Taking a break between storms can be fun. Since we had a rather active monsoon pattern this year, it follows that fall-which normally is our best season-would go right into winter and give astronomers the slip and leaving them wondering what happened. My observational period lasted from about 9 pm to 2 am. Temperature went from 48 to 45, humidity from 82% to 96%, dew point stayed at 43 degrees and the wind was under 5 mph for the period. In other words for Southern Arizona is was pretty dismal. Transparency started out a 6 and ended up a 5 and the seeing...well, for the most part was a 5 or less although I did have calmer periods lasting for 10 or so seconds at a time. I was using the 22" contraption currently residing in my observatory. This, by the way is not a "fast" telescope. Go to laptop, enter coordinates, move telescope...go to ladder, climb up look at object, decide next eyepiece, retrieve it, back up ladder, go to other computer running The Sky and look at chart, meander over to desk and look in reference books and then make notes...go back to laptop....It can easily take 15 minutes or more to fully look at an object and move to the next one (CCD work is even more fun but more on that later).
First on the list was NGC 672, a smallish galaxy that forms a nice pair with IC1727. 672 was the brighter of the pair although 1727 is larger. 672 oval in shape but with what looked like a distinct central bar or dust lane. this might have been a very abrupt change in contrast between the central portions and outer arms. More magnification seemed to help slightly. 1727 was a slightly more oval and quite a bit dimmer.
NGC 784 looked very much like the edge on galaxy that it is-long and thin. Very faint texturing across surface and the ends seemed to taper slightly but did not "drop off" like 4565 or 891. with averted vision seemed to be able to catch fainter extensions when the seeing would settle down.
NGC 925 was fairly bright and large and a 12Nagler suggested the slightest hint of spiral structure, with very dim and indistinct gaps or darkenings in the glow. reminded me of a dimmer M33 in say a 4" refractor-just the slightest hint of detail.
Now it was off to Cetus and I looked for quite some time for IC1613...a very large and dim galaxy....my notes say that this was "damn tough" and indeed it was. After getting the right star field, I thought I saw what looked like a very slight, subtle, not bright, indistinct brightening of the sky. A Lumicon deep sky filter helped to blink the object off and on and there indeed was a very slight change in contrast. My notes also say "my eyes hurt" and indeed they did.
Drifting to NGC 864, at first I thought that I was looking at a nebula-a glow around a star but indeed it was the galaxy with an annoyingly bright star next to it. It looked very much like some of the little puffs in Cassiopeia-just glows around stars.
By this time Jupiter had a glow around it and everything was dewed up in the observatory. Looked at Saturn with a 10.4 mm Meade research grade orthoscopic (268X). For the most part it shimmered and boiled but when it steadied up-there were differences in the coloring of the rings, and a very slight gap in the outer rings that looked like the thinnest of pencil lines (this would be outside of the Cassini Division). Jupiter also boiled but when steady there were very subtle differences in color WITHIN the great red spot and the disk was speckled with little white spots, swirls, and subtle differences in coloring. However, for the most part, the seeing was not cooperating and details we seen fleetingly.
Finally rolled the roof closed a little before 2 and all in all not a horrible night-just not a great one for around here.