Last night I packed up my loot from Christmas and made my way out to the OCA dark sky site near Anza CA. Everything looked set for a wonderful 7 or 8 hours before Selene reared her beautiful head. Ah that was not to be...
First I played with my new toys (of course). One of my favorite moments was when I stacked the 4x Powermate then the Paracorr (1.15x) and then a 16mm Nagler for 541x (4.6x) with my 45cm dob trained on Saturn. What a view! Of course the seeing was fairly poor and the mirror was still cooling but in the few moments of steady seeing the planet was huge with tiny little pin pricks for moons nearby! With great eye relief and a large field lens it was a pleasure to use this combination. Can't wait to get a decent night. The setup looks real funny. Like a small scope at right angles to the real scope! 8) BTW the focuser works great.
The 31mm Nagler rocks! You should have seen the double cluster nicely framed in the 1+ degree FOV. Who says they require a rich field scope! In the early evening hours after sunset, while the mirror continued to cool, I worked my way through Sue French's small scope sampler for January from S&T. Yes I know the 45cm is not what she had in mind. But I'd never have seen Eta Persei which would be a shame to miss in any scope. Then stopped loafing around and as she suggests took on the California nebula.
A question: Is the brightest portion of the California nebula just directly north and 'maybe' just a tad west of Xi? I swear I could see the where the edges of the nebula would transition into the darker sky background as well as that one brighter region. Otherwise I would have to log it as 'suspected'. Here's my log notes:
"Very tough to say yes I see it. But I believe, as a sweep, I can see brighter areas that standout from the background or a brightening of the background as well as darkening where edges may exist. This is especially true north north-west of Xi Per but just east an asterism containing TYC-2369-386-1 (SAO 56838) and TYC-2369-1294-1 (SAO 56841). Then again maybe I am full of it!"
Anyone who's ever read more than one of Mark Wagner's observing reports knows his "Spotted Beast of the North" from October 1998 is a night he was having a lot of fun! Slowly, very slowly(!), I have been working on this report as an observing program of my own. I have been diverted many many times away, so it's still not completed. However I have keep the printout of his report and returned last night with that strange beast execptionally well placed for observation starting around 7pm local time.
Talk about tough star hopping! Camelopardalis can be rough going! It took me forever to track down NGC2366. I kept backtracking to NGC1961 and it's companions and hopping from there and getting lost. Finally in desparation I placed the telrad on NGC2403, a big bright galaxy and within a minute or two was on NGC2366!! I am so pigheaded sometimes I don't see there are other ways to hop to a DSO!
There are many many interesting and relatively bright galaxies in the belly of the beast. (As well as plenty of challenges!) One example I mentioned is NGC2403, a big bright galaxy that should be an easy target from most scopes and is most likely overlooked by many. This whole constellation is well place these evenings in the northern hemisphere and is chocked full of DSO's that get ignored because of the more 'famous' constellations of winter. Check it out.
As I moved on to NGC2655 I noticed the sky... WHAT! Where did THOSE clouds come from!??? Just call me the rainmaker... It has not rained here in Southern CA since early November. I go out to my dark sky site for the first time since the 10th of Decemeber, first time with my new toys, and by 9pm local was clouded out. Today it's raining... Coincidence?? So to anyone in SoCal... Sorry! 8(