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I'm finally getting around to writing an observing report for Friday, October 8th. A good sized group of us decided to try for a Friday night observing session at Pacheco State Park in Northern California. The previous week, the sky transparency had been very poor for deep sky objects, but planetary observing was terrific. I was hoping this night would be better for faint, fuzzy hunting, and it was!
Because of miserable traffic, I didn't get to the observing site until about half an hour before sunset. Set-up of my 12.5" Meade dob is easy though, and with the help of my buddy Mark Wagner and another friends laser collimator, I was ready to go. We started out the evening hanging out around the brighter Messier objects, and a few colorful double stars. Just loafing until it really got dark.
For some reason, I asked Bruce Jensen about Barnard's galaxy (NGC 6822). He immediately said "That's one of my favorite objects!" and promptly pointed his 18" dob right to it. E.E. Barnard discovered this object visually with a 5 inch refractor. The guy had some incredible eye-sight! The galaxies total magnitude is listed at 9, but it is very large and it's light is spread out over an area of 20' x 11'. The view in Bruce's scope was not easy to my eyes, but the diffuse glow was certainly there. There is also apparently a small planetary in the view, but I didn't notice that. Then Bruce told me I could probably see it in my 12.5" dob. I was doubtful, but after a quick peek through his Telrad, I went to my scope matched the star field in the eyepiece and...... well, I didn't see it right away. I called Bruce over and after a bit he said he could see it. I went back to the eyepiece and studied the field for a bit, and I finally saw some of the diffuse glow. The most interesting thing was trying a UHC filter. All of a sudden there were little knots of brightness, very small, in the field. Bruce said these were OIII regions in the galaxy. Pretty cool!
The main viewing for me the rest of the night would be objects in Aquarius and Pegasus, with a brief foray into Cepheus. I started with my Herschel 400 list for October, and found NGC 7010 listed. I called the object up on The Sky software and noticed M72 (NGC 6981) andM73 (NGC 6994) were very close, so I decided to re-vist these objects first. M72 is a nice little globular, just about resolved to the core with my 22 Panoptic. I had forgotten what a wonderful object M73 was. A 4 star asterism. Messier thought he saw some nebulosity in the area. No one else ever has. I think Messier was probably hitting the grog that night.
NGC 7010 at mag 14 was small and faint and needed higher power. A 12 and 9 Nagler gave better views than my standard 22 Panoptic.
The next item on the Herschel list was NGC 7009, which turned out to be the Saturn Nebula. I wish I was better at remembering these numbers! I'd seen this object many times before, but what the heck. With a 9 Nagler and a UHC filter the view was excellent, and the ansae were obvious.
NGC 7606 is a mag 10.8 elongated galaxy near psi Aquarii, but not in the same field. It appeared bright and it's spiral shape was apparent. NGC 7600 was nearby so I scooted over. This is a mag 12.8 galaxy and is described as lenticular in TheSky. It wasn't as bright or big as 7606, but still a nice view. There was a chain of three brighter stars in the field. I'm gonna have to learn how to determine orientation.
NGC 7723 was one of my must-see NGC's for the night. It's big and bright. At mag 11.9 it seemed brighter towards the middle, and had a bit of an odd shape to my eye. There was a mag 5.6 star a bit to the east and visible in the field with the22 Panoptic.
Just a degree away is NGC 7727, another 11th magnitude galaxy. It's a bit larger, so it's light was a little more diffuse, but still, it was a good find. It's listed as a barred spiral. In the same field is NGC 7724. A very small galaxy listed at mag 14.3. The view with a 12 nagler was much better.
I decided to see what was on the September Herschell 400 list and saw NGC 6946, a mag 10.5 galaxy. I must admit to skipping over a lot of the open clusters on the list. Some of them are spectacular, but I find many of them are too small or sparse for my liking, or they're in a rich milky way field and everything looks like an open cluster! In any case, while looking for 6946, I stumbled upon NGC 6939, a large and bright open cluster. It's a bit irregular with about 100 stars. Quite pretty. The galaxy I was looking for was very nearby, and what do you know? It's in the same eyepiece field! This pairing was the observing highlight for me, and certainly a must see NGC grouping. Why hadn't I heard of these objects before? Turns out NGC 6946 is only 5 megaparsecs from us, and is one of the nearer galaxies outside of the local group. It glows at mag 8.9 and is fairly large. I wouldn't call it bright, but it stood out beautifully with the open cluster in the same field of the 22 Panoptic at 69x. Check this one out when you have a chance.
The next object turned out to be the final must-see NGC for the night. NGC 7331 is a well known galaxy, and is a jumping off point for finding Stephen's Quintet. I didn't realize that there were other galaxies in the field with NGC 7331. NGC 7335 mag 14.5, 7340 mag 14.7, and the most difficult for me to see at mag 15.2 is NGC 7337. Switching to a 9 Nagler helped a lot to detect these faint galaxies. Paul Sterngold thought these galaxies were obvious. The combination of the large and bright 7331 with these small galaxies was quite a treat. You owe it to yourself to spend some time in this area. If you have a larger scope, you might find some of the other galaxies in the field and those that are very nearby.
I finished the evening with more galaxies in Pegasus. NGC 7217 is a bright, round galaxy shining at mag 10.2. It is a nearly face on spiral and I would think easily visible in most scopes.
Below the great square of Pegasus is NGC 7448 A fairly bright mag 11.7 spiral. NGC 7454 was a fuzzt parch in the same field with 7448 at 69x.
The last objects for the evening was another dim galaxy grouping. NGC's 7463 mag 13.3, 7464 at 14.3, and 7465 at 13.3 gave a better view at high power. I really pumped it up with a 6.7 Meade UWA (227x) and a 4.8 Nagler (317x). Using high power for dim galaxies can be useful!
I had a great evening of observing and enjoying the company of my friends. I packed up and drove off about 1 a.m. Luckily the traffic I encountered on the way to the site was gone by the time I left. I can't wait until the next exciting evening of must see NGC's.