by Matthew A Marcus
The secret word for the night was 'moisture'. Fog was always present on the hills below the site, and dew was a major presence. Even with the Mark Wagner Special dew shield, I got dewed twice, the second time being what I took to be Nature's way of telling me to go home, which happened at 0330. Seeing was good to very good; transparency looked good to start, but seemed to get worse.
Robert Leyland, another Robert, Dwayne and Dave Staples were there. My apologies if I've left anyone out. It was the Night of Big Iron; my C8 was the smallest scope there.
The night opened with the big planets, before it got really dark. They were surprisingly good given how low they were. Jupiter showed a shadow transit and that 'brown barge' which has accounted for so much bandwidth lately. Later on, we saw the moon responsible for the transit pop out. Still later, through Robert's (not Leyland) scope, I could see the GRS. For all these observations, I used an H-beta filter to avoid retinal damage. Saturn was also pretty good, showing Cassini, the Crepe ring, bands, the dark shading at the pole, and the occasional good look at the Encke minimum.
I spent most of the night working through the objects in NSOG in Auriga. The results are as follows:
| 1664 | Big OC which I'd logged before, so I didn't log it again. It's large and loose. |
|---|---|
| B26-28 | I tried, but I couldn't convince myself I saw anything. I suspect the moisture made the transparency too poor. |
| VdB 31 | Another DNF (Did Not Find). This is a faint reflection neb around bright stars; exactly the sort of thing which requires dry, clear skies. |
| Cz19 | DNF. One of those OCs which you can't tell from the rich, Milky Way background. Auriga is jammed with these. I also tried for Do15, Cr62 and Be18/K22, with the same non-results. |
| Be19, Do18, Be70, Do20, Basel4, K8 | Did not even attempt. The descriptions suggested that these would also be hard to distinguish from the background. Life is short and OC catalogs long. |
| B29 | DNF |
| PK173-5.1 | DNF |
| 1778 | This OC shows two thick rows of stars which bend in at the ends to touch each other and form a lens-shaped figure. |
| 1798 | As NSOG says, it's a faint, hazy patch. I saw a few stars in there, but mostly a round haze. |
| Do16 | A good one for the 'Why Bother?' list. A scatter of a few faint stars. |
| I405 | This object is difficult because it's so big. However, you can see that part of the field is murkier than the other part. You can trace a good fraction of the Africa-shaped boundary shown in Uranometria. |
| 1857 | A nice OC, anchored by a brighter (NSOG says m7.5-8) star in the center and one at the NW edge. |
| Be17 | I'm glad I could see at least one of the clusters in the catalog which might be named after where I now live (Berkeley). This one is a round haze framed by some brighter stars. Nothing special. |
| I410/1893 | With an Ultrablock filter, you can see both the nebula and some of the OC (1893) it surrounds. This EN/OC complex is like the Rosette Nebula in that it's a ring of brightness surrounding the OC. Without the filter, you just see the OC. |
| Sh2-224 | After my lack of success with some of the other objects, I didn't go for this one, as it's very faint. It's an SNR whose shape resembles a miniature of the Veil. |
| Stk8/I417 | It turns out that my corrector was dewed when I looked at this, so I'll have to do it again on a dryer night. Even with that, I could see the OC as a small group of stars near the bright star Phi Aur. The nebula was a small, faint smear of light within the OC. |
| 1907 | This small group is easy to find as it's just S of M38. It's fairly compact, as opposed to M38. |
| M36,M37,M38 | After the other OCs in this area, it's nice to see some eye candy. I didn't log these as I had logged them before. |
| 1931 | This looks like a small galaxy with a stellar core. It's actually a nebula which NSOG lists as being emission and reflection. It doesn't respond well to an Ultrablock filter, so the reflection part must be dominant. |
| Stk10 | A large, loose group. NSOG lists its magnitude as 11.3, but then says that members range from 7-14. How can that be? |
| B34 | This DN is not plotted in Uranometria. It's a circular area within which the sky is a little darker than outside. This area fits in the field of my longest EP with a little to spare around the edges. |
| I2149 | A tiny but bright, round PN. No filter needed. |
| 2126 | The NSOG account in the small scope froths with enthusiasm and has an exclamation point. The description for 12/14" scopes calls it a 'rather faint, fairly small, loose scattering of ... stars'. That's more accurate. There's a bright star at the edge which can help you find it. |
| 2192 | (OC) An elliptical haze with some stars poking through it. It's widely surrounded by brighter stars. |
| 2281 | This last object listed for Auriga is YA OC. It's a pretty nice one, though. Lines of stars form a crude cartoon of a whale (well, sort of). Anyway, it's bright and it's big. One of the better OCs in the area, not counting the M-objects. |
After Auriga, I got tired of OCs so I went for some more objects on my Deepmap 600 list:
| 4889/4874 | 4889 is the brightest of the Coma Cluster. That gives you an idea of how late I stayed out. Near it I think I saw a very faint smudge which would probably have to be 4874. |
|---|---|
| 2784 | Gx in Hya. It's far enough S that you want to get it while it's on the meridian, so I did. It has a bright core and looks like a tilted spiral galaxy. |
| 5474 | Gx in UMa. A round, fairly big fuzzy. |
Other objects included 253 (always a winner), some of the Fornax cluster (I didn't get Fornax A; too hazy down there), the Horsehead through Robert's and Robert's scopes, the Double Cluster (becoming my traditional opening DSO), M42, 2903. Robert L. showed me that you could see the Rosette Nebula naked-eye using a filter and knowledge of where it is.
I wasn't too bummed to be dewed out at 3:30; I'd had a good, long, relaxing night of observing with friends.