by Jamie Dillon
Three TAC scopes were in a row: Felix in the black trunks weighing in at 11", Papa Joe at 12.5, and Crilly's new 15.
Nilesh and I were exploring in the woods around 4216, that lovely edge-on <2 deg south of 6 Comae. Whole pile of 'em there. Well, there's this one little guy, 4206, right there. I'd been reading in Adventures in Deep Space, this one page of Jim Shields' where he lays out some cool pairs of galaxies in Virgo. Mentions 4216 and 4206 being 2 of three edge-ons in a row. 4222 is just a bit north. Hadn't seen it. Went back and there it was at the limit of what Felix would pick up, jiggling the scope with averted vision. Nilesh went and got it clearly in Papa Joe. So then I went and looked these guys up in SkyAtlas Companion. Turns out these 3 are part of a 4-galaxy group with IC 771. Not there in Felix. Nilesh found it in Papa Joe, a dim bridge between stars.
So we amble the few feet over to Jeff. "Say, Jeff, you real busy?" His scope made short work of this 15th magnitude object, with direct vision. That same scope gave out some fancy views in Draco of 5907 and 5982 with partners, later on.
You can see we had fun. Really did stay glued to the eyepieces till around 3. Cooperative observing can really be a great way to work.
I caught up with that OC in Aquila, 6709, which is shapely against a rich background. 6210, that blue planetary in Hercules, wasn't showing any color in Felix nor in Papa Joe. But all thru the night there was evidence of high clouds. At the end of the night, 7331 in Pegasus wasn't its best spectacular self.
Another find off the wishlist was Albert's OC, 6520, just out of the spout of the Teapot, with B86 right next to it. I'd seen that cluster last summer and missed the dark nebula. Turns out to sure enough be a function of good seeing, kept going back there and saw the astounding part 4/5 times. B86 is a hole in space, deep black.
Finished off the night with M31! Time marches on. I saw some fresh sense of a spiral shape in NGC 205. Then last of all went to the Sagittarius Star Cloud, which I really dearly love. And there was a dark nebula really strutting its stuff thru a side of the Star Cloud. Very satisfying night in all.
(over in the Finnish Bootie counted 23 stars at one point, for 6.2. Changed off and on in different areas thru the night, high cloud-fu. Seeing got to 5/5, excellent, varied also. Mars boiled all night.)