September 23 Lake Sonoma

by Matthew Marcus

The large number of "should I go?" and "standing down" postings showed how unpromising the sky looked. However, the brave souls who did go were amply rewarded for their patience. The clouds mostly went away when the moon did, leaving a sky with excellent seeing. Even relatively early in the evening, when it was less than halfway up, Saturn showed up quite well, with the Encke minimum, a conspicuous band on the planet, the planet's shadow on the rings and the Crepe ring all easy to see in an 8". Jupiter showed a shadow transit earlier on in a C-14.

My observing project was to see all the objects listed in the article about Sagitta, Vulpecula and Delphinus in the September Astronomy. I got all but one - Palomar 10, a 13.2 mag glob. I might have gotten that too, with a good enough finder. Anyway, here's a list of objects logged (in a C8), in order of logging them:

6802	OC in Vul, right off the E-most star of the Coathanger. An elliptical haze with stars popping in and out.
6820/6823	OC/EN in Vul. The nebula was hard, especially since the moon was still up.
6830	OC in Vul.
M71	GC in Sag. Looks like a dense OC, but it's a nearby glob. Haze in center partially resolved into stars in averted vision.
Harvard 20	OC 2/3 degree from M71. One of those little-known neighbors.
6886	A 4" PN in Sag which I had to blink to find. Showed a disk at 250x.
6905	Round PN in Sag nicely framed by a triangle of stars. No central star seen, despite report in Astronomy article which said I should be able to see it.
6891	PN in Del, 14". No filter needed.
6934	GC in Del. Some hints of stars in outlying regions. Not much condensed.
6940	Big OC in Del. Has two starry regions separated by a dark channel.
7006	Small GC in Del. Unresolved.
45	Gx in Cet. Barely detected, even though it was on the meridian at the time.
428	Gx in Cet. A strongly elliptical glow in the curve of an arc of stars.
578	Gx in Cet. An elliptical blob.
1087	Another 'blob' Gx in Cet.
24	One of the innumerable Sculptor galaxies.
1097	Gx in For. Bright and elongated with a distinct core.
1398	Gx in For. My sketch makes it seem to be a face-on spiral with a distinct core.
I410	EN in Aur. Photos show this to be a complete circle around an OC, like the Rosette, but I saw only part of it, which looked like an arch. Ultrablock was needed to pick it out. I should have tried the Ranger.
1931	RN in Aur. At least, I think it's a reflection nebula because it doesn't respond to filtration. An elongated streak, like a tilted spiral galaxy, surrounding two (3?) stars. Required 250x to split the stars.
Fornax cluster	I drew a field around 1380, then tried to match it to the plot in Uranometria. I got matches for 7, with two unaccounted for. These two are probably faint stars my imagination promoted to galactic status.

I left at 5AM, not because it was getting light (it wasn't), but because the fog had climbed up to the level of the parking lot. I'd saved looking at the big planets in my own scope for last, and had to do that in a big hurry as the fog was thickening around me. By the time I had taken down, it was pea soup.