I set out to try and find Pluto with my pronto & I3 combination from the balcony. I had seen down to mag 14 "stellar" objects on good nights, so while I knew my chances were slim (balcony=much light pollution) I figured no guts, no glory.
With TheSky chart right next to me I quickly found the designated area. I started drawing stars, figuring that this was probably going to take a couple nights, observing some movement to really be sure. I strained to see faint stars, that would show themselves at most 10% of the time, I had the exact area indicated though, so I was feeling pretty good. There was some clouds though, and it turns out the very faintest stars I could make out were around mag 13.3, there was a couple of these right in the area where Pluto was plotted. The kicker of this story is that I had accidentally set the sky for a week earlier, so I wasn’t in the right place, but with 13.3 being the faintest, I don’t think I was gonna see it.
a couple days later I looked up Uranus & Neptune in the early morning. I found both pretty easily with the pronto & regular eyepiece. I was very curious to see how the I3 would enhance a planet. All of the other planets (except mercury) are too bright for using the I3. Turns out that my Pluto hunt was probably really futile. I would rate the I3’s enhancement of Uranus/Neptune as "below average" in that it enhances most stars better than it did for the 2 gas giants reflecting our sun’s light. I guess the sun simply isn’t a red enough star for good I3 performance.
Just some highlights from Friday night at Montebello with John Gibson, and later my wife, but first one lowlight. The mosquitoes at MB were out in force, before & just after sunset. I think on future trips there & to dino I am going to try and minimize my mosquito exposure time. Mosquito time isn’t the best astronomy time anyway.
1st target after it started to get dark, NGC 2608 and its supernova. This object took all of my toys & patience to find. I think I must have looked for it for an hour, and then looked at it, drew stars/location for the better part of 2nd hour. I could not see either galaxy, nor supernova in a normal eyepiece, I new I was in the right place, no galaxy, so at this point I got out the I3. I3/16" revealed a faint small fuzzy with a stellar core visible roughly half the time. If I didn’t keep my eye on it as I looked around the field, I would misplace it. power 72x. I had forgotten the printouts I made of the supernova’s location at home, so I made some drawings of the immediate area, for analysis later.
The stellar core of ngc 2608 formed a nearly equilateral triangle with 2 faint but directly visible stars. Just off of 2608 was another even fainter star, that made it seem like 2608 had a double stellar core. This fainter star was visible slightly more than the nebulosity of 2608, but wasn’t as bright as the other 2 stars & ngc 2608’s core. almost though.
When I got home I hogged the computer from my wife for over another hour. I compared my drawings, with TheSky, and with the DSS image of 2608. It took me forever to match of the field stars I had drawn, with both TheSky and DSS image and eventually with the supernova chart from AAVSO. voila, when I finally got the DSS image orientation, matching TheSky it was clear from the DSS image that there simply wasn’t a star where I had noted fainter "double core" star above. When I got the AAVSO chart matched up, that "double core" star was exactly where they had plotted the supernova. I projected backwards, very pleased that I had seen an exploding star nearly as bright as millions of other stars in the host galaxy.
My wife had shown up for the 1st time in awhile to look at things during all of this, and so I mainly wanted to show her some showcase objects for good clean fun. Sadly all the good galaxies in Virgo/Leo/Coma where near the zenith and even with my stool she was too short for the dob pointed straight up! I gotta get a nice portable step stool of some sort, any one know of one?
She was very impressed with M4, as was I. It was higher than I have seen it in the past, and with the I3/16" combination the swirls/whorls/patterns of stars are quite impressive. Also showed her M80 for distance/size comparison. I guess M80 is more distant
Later I noticed that Centarus was around its transit, and I wanted to see ngc 5128 (centarus A). There was an extinction soup of haze around the southern horizon, but I was pretty sure 5128 was just above it. With the I3/16" I could see 2 dark lanes stretching across the bright elliptical core. (Is it an elliptical?) I noticed the giant yellow ball of omega centari on my SA2000, but I wasn’t sure it was above the horizon and it was certainly in the soup, could I see it?
I tried to find it by moving straight down from 5128, but only found the trees on the horizon. But I could see stars in the horizon haze, so I took a tip from someone who posted earlier in the week, binoculars! Wow! there is was! I giant hazy ball just above the trees. A little to the left of directly below 5128. I am sure it benefited from the same illusion as the full moon on the horizon, when we think the moon looks bigger than normal when juxtaposed against foreground objects. Now to the scope, so very low... there is was. In a regular eyepiece on the 16" it was still a hazy ball just a degree or 2 above the trees. The trees weren’t in my field of view, but they were just below it. I put in the I3 and I think the view is best described by my wife’s comment: "OOOH!" The I3 resolved that hazy ball into a myriad of stars nearly filling the entire eyepiece. (72x & I think around 35’ diameter fov) Bigger than even the sprawling M4, more uniform though, probably due to the increased atmosphere in between. I will definitely be revisiting this as June 21st approaches, just a couple more degrees please...