With the New Moon and eclipse on Christmas morning, I took a break from our familial Christmas activities to star gaze.
I've been following a program of working through a constellation, attempting to find as many of the listed items that I can. My source materials are: Rukl's Constellation Guidebook, and The Night Sky Observers Guide (Kepple & Sanner) which I refer to as NSOG.
Activity for the next few sessions is devoted to Andromeda, and its surroundings. The very familiar galaxy M31 with its companions M32 and M110 won't escape mention, but I'm interested other sights as well.
On Boxing day I picked up a couple of new Pentax XL eyepieces (7mm & 14mm) from Orion's closing sale, so I had to try them out too. Christmas Eve I was using the 21mm, 10.5mm and 5.2mm XLs.
| Observer | Robert Leyland |
|---|---|
| Date | 24 Dec 2000 |
| Time | 1915 PST - 2330 PST |
| Location | Novato CA. 38N 122.6W Elev 500' |
| Weather | 7°C Temp 63% Humidity |
| Seeing | LM ~5, moderate light pollution, low haze layer obscures horizon |
| Equipment | 8" F6 Dob, Pentax XL EPs |
I spent a few minutes checking the scopes collimation, it is ok, but a few minor tweaks get it closer to ideal. I also take the time to get the Telrad lined up properly.
So beginning with the easiest...
Androdmeda Galaxy (M31/32/110), so large and so bright. Some banding is noticeable away from M32, it is hard to call them dust lanes, but the effect is evident. The nebulosity extends far from the core. To compare I flit over to M42, where the trapezium is showing the E star, but no more, and the nebulosity is extending far further than I remember seeing before. It must be a good night!
Back to Andromeda, a star hop past Mu and B And, to M33. This is large and has low brightness so that it is often hard to see from my home. Tonight is is very good, some structure can be seen, with a clockwise spiral pattern.
Off Beta And, is NGC 404 a cool little spherical patch that contrasts wonderfully with bright yellow Beta in the same FOV. It was a lot nicer to find than the more common "Error 404, Page not found" we usually face. I experimented with pushing the star out of the FOV, and concentrating on 404, without much success. I may need to work on my patience here... so much to see.
Gamma And is a beautiful double star, with blue and yellow components, moderately close, easily split in the 10.5mm (115x). It is a really nice sight, comparable to the much better known Albeiro but to my mind nicer, as the stars are closer and the contrast that much more apparent. This is one pair I'd like to come back to with a spectrascope.
Push out past Gamma, we can find NGC 891. It has a dim elongated oval shape, and take good averted vision to see. The star pattern around it is recognizable from the photo in NSOG (p22), so I know i have the right place. There are several other galaxies in this region, but I can't see them, and NSOG descriptions for 12 and 16 inch telescopes begin with the words "A dim..." which tells me these are beyond my current situation.
Pushing out past NGC 891, the open cluster M34 is easy to see in the finder, and makes a nice change of view.
The Abell 262 galaxy group between Gamma And, and Triangulum seems to be beyond reach just like the 890-911 group, but nearby is NGC 752, a nice open cluster. It is easily seen in the 7x50 finder as a fuzzy patch, that explodes into hundreds of stars through the telescope. It overflows the view in the 21mm eyepiece, and is easy to use a navigation point, along with the adjacent double 56 And, which is a nice pair of golden stars.
On the opposite side of 56 And, is a small group of stars that include NGC 7662 a planetary nebula. Through the 21mm it appears like an ordinary star, albeit somewhat dim for its apparent size. Boosting to the 10.5mm, it becomes clearly planetary, like a flat globe with soft edges. A very faint star can be seen just below it, and I can see some filaments coming off the nebula. It is very pretty and occupies my attention for quite a while.
Continuing in the same direction, I look for NGC 7640. The star pattern that contains it, is unclear from the NSOG description. There is a triangle of stars with a dim central "star" that could be it. Averted vision showed no nebulosity, but does reveal a dim star just outside the triangle that would define the end of the galaxies nebulosity in the diagram on p24. By this time (11:30pm) 7640 is fairly low in the sky and starting to get into the mushy area.
| Observer | Robert Leyland |
|---|---|
| Date | 26 Dec 2000 |
| Time | 2015 PST - 2314 PST |
| Location | Lake Sonoma CA. 38.7N 123W Elev 500' |
| Weather | 8°C Temp 63% Humidity going to 3°C 91% |
| Seeing | LM 6+, some low fog/cloud to S and SE |
| Equipment | 8" F6 Dob, Pentax XL EPs |
I began the evening by repeating some of the Christmas Eve viewing. Quickly covering M31 et al, and M33 which has a stronger spiral structure visible. NGC 404 looks good, while Gamma And gets another look, with the 7mm as well, it really is a great double star.
NGC 891 shows more structure, the elongation is much more evident, and averted vision shows a possible dark stripe in the center. It is quite remarkable what a dark sky site can do to aid your vision. The seeing isn't the best I've seen here, and yet it is still far better than my home.
NGC 910.911 are a possible sighting amid "lumpy darkness" further out from 891 and Gamma.
The Abell 262 cluster is still too hard to see though so I move on to NGC 7640.
Firstly I look for 7662, starting at NGC 752 and the previously mentioned double 56 And. The Blue Snowball looks great in the new EPs too!
The same star pattern shows no trace of nebulosity, but the central "star" does appear to be slightly oval, and maybe a bit fuzzy, perhaps the only sign that it is not just a "regular" star.
I take a little break, as the temperature has dropped to 5°C and take a quick look at M1 with my new eyepieces. It is a good sized "blob" in the 21mm, but in the 14mm it shows some features. There seems to be a diminished brightness "hole" towards one end, and the fuzzy edges seem stretched. M1 is often regarded as boring, but there is more there than a casual glance will reveal.
Coming back to the Andromeda region, I move to Triangulum. There is no joy at Epsilon Tri, I just can't see the second star of this double. There is a pair of stars adjacent to Iota, which may or may not be related. Iota Tri on the other hand is an easy split with magnitude difference between the components, both look yellow green using the 7mm XL, and are still split, but with very little color in the 10.5mm. NSOG list both Iota and Epsilon as having the same separation (3.9"), I expect that the big difference in brightness is hiding Epsilon's dimmer component from me.
At this time the temperature dips to 3°C and the humidity has been climbing all evening, and is now around 88%. I look for NGC 890 and 925, and while I think I have the correct position I can't make a positive ID, as the dew has started to form on all exposed surfaces metal, glass, plastic.
As I pack up, the temp climbs back up to 4° and the humidity keeps rising, definitely time to go. So I still have a few things to look for next time.