2 January 2001 - clear, calm, moon near first quarter
On the way home from work I thought I would try to see the last two H400 objects in Cygnus that I had not seen yet. Cygnus is getting low in the NW and if I did not see them soon I might have to wait until near dawn in May.
These objects, 7044 and 7128, are galactic clusters, and so would not be as much as a problem to view as a galaxy would be during a first quarter moon. My plan was to greet the family, explain what I wanted to do, print out finder charts, set up binoculars and observe these two NGC objects.
A few problems developed.
I was warmly greeted by my family and my request agreeded to. I started setting up on the upper back deck when I was told that the toilet was plugged and needed to be fixed. I continued to set up while the family ate dinner. The printouts seemed to take forever, but finally they were done, the binoculars set up on the deck and all, I thought, was ready.
I decided to fix the toilet as my kids sometimes forget problems that exist (I don't even want to go into what one of them did with a toilet that was removed for repair once). So I started plunging. And plunging. And plunging. For 15 minutes. No luck. Time to snake. With my wife we sanke, And snake. And snake. And snake. After a dozen runs with the snake progress was made. Problem gone. Yuck! Clean up time.
Back to astronomy. Outside I go to try to find the guide stars. My son David comes bouncing over the deck and as I start to get seasick jumps on me saying "I want to see Daddy!" "There's nothing to see yet David", say I. "Go get ready for bed." Two minutes later this is repeated. Two minutes after that son Robert turns on the floodlights so he can see what I am looking at. But I have another problem, I have my computer glasses on and can see only two stars in Cygnus. Ok. Finder is lined up with the 30x binoculars. Let's look at the finder chart I printed out. Um.....I can't read it. The stars all seem to be about the same brightness.
OK, let's try my old standbys, Sky Atlas 2000. Get out the Cygnus map, go to the RA and Dec for 7044, and it is not there. Double check RA and Dec. Find I have two different values for Dec on 7044, but it is not at either location. Ok, this has happened before. Time to get out the MSA. Go to the right page and 7044 is NOT there! I try the other Dec I had and it is NOT THERE EITHER! What is going on??? Then I remembered that Roger S was one of the authors and I thought he had a thing going to not list objects not found in the RNGC*. So I looked it up in the Night Sky Observer's Guide. It is there, with a finder chart. With some trouble (due to the twisting around of that section of the sky, poor eyeglasses, and the tripod either too high or too low). I found the guide stars, and after checking the written description a few times, found that faint small grouping of stars called NGC 7044.
Now for NGC 7128! It's in the MSA! It's got good guide stars! But I can't find the guide stars!!! Kids keep coming out and wanting to see. My wife comes out and wants to see. I try to tell them that this is NOT worth viewing. Thirty minutes of struggle. Finally I find 80 and 81 Cygnus, my guide stars. Double check the nearby stars. OK. Triple check. OK. Double check again, don't want to get my hopes up... And then a little slew over and there is 7128. I've now finished all the H400 objects in the west and have only a dozen or so H400 objects to view with binoculars before trying to view the faint joys of Lion, the Bear, and the Virgin.......
To finish off I showed my family M35 and asked who could see 2158.
Time to put the kids to bed and eat dinner. I now have 34 of 47 constellations finished, 229 of 400 objects in the H400-I list viewed with binoculars.
Greg Edwards
* I looked up 7044 in the RNGC this evening, it is there. And found an image at the STScl Digitized Sky Survey
http://stdatu.stsci.edu/dss/dss form.html so it is not a "missing" object.
PS: Does anyone have any idea why 7044 is not in the MSA?