by Jamie Dillon
Saturday night was major fun up at Coe. First time the TACo's had been assembled on a hilltop since end of June up at Lassen. What a gang of people. Banter for days. Doug Davis and Jason Newquist were back after prolonged unexcused absences. The skies cooperated to boot. Seeing was good to excellent, 4/5 to 5/5, after dark, and the transparency was at least 6.0 overhead and to the north and east.
Since then I've been telling everybody that might care that I found Pluto. No one down here really cares, but I know you do. Nilesh really really helped. Just as well, seeing as how it was him finding Pluto up at the Peak, months ago, with his 6" Alfani, that helped get me started here. Also, this summer I'd read Clyde Tombaugh's marvelous book about his discovery. 3 wks ago I'd spent a solid hour at Coe not finding this distant elusive little object. So here we got busy with Nilesh's The Sky (after I'd whined for help) along with the findercharts from March's S&T. Got to the unmistakable field, nothing jumping out. Nilesh sat down at Felix at 210x and started seeing a point-source right on the money, with averted vision, 30-50% of the time. I studied it, gazed in some awe, then Matthew Marcus came over and confirmed what we were looking at. It's described now as mag 13.8, and with Ophiuchus leaning over to the west. Pluto must have been over 14.0, close to the limit of what Felix will do. The location exactly matched both charts.
This was with Felix the Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs, with a 22 Pan, 16 UO Koenig, a TV 2x Barlow and a 6mm Radian. Used a Lumicon OIII plenty later.
So there I used up the last of my youth, had to go to some use. On to brighter objects. Venus in fact had been just over the hills at sundown, and Neptune was bright and blue early on. Uranus is in a real easy spot to find now, by iota Cap, and very blue-green still. All this coming fall and winter I will not get over Saturn, Jupiter, the Pleiades and the Hyades all in a pattern together. Encke's discontinuity was clear to direct vision on and off thru the night. After a good long while studying Jupiter, I ambled over to Rich's scope for a sense of perspective.
New for me was finding a bright HII region in M31, off at the end of one arm. Sure enough it blinked differently with an OIII filter. Then turns out Mark Wagner was gazing at the same object later with his Obsession, and said there's a blue giant cluster right there by the emission nebula. NGC 206.
Then I figured planets to planetaries, found the Helix Nebula, 7293 in Aquarius, using Neuschafer's directions. The thing is huge! And with the OIII it tried to jump out of the eyepiece at me. Twirling patterns, phew. Then it was high time to see the Cat's Eye in Draco, 6543, which sure enough was a lovely pale blue to my eyes, with a big bright central star. Took Rashad to remind me that a planetary won't have a bright big core, unless that's its star! Ended up the serious part with finding the Bubble Nebula, NGC 7635, in Cassiopeia, right near M52. Intriguing tendrils of gas across a broad area. Gonna go back there with unfatigued eyes, more magnification and the OIII. Even with the famous Hubble picture of the Bubble (Hubble pic 98-31) in the mind's eye, there's nothing like seeing it live.
One more great night. Thanks to all.
Also that night we did a joint study of 6553, a globular sitting SE of the Lagoon, M8. On 5 August, I'd found it and its apparent neighbor, 6544, while scanning around M8; neither of them showed resolution at 57x (again with an 11" f/4.5 Dobs, using a 22 Pan, later also a 6mm Radian for 210x).
Now in their marvelous book, The Milky Way, Bart and Priscilla Bok have two striking pictures of 6553. I'd told people wrong that they were done with different filters. They were taken with the 100" on Mt Wilson, but one with a blue-sensitive film, the other with red-sensitive. In blue, 6553 looked sparse and very faint, where in enhanced red light it blazed out, dense with stars. Intervening dust reddens the light on the way to us.
So at 210x Saturday night, 6544 showed some resolution of some apparently brighter member stars, while 6553 showed granulation but not real resolution. Begging Mark Wagner worked, and we looked thru his 18" at ca 100x (right?) then at ca 160x. At that point granulation looked much more pronounced.
Here's the punchline part. Clay Feldman was playing with his image enhancer, the like of which I'd never seen outside of S&T. As Clay said, "Welcome to 50's TV." Looked just like a little CRT, which apparently it is. Sucker cut right thru that dust, and there was 6553 blazing out, much like on the red-sensitive print. No aperture would cut thru that dust, but shifting sensitivity down to the red end of the spectrum did. Made for a dramatic demonstration of what interstellar dust does.