Stalking Galaxies in the Winged Horse

by Randy Muller

Attempting to make the most of the remaining few days of clear weather before the onset of bad fall/winter weather, I made a trip to Fiddletown on Saturday, November 6, 1999. The scheduled arrival of a storm on Saturday did not discourage me from going - it encouraged me instead to try to maximize my observing opportunities by also observing Friday night.

So, as I drove up to Fiddletown, I was already a bit tired from the previous evening of observing. The drive was very scenic, with the golden undulating hills topped with dark green oaks presenting a lovely contrast with the other deciduous trees turning all sorts of brilliant colors. Just driving up through this beautiful country, anticipating a clear night under the stars and seeing my astro friends again gave me nice feelings of peace and serenity.

As I drove, cirrus clouds began encroaching on the southern sky. But I was looking forward to seeing Steve Gottlieb again, and meeting Ray Cash for the first time. Ray has a cool website (http://members.aol.com/anonglxy/deepsky.htm) with a collection of Hickson Compact Galaxy group observations, to which I contributed after accidentally observing three of the components of Hickson 44. Also, I knew Rashad was planning a two-nighter there, and there was a possibility of Mark Wagner showing up.

I met Gary Manning at the Pokerville Market in Plymouth at 4pm, and a few minutes later, Steve showed up. I jokingly mentioned that evey time Steve meets Gary and me to observe in Fiddletown, the weather is threatening.

We drove to the observing site, and Ray was already there and set up. He would be deep in the throes of doing CCD photography, and I saw some awfully cool looking raw images on his laptop at a couple points during the evening. He reported that Rashad had just left, because of the clouds. The clouds looked very grim, but we set up anyway. I also wanted to show the star charting software running on my laptop to Gary.

I wanted to do a limiting magnitude check in Pegasus, if possible, even if I could not observe anything else. I used the starcharts located on Bill Arnett's website at http://www.seds.org/billa/lm/rjm.html, and had done a star count in a part of the Great Square of Pegasus at the Sacramento Valley Astronomical Society observing site the night before (Friday, November 5), and I was interested in comparing the darkness at Fiddletown. The only other time I was at Fiddletown was on January 9, 1999, and it was extraordinarily dark, due to fog in the Central Valley absorbing the light pollution of nearby Sacramento and other valley cities. This night there would be no fog, and consequently there was a large (30-40 degree high) light dome in the west, where Sacramento lay. The lightdome from Sacramento/Auburn at the SVAS site is typically 20-30 degrees.

As the sunlight slowly disappeared, so did the clouds, miraculously. Soon we were treated to magnificently clear skies, though clouds lingered on the western and southern horizons. The skies alternately clouded and cleared throughout the night. According to Steve, transparency seemed to be down a little bit, and it did not seem as dark as it normally gets. Sometime after dark, a fellow whose name I don't know showed up with a friend and a 20" f/5 dob.

STALKING GALAXIES IN THE WINGED HORSE

I began with Algenib, also known as Gamma Pegasi, which is the lower left corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. About a degree to the north west lies NGC 14, a small, diffuse galaxy, which I logged as 'faint', although it is magnitude 12.1. I think that in spite of the apparent clarity due to lack of clouds, it was not all that transparent.

Dew was now thick on my table, and was even forming on my laptop. I was a little bit worried about it, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I also began worrying about dew forming on the plastic sheet I was using to dim the screen.

Continuing west, I skipped NGC 7814 (within the Square), since I had observed it before (at Lassen in August). I observed NGC 7800, which appeared extremely faint to me (mag 12.6). This is about a magnitude brighter than other galaxies I have described as appearing 'extremely faint' on other, clearer nights.

I moved south and tried to track down NGC 7810, but was unsuccessful. The sky seemed a little milky, so I stepped back from the scope, only to see that some clouds had appeared in the part of Pegasus I was looking at. I was amazed I could see anything at all. I complained loudly about the clouds, looked at the other parts of the sky with my naked eye, noticed that the clouds had moved west a little bit, redid my search and this time found it with no difficulty. Since it was magnitude 13.0, I'm guessing that my earlier observation of NGC 7800 was partially obscured by clouds.

Although I later discovered that the galaxy NGC 7803 was very nearby, I cannot explain why I didn't look for it. My goal was to do an exhaustive survey of galaxies in this area down to wheatever the limiting magnitude of my scope is, and I missed this one. It's possible that, at mag 13.1, I had the limiting magnitude of SkyMap set to 13, and thus it didn't appear on my charts. It was early in the evening, and I was adjusting the limiting magnitude as I went. I guess I was being too conservative - I'm sure I could have seen it had I looked for it.

I next went about 2 and a half degrees southwest to locate NGC 7794, a 'faint' diffuse oval galaxy (mag 12.5).

At this point it clouded up again., and I noticed that the dew, which had been forming thickly, was now going away. This very same phenomenon had happened the night before at the SVAS observing site. Sitting there under the stars (with some clouds), it grew very quiet. Even the observers were not making much noise. An eyepiece being inserted with a metallic scraping sound here, the flipping of some pages there. By far the loudest noise was the rhythmic chirping of the crickets nearby. I love the quiet, and I am not used to this level of quiet.

I looked at NGC 57, about 2 degrees north east of Algenib. It was small, but relatively bright at mag 11.6. It was kind of fun to keep crossing the boundary between the high and low NGC numbers.

At this point, Steve came by and asked me if I wanted to see Pease 1, a tiny planetary nebula in M15, a bright and beautiful globular cluster. He first showed me a finder chart for it, which was a photographic negative of M15. The planetary was marked with a pair of tick marks. Steve pointed out an asterism of 4 stars to help orient the field of view in the eyepiece. Next, there was an identifiable clump of stars just outside the core of the globular. The planetary was in this clump, and it was verified by blinking with a UHC filter. The clump maintained its brightness, and occasionally even looked stellar.

It clouded up again as we finished looking at this. While frustrating, it gave us the opportunity to socialize, and I got a look at the observation database Steve had running on his Mac laptop. It was very slick, as he was able to pull up all observations he had made in the past on the spot.

THE NGC 524 GALAXY CLUSTER

This cluster strongly reminded me of being back in Coma-Virgo in Spring. As my scope traversed the field, new galaxies would pop into the field of view while others disappeared. It wasn't as big or dense as the Coma-Virgo cluster, but it gave me that same feeling of awe at the scale of what I was seeing.

I am surprised that there is nothing about this cluster in Burnham's, and there is only scant mention of it in the Night Sky Observer's Guide. But in looking through NSOG, I found a couple more that will provide some rich hunting grounds in the future.

Clouds again prevented me from viewing, and I spent a long time socializing. When it became clear again, I took a look at M42. I was able to see 6 stars in the Trapezium (just barely), so the seeing was not that great. Finally it clouded up again, so I socialized again for a long time, then I gave up and began packing up. Of course, when I left, it was clear.

HOW DARK WAS IT?

THE HAZARDS OF OBSERVING

After I tripped and hurt myself, I didn't have to go nearly as bad anymore.

I had carefully avoided re-observing stuff I've seen before, but I only saw 12 new objects. Also, when I looked at M42, it looked nice, but certainly not as spectacular as it did in January. I could not see that loop of glowing gas going all the way around like I saw the last time.

The drive home early Sunday morning was OK. I drank a popular caffeinated soft drink to keep me awake, and that worked fine. I much prefer to sleep in my own bed. I am continually surprised at how close Plymouth is to Sacramento. Given the weather on Sunday and the days following, I think we were very, very fortunate to have as good weather as we did on Saturday night, and I am really, really glad I went.

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