Brief obs report from Coe

by Paul Sterngold


Yeah, it was very nice at Coe on Sat night. I brought the C11 for photos and Bertha (13.1" dob) for visual. I hadn't done visual deep sky observing with Bertha since Lassen. I found my star-hopping and field-hopping rusty, but by the end of the evening, I was getting more successful with some fairly dim galaxies.

I was surprised at how warm it was. I didn't put on my down jacket until midnight, although I did have a sweatshirt and fleece jacket on before then. The wind kicked up twice, once early in the evening, and again sometime around midnight, but only for about fifteen minutes each time.

I enjoyed the company as well. There were some old friends whom I haven't seen in too long, and many new ones as well.

I managed to log 19 new objects, the dimmest being mag 13.8 UGC6103. I observed several others that I didn't log such as M42, M36, etc. Here's my list:

NGC1055
M77 NGC1068
NGC247
Sculptor Galaxy NGC253
HolmbergII Other ID: UGC4305
NGC2403
IC342
NGC1502
NGC2841
NGC2684
NGC2768
NGC3198
NGC3184
NGC3675
NGC3893
UGC6135
UGC6103
NGC3614

Everyone left by about 1:30am. I then took a 1-hour exposure of M81 and left almost immediatley afterward, pulling out at 3am. I only managed one other photo, of the Horsehead. Both were through the C11 at f/6.3 (actually lower since my OAG sets the camera further back). If anything decent comes out, I'll post.