by Matthew A Marcus
I did quite a bit of view-cadging myself as there were some big dobs around, including Robert's new toy and Dick Flasck's with the tracking platform. I definitely felt the pangs of aperture envy.
The night was dark, though a couple of observers said that they routinely saw it much darker. I wonder if this had anything to do with the big wildfires. The seeing was fair to poor the whole night.
It was a 5-planet night for me - Mars, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus. You can tell from this that I stayed pretty late. I drove home in the rosy-fingered dawn. Some of those fingers stretched across the south, forming bars across the sky as seen out my windshield. I was last out by a couple of hours.
I logged 21 DSOs, including some real challenge objects (at least for an 8"). These were:
| I4756 | OC in Serpens Cauda, so big it wouldn't fit in the C8's field, so I used the Ranger to log it. |
|---|---|
| I5164 | Emission nebula, rather faint |
| Stk 23 | Open in Camelopardalis, big and loose |
| G1 | Glob in M31. Dick found this in his big scope and loaned me the chart (S&T, Nov. 1995) so I could try it with half the aperture. I got it in all it's 13 mag. glory, and Dick confirmed it. That's the only glob I've ever seen which didn't belong to our galaxy. |
| "M177" | This is from the Peoria group's Next Messier list. It's the Scutum Star cloud and their answer to M24. I used binox to sketch this. M11 is in the field. |
| 891 | Always a favorite. This is the first time I've really seen the dark lane, though it came and went in averted vision. It was solid in a C14 at the other end of the parking lot. |
| I1459 | Galaxy in Grus |
| 7410 | Ditto. |
| 1201 | Galaxy in Fornax. This and the ones in Grus are from the Deepmap 600. I've gone through and flagged those objects on that list I haven't seen yet. Some are too far south to see at all from here, but others, like this one, and far enough north to be seen if you seize the opportunity when it arises. Given that I've seen Cen A from Dino (Dec = -43), I figure that only 16% of the sky is completely off-limits from our latitude (fraction too near the South Pole = (1-sin(|dec|))/2). Unfortunately, that 16% includes an awful lot of great objects. |
| 1275+1268+(?)1274 | Perseus I galaxy cluster. 1275 was reasonably easy, 1268 was faint but definitely there, and the third one was an 'I think I saw it'. I logged them and then looked them up in NSOG so I wouldn't be biased. |
| 1232 | Nice little edge-on in Eridanus |
| 1499 | California Nebula. Got it in the Ranger at ~3:30AM using a 32mm EP and an H-beta filter. It didn't all fit in the field. I've previously logged it in binox with Ultrablock filters over the lenses, but nobody then present would believe me. |
| 4632 | Big elongated galaxy in Draco. |
| 6652 | Yet another Sag glob. Two little strings of stars coming out of the core give it a somewhat triangular appearance. |
| 6709 | A loose OC in Aquila, looking like a hollow rectangle with arms coming off it. |
| 6717 | Glob in Sgr. If you don't know what it looks like, it's hard to spot against the glare of a bright star (35Sgr) next to it. I was right on it, didn't see it, navigated to it again with the Uranometria, then realized that I had been on it and didn't notice it. |
| 6907 | Galaxy in Capricornus. |
| 6910 | A pretty little OC in Cygnus. Its strings of stars lend themselves well to fanciful imagry. For instance, in one orientation it looks sorta like a giraffe with an orange star for its nose. This might be a good one for public star parties. |
| 7217 | One of many galaxies in Pegasus. |
| 7507 | Smallish galaxy in Sculptor. I don't know if it's part of the Sculptor Group. |
I propose a new unit of logging or observation rate:
1 Freeman = 100 objects/night.
Since this unit is far too large for everyday (everynight?) use, the milliFreeman would be the usual unit. Thus, I sustained an average rate of 210mF. It would have been higher, but I spent a good part of the night schmoozing and bumming views, which of course is much of the fun. In case it wasn't obvious, :-) :-)