by David Staples
After watching the sky anxiously all day I finally got my daughter off to bed and headed to the lake, arriving about 8:20. Robert Leyland (17.5"), Matt Marcus, Robert A. (20", from Los Gatos) and George Golitzin (14", Sonoma Co. A. S. member) were already there making it an "acres of glass" night. Nothing under 14 inches except the C8's of Matt and mine.
Other than a dead battery for the drive and bit of dew, it was a great (and a tad chilly) night.
| Observer | Dave Staples |
|---|---|
| Date | 12/13 Jan 02 |
| Time | 2030-0130 PDT |
| Location | Lake Sonoma CA, 38°43'N 123°02'W Elev. ~900 (Grey Pine Flat) |
| Weather | Clear, cold, dewy, no wind |
| Equip | C8, Telrad, 7x50 finder, 40mm, 32mm, 26mm, 10mm plossls, |
| Seeing | 8/10 |
| Trans. | 7/10 |
Not being one that is organized enough to come up with a target list before hand, I started by flipping to the Orion page in SA2000 and seeing if there were any M's that I hadn't logged as yet. So I started off with M78 and M79.
After looking at M42, splitting Rigel (easier than I thought it would be) and perusing sigma Orionis (sp?) I noticed Leo was up so I moved on.
M95-96: Just got both galaxies in the eyepiece at 50x (.9 deg FOV). Round fuzzy spots, though after looking at the DSS images I'm not surprised. Higher mags did not reveal much more.
M105 and companions: It's companions, NGC3384 and 3389, were actually more interesting if dimmer that 105. NGC 3389 a bit of elongation oriented north east. I also mooched a look through George's 14 and 3389 was definitely elongated and a bit mottled.
NGC's 3412, 3377, 3367, 3338, 3346, 3300: This group arches north and west of M105. Of this batch 3412 was the only one that was more than a just visible fuzzy spot. When checking the DSS images this morning 3346 looks like one that would be good to come back to with something larger that an 8 inch scope, it is a nice barred spiral in the image. It would be interesting to see how much aperture it would take to see that detail.
After that group Leo was far enough up for the Triplet to be out of the murk and everybody took a look at the eye candy. I also logged the 4th galaxy of that group that is just outside the view of the three.
NGC 3593:slightly elliptical and dimmer than the other three. I missed this one when I first found the Triplet last year...all I had for charts then was "Turn Left" and it didn't mention 3593 at all.
NGC 3596: Near 70 Leonis, my last galaxy of the night. A spiral according to the DSS, but you wouldn't know it in my scope. All of these faint fuzzy's are feeding aperture fever...which will probably never subside.
After that it was time for one last look at our solar neighbors, with Jupiter and the shadow transit and Saturn with her fabulous rings before packing up contentedly and heading home through the pea soup fog.