Don't miss S4/1999

Notes from Anza CA

7/1/2000

Anza CA is about 12 miles from Palomar as the bird flies. Temps ~ mid 70's falling to low 60's F (16 - 24C), winds calm Seeing: Very good (4 on a 1-5 scale) Trans: 5-6 on a 1-10 scale, Pipe dark nebula barely visible. N.A. nebula barely visible

Some cloudiness to the east northeast that came and went most of the night.

As usual the place was pretty crowded. Had I known so few people would be imaging at 3:30am or so when I planned to leave, I'd have stayed setup on a vacant pad on a very nice ridge. I was worried that is I left at about 3:30am I might disturb the imagers (though I take all sorts of precautions with the lights on the truck). So I setup in the dust and dirt next to my good friends observatory. I had the 18 inch (45cm) dob with me as opposed to the previous night with the 5.1 APO.

I observed LINEAR S4/1999 as it neared M34 at about 2:58AM (9:58UT). Don't miss looking! It looks like a comet! I mean it is no faint fuzzy. I observed the comet with apertures from 20cm to 45cm (there were still a few people awake at that hour). The comet nucleus and tail were well visible in all the scopes. The comet appeared oriented roughly east to west. The dust tail seemed to me to span roughly a half degree and was quite straight. It was also quite thin as opposed to some other comets that had short wide fan tails. Don't miss it. I did not do a magnitude estimate. But it's looking very very photogenic.

Another object I highly recommend is NGC 6888, the 'Crescent nebula' in Cygnus. I had a glorious view of this nebula in the 45cm. Just a few of the brightest arc sections of the nebula were visible at 64x (31mm Nagler Type 5). But screw in an OIII filter (or apparently a UHC filter) and about half Terminagler's one degree FOV becomes filled with a spectacular 'E' clip like nebula. In fact I like the 'E Clip Nebula' better. It must be holding the neck of the swan together. I spent 30 minutes examining and logging the detail available at 64x, 166x, and 221x. One not to miss. Interestingly everyone else seems to be using a UHC on it. Wish I had tried that to compare the view. At 64x I could even pick out the fainter southeastern side which then 'closes' the E Clip into an oval. That side 'disappeared' at high magnifications.

Looking for some bright planetary nebulae to track down? The SkyHound web site (www.skyhound.com) has an entry for NGC 6572. You'll be able to track down this bright green (to my eyes) planetary with as small a scope as you wish. It's REALLY obvious once in the FOV. It's color gives it away. At 284x I thought I detect a bit of fuzziness around the edges but it's the color that is striking. The hop gave me a bit of trouble, but that's half the fun!

And try NGC 6210 in Hercules. Even the smallest scopes should have no problem tracking down this bright planetary. I found the nebula in the 9x60 finder on the LITEBOX! It's on the North side of a triangle that is easy to pick out in the finder. Look on a chart and you'll see what I mean. (SAO 84574, SAO 84551, and SAO 84572 form the triangle for those of you playing the game at home). When I bumped up the power and insert an OIII filter I wrote: "I keep thinking I see some streaks emanating from the planetary but really can not confirm." Today, after going back to the web site, that matches well with the notes there.

Fun FUN F U N!