually looked eerily like it's namesake. Is that the real central star or a foreground star?
Stilling being a novice in many ways, I tried splitting some double stars in the head of Draco. NOT! Go ahead, play with a 2.4 magnitude star and a 12.9 magnitude star! (Gamma Draconis) I saw a VERY bright star and big diffraction spikes! 8) What's that? Try Restaban? Beta Draconis? You mean magnitudes 2.8 and 12.7 with a separation of 2 arc minutes? 8) Xi (Grumium)???? However, Epsilon Lyra split wide open into four components at 166x using the 12mm.
Using a 27mm Panoptic I failed to find the Draco Dwarf galaxy. Bad idea???? In Hercules M92 and the nearby NGC6229 were fabulous at various magnifications.
Using an OIII filter and the 16mm Nagler the western portion of the veil (NGC 6960) was a river of twisting eddies and currents while the northern portion (NGC6979) was an easy target. The western portion (NGC6992) was more difficult but fell to the 18 inch mirror and OIII filter as well. There is more to this gentle remnant that I need to explore, but working near Dobson's Hole soon proved tiring.
I did not get as many objects observed as I could/should, but what I did observe, I did so with 4 or 5 various eyepieces and took my time.
I was hesitant to go out on a night where the moon would interfere for the first two hours plus having gotten up early yesterday morning to get to work, but 22.5 hours later, when I got to sleep, I was glad I went! Just one of THOSE nights. 8)