by Steve Sergeant
It's been a full two months since I had any of my telescopes set up. I did make a trip out to see Leonids, and I've pointed my binoculars at a few bright Messiers since one night at Coe in October. But, like the line in the Musical West Side Story, about my astronomical interest you could say, "He's depraved on account'a he's deprived."
I left work pretty late last night -- too late to join Bruce at Delle Valle, as was my plan. So all that remained was the option of setting up my NexStar 5, Marvin, on the sidewalk in front of my northeast San Jose house.
There's one acceptable place to set up on my sidewalk, at the confluence of the shadows of two trees. This precise position protects me from the direct light of two street lamps. I still have the light of several Christmas displays on my street, but luckily, they're not immediate neighbors.
From my sweet spot, the darkest swath of sky is due east and perhaps a little south. At the beginning of my session, I was looking at Auriga, Gemini, Orion, and Taurus.
The sky seemed clear and dry in that direction, as far as I could tell. Though looking at a less-than-pinpoint Capella during my GoTo alignment told me that I was looking through some moisture.
Using Andreas Hofer's "Planetarium" for PalmOS http://www.aho.ch/pilotplanets/, I planned my program based on whatever there was to see at magnitude 8 or less in my little zone of darkest sky.
M-35 was the brightest thing to pop-up on my chart. This open cluster in Gemini seemed to reveal a "t" shaped cross pattern of the brightest stars.
NGC-2129 is right nearby, it's a small open cluster with three bright stars I could see clearly, and perhaps a dozen or so other very dim ones.
M-1, the Crab Nebula is also right near by. I was certain that it would be quite a challenge under these conditions of aperture and sky glow. But I did detect a roughly oval, slightly brightened patch about 1/6 of the diameter of the 37' field of view in my 17mm Plossl; That had to be it!
NGC-1817 is an open cluster in Taurus. At magnitude 7.7, it is at the lower limit of stuff I expected to really see that night. With only perhaps 5 bright stars in my view, it was definitely an object for subtle tastes. One thing that made it interesting though, was observing it as a double cluster with neighboring NGC-1807.
NGC-1750 over-filled the 37' field of my 17mm Plossl. It was bigger and brighter than I expected from the information in my chart software. Messier should have found this one.
NGC-1647 is an open cluster with an S-curve chain of stars running through the middle of it. There seems to be a distinct bright pair in the middle (is this a real double?).
My next stop in that part of the sky was Saturn, and just as I slewed to it, a car drove up shining it's lights on me. A neighbor couple, who I'm just starting to get to know after more than two years, got out and walked over to see what I was doing. So I showed them Saturn.
To say that the woman was astounded by the view was an understatement. She said that she never imagined that a normal person could see this kind of thing themselves. But she was cold and went quickly into the house after the quick view -- turning on a porch and driveway light in the process (ouch!).
Her partner, however, was much too fascinated to let the cold discourage him. I asked him if he could pick out Titan, Rhea, and Tethys in the view. He could, and he bolted across the street to tell his partner once he discovered what he was seeing.
But I was merciless -- I slewed the scope onto M-42, the Orion Nebula. (In spite of the fact that he was nice enough to bring me a bowl of warm Chinese rice wine.) He was appreciative of this view as well. So I went in for the kill -- hoping the sky wasn't too washed-out over San Jose, I slewed to M-31, the Andromeda galaxy. I asked him if he'd ever seen two million year-old light before. He took the bait: He asked me when I was going to some mountain-top where the views would be better and he could look through my 12.5", because he REALLY wanted to go along. He said that his partner is a painter, and might like to go along and make a painting of stars.
At that instant, his partner insisted that he come in out of the cold. I told him what a nuisance his outside lights were, and he quickly extinguished them as soon as he entered his house. So I resumed my "program".
NGC-2281 in Auriga is a compact open cluster that almost looks like a mini-Pleiades. Or perhaps a kite with a long tail.
I couldn't resist looking at the spectacular open clusters, M-37 and M-36 in the immediate Auriga neighborhood.
I capped the evening with a more difficult catch -- some of my
Anyway, I had exhausted the patch of sky that I could see from my front sidewalk, so I went in and looked for another beverage as warming as that Chinese wine.
With the surprise visit by my neighbors, I think my evening had all of the elements of true sidewalk astronomy (except perhaps the large, home-built Dob). It wasn't some dark-sky site, but it was a blast.