by Jamie Dillon
NGC 6946 was the most interesting deepsky object I observed in the midst of two very absorbing nights. At the border of Cepheus and Cygnus, there's a bright OC sitting there, 6939, and whoa a spread-out face-on moves into view. In Rashad's 12.5 and my 11, it looked blown apart, disrupted. In a bigger scope, according to Steve Gottlieb, 6946 has one distinct long spiral arm and looks like a shrimp. Burnham has an arresting picture of this galaxy, and explains what Rashad and I saw, that in medium apertures you see the bright core and not the arms, which explains the rough square shape we saw.
As noted last night here, it's hard to write for once, it being such a pale shadow of those crystalline skies both at Devastated Area Thursday night and Bumpass Friday. This was with Felix the 11" Celestron f/4.5 Dobs, using a 22 Panoptic, a 16mm UO Koenig, and a 6mm Radian, with a Televue 2x Barlow and Lumicon OIII.
The wishlist for the trip came straight from Ray Cash's webpage of observations of the 100 brightest Arps, at http://members.aol.com/anonglxy/arpnotes.htm out of which I picked the brightest in turn, also picking out at least pairs of galaxies in each view (why not be greedy, this was Lassen). The hop for Thursday night moved down thru Canes Venatici, starting with 4495-90, seen at Lake San Antonio. 4485 was bright here, moving at its dramatic right angle off 4490, pretty. 4618-25(Arp 23) looked splotchy, 4625 looking disordered in the 22 at 57x, both with randomized edges in the 16mm at 79x. Stopped to see M94, only seen once before, a splashy face-on. Paul Sterngold and I teamed up that night, swapping views, with Steve Sergeant next door on his new JMI. Paul and I had known each other best thru our kids playing together several times, now spent hours not only observing but hanging out around the campground, we had fun.
Also settled a grudge with NGC 4240, which had been elusive at the Peak. Found out why from Devastated, where it was lumpy, squarish and diffuse, right where we had been looking before. This night Sterngold counted 28 stars in the Finnish Bootie, where at the same time I came up with 22 (6.4 and 6.2, respectively). Seeing went from 4/5 to 3/5 and back.
Let it be said here once more that the best view of the whole trip was naked eye, the Milky Way overhead Friday night from Bumpass at 2:30 am, plain magnificent. That night I got 26 stars in the same triangle in Bootes, just about 6.4. Seeing was excellent, 5/5. Started by discovering a galaxy, 3949, a pretty slim spiral near chi UMa, found by recklessly overshooting M106. 4231-2, a 14th magnitude pair fondly remembered from the Machholz night at Coe, not there the night before, were available to averted vision ca 40% of the time. Then ambled on south to 4627-31(Arp 281). 4627 is a fancy edge-on, big and slim, known in these promiscuous parts as the Slug Galaxy, shows in Burnham's as thicker on one end. Didn't find 4627, but did see 4656, an irregular nearby.
Then headed north to 6946 (Arp 29), described with awe above, then over to 2300 (Arp 114), with neighbor 2276, near Polaris in Cepheus. 2276 showed a bright core, 2300 a bright foreground star, all mottled with lanes. The whole area there showed a background mottling, dark lanes threading throughout.
Went back for the nth time to the Big Arp Set, Stephan's Quintet, off 7331 in Pegasus. Turned out to be a limiting mag test for Felix, which was what I was aiming for by now. Steve Gottlieb thoughtfully helped, and we both could make out 2, then 3 galaxies dimly in the field, at 78x, then around 140x. This was under a really fine sky, with an expert observer standing in. So it looks as if 14.0 is around what Felix will do. See how far I can push into the 14's over time.
Comedy next night after a fine public star party, when I was visiting the Big Single Arp, M82 (Arp 337) and looking north to suss out the next neighbors. About 4 deg out hit a face-on dim spiral, which was quickly dubbed the Do-I-Give-a-F#&* Galaxy. Three nights was past limit still. Prolly was 2985.
Food was super, company was funny and all around superb. Made new friends, developed friendly acquaintances, and cultivated some already lifelong friendships. Even made some good music. Liam was great, and the TACos were nice to him. It was grand.