| Date | January 27, 2001 |
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| Location | Dinosaur Point, San Luis Reservoir, Merced County, California |
For my first serious night out observing in two months, I had originally planned two nights at Lake San Antonio. Those plans were scuttled by an illness of the canine member of my family, so I decided to try a closer, newly popular, and promising observing location: Dinosaur Point.
Dinosaur Point is not very high in elevation, and as such can be susceptible to central valley tule fog. But in it's favor, it's well sheltered from wind and the clouds blowing over the ridge that plague Pacheco Pass State Park just a couple of miles away. The parking lot is smooth asphalt, and almost perfectly level. I don't know the history of why this place is named for a terrible lizard, perhaps a reader can supply that story.
I arrived at this lake side location precisely at five PM. The temperature was around 45°F, and the humidity was around 80%. I was parked next to Matthew M. and his 8" SCT. There were already five other vehicles there in addition to mine. As I started to set up Zephram, my 12.5" F4.5 equatorial Newtonian, I discovered to my horror that I'd forgotten to pack my finder scope.
I struggled for 15 or 20 minutes trying to get close polar alignment without any kind of viewfinder or sighting aid. I gave up and decided to do something easy -- like set up my Orion ST80. Just as I got it set up and aligned, it occurred to me: I could attach this small refractor as a finder scope!
Getting this combination to work was not as easy as I had first hoped, it grossly affected the balance of the big scope, and getting the two aligned was also a chore. Polar alignment without a reticule in the finder scope was also more frustrating, but by about 19:00, I was ready to start my program.
Making a short hop from Polaris and my rough polar alignment, I started out chasing galaxies on the Eastern edge of Ursa Major. Just rising high enough off the horizon for my scope to reach, I started out looking at the pair of M-81 & M-82 (Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy) in the 51' field of my 19mm eye piece at 75X magnification. The sky was dark enough that I could see one clear spiral arm SSE of the core of this showpiece spiral, and a hint of one on the opposite side.
Pulling back for a wider 1° 13' view at 53X, I saw another, much more faint galaxy NE of M-81. I thought I had identified it as UGC-5247, which Starry Night Pro listed as magnitude 14.9. A few others were soon on the chase and tried looking for the same object. After a lot of comparison of views and discussion, I begrudgingly accepted that I was seeing NGC-3077, which is only magnitude 10.6. NGC-2976 is another galaxy also in that neighborhood, and also shows some of the details of a spiral.
Jim F. was observing with his I3 image-intensified eye piece on his 16" Meade Dobsonian. We tried to see if this galaxy of disputed identity showed any detail in his eye piece. It didn't. However, M-82 showed much more structure in this device.
I had a couple of objects I wanted to revisit in Gemini, before Leo made his appearance high enough over the sky glow of Los Banos:
| IC-443 Diffuse Nebula | I looked and looked for this diffuse supernova remnant that I found last August at Lake San Antonio. It should have been easy now that I know where to look. Alas, no joy. Even with a O-III filter, and minutes spent carefully dark adapting with my eyes closed and covered, the sky at Dino point wasn't that dark. |
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| NGC-2371 Planetary Nebula | I blinked and blinked where this object was supposed to be, and finally was confident that I saw a nebulous glow around brighter core, still tiny in my 9mm, 159X, 29' FOV. It was too dark to make out in my 6mm, 238X, 15' FOV. |
| NGC-2371 Planetary Nebula | This object is often called the Clown Nebula. It's a fun and relatively bright little fuzzball SW of the challenging double star, 63 Geminorum. It showed several clear step-like zones of decreasing density around the core in my 6mm, at 238X and 15' FOV. |
Finding these objects with my make-shift viewfinder turned out to be one of the more character-building challenges of the evening. I took a break from this rewarding tedium to see what some of the folks around me were doing. A lot of them were imaging -- at least four. Richard N. was shooting film with a CCD guider, and everyone else was completely charge coupled.
Bruce J. was able to show me the Horse Head Nebula, IC-434, in his 18" truss dob. I couldn't actually make out the famous Horse Head shape, but I could see the star pattern, and could see a slight dark intrusion into a diffuse nebulous stripe.
The temperature dropped into the mid 30's, and dew settled lightly on my table top. But the optics were staying dry without any extraordinary measures. Finally, my planned destination for the evening had moved into place: Leo and his lion's share of galaxies.
| M-95 (NGC-3351) Barred-Spiral Galaxy | I couldn't make out the bars, but I could see that there was a distinct spiral arm region extending beyond the elliptical core. |
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| M-96 (NGC-3368) Spiral Galaxy | I could make out quite a bit that extended beyond the core. I also think I detected one possible companion, or else it was a large H-2 region farther out from the core. Starry Night didn't know any cataloged companions -- so what did I see? |
| M-105 (NGC-3379) Elliptical Galaxy | I had quite a surprise when I first brought this galaxy into view: In the 39.6' field of my 9mm, there were tow other galaxies! I hadn't noticed them with my Orion ST-80 a couple of years before. But there they were, NGC-3384, a little dimmer than M-105, and NGC-3389, dimmer yet but still quite visible. That was such an exciting discovery for me that I studied it for some time. |
| M-65 & M-66 (NGC-3623 & NGC-3627) Spiral Galaxies | Southwest of the star Chort (or Theta Leonus; the lion's hip) are another couple of spectacular spiral galaxies. These two were visible at once in my 9mm. But another treat was to be had by taking the wider view with my 19mm eye piece, a 51' FOV at 75X: an edge-on spiral galaxy, listed as NGC-3628. I saw it's prominent dust lane cutting through it. M-66 especially showed one clear spiral arm in the 9mm view. |
While I was out, I couldn't resist some of the more obvious and spectacular stuff. So I visited the great Orion nebula M-42, the open star cluster M-46 in Puppis and it's thrilling little ring nebula NGC-2438, and wrapped the evening up with quick 238X glances at Jupiter and Saturn.
As I packed up at midnight, both the temperature and the humidity were steadily falling. It may have been an even more tremendous night for those who stayed longer. But I drove home listening to some silly comedy music, and chanting, "Lions and Terrible Lizards, oh my!"