by Jane Houston Jones
We enjoyed a short cold night at Lake Sonoma Friday night. The new supernova in Pisces was one excuse to go, not that we needed any excuse on a perfectly clear Friday night. Knowing the moon would rise at 10:30 p.m.gave us an excuse to wuss out, if the going got too cold.
Arriving at the Grey Pine Flat parking lot at 6:00 p.m, we found only one vehicle, a pickup truck playing loud music. He left before we were finished setting up our three telescopes, and for the rest of the night we had the place to ourselves. Seeing was great - a 9 of 10 seeing night, and transparency about a 7. It was a perfect winter observing night. Temperatures hovered around 40, and humidity was high, but except for a little eyepiece lens fog, and a little dew on Mojo's Lumicon 80mm finder we had no major problems. I should mention that at times Mojo was transformed into a human Kendrick dew zapper, by holding a Grabber Mycoal mini-mini hand warmer against his eyepiece or finder. Those little things made a huge difference in comfort, too, one in each pocket turned frosty fingers back to a comfortable normalcy.
We brought Supernova eating telescopes, our 17.5inch f/4.5 and 14.5 f/4.8 Litebox reflectors. Our first project was to see the new Mag 13/14 supernova, SN2002 ap, near M-74. M-74 is a lovely face on spiral galaxy, a great target in its own right. Using the chart the supernova was easy to spot near two magnitude 13 stars. Here's a map if you want to give it a try. I understand it is getting brighter, so my mag 14 estimate, based on the first reports, may be too low.
http://www.aavso.org/charts/PSC/SN2002AP/SN2002AP-F.GIF for a nice map
Just as we had the new supernova in our eyepieces, my brother and my 6 year old nephew Aaron joined us from Healdsburg. Aaron received a 6 inch Pierre Schwaar f/5 reflector for Christmas, and has been taking it out every clear night for views of Jupiter, Saturn, M-42 and the moon through his 25, 20 and 15 mm eyepieces plus 1.8x barlow. He wanted higher power, and so his eyepiece collection has been supplemented with a 10.5 Televue Plossl and a 6 mm Vixen Lanthanum. He likes the views through the 6 the best. So last night I brought my own matching Schwaar 6 inch f/5 to show some objects in a dark sky to Aaron, but he was much more interested in the ladders and views through the bigger telescopes. I think he has aperture envy, I know his dad does.
Aaron's first question when he scanned the sky was "What's that bright starry thing in the sky?". We smiled, and Mojo described the Winter Milky Way to Aaron and Mike. They had never seen it before, at least not so clearly. We went through a bunch of good objects, trying out some new Christmas eyepieces. M42, M45- Pleaides, M44-Beehive, and Andromeda's M31/32/NGC405, Ursa Major's M81/82 galaxies, and M97/108 owl and cigar through our new 31mm grenade-like Nagler.
My brother was just blown away by Saturn, sporting a distinct brown NEB band at 180x in Mojo's nice telescope. He had not seen the Cassini division and just babbled, and goshed on about it long after we had moved on to other objects. Other Aaron objects were M-35 in Gemini, the Eskimo Nebula, Jupiter. The contrast of views in city and dark site, even on just the planets amazed them both.
They left at 8:30 p.m. and we were still the only ones in the large parking lot, under perfect conditions. We did some more projects, trying our new 4, 6 and 10mm Radians.on them. My own projects were to try some planetaries, through different fiilters at high power, through the new eyepieces.
07h 29.0 +13.5 The huge but faint Medusa Planetary Nebula, aka Abell 21 or PK205+14.1 required an O-111 to see the crescent shape. It is in the vicinity of its planetary neighbor, the Eskimo Nebula, NGC 2392 in Gemini. I needed to go to low power to find this one, my 22 Panoptic for 84X, with filter
07h 25.6 +29.29 Up near Castor itself was the twin Nebulae NGC 2371 and 2372. They needed the UHC filter, the O111 didn't seem to help. They looked just like the picture in NSOG, Night Sky Observers Guide, like two translucent fish eggs, one lobe larger and fainter than the other. I couldn't even find this at low power, and to go star hopping with the 9 Nagler+filter to find it, which was a challenge.
06h 16.9 +22.47, IC-443 , the Winter Crescent supernova remnant also required the O111 filter. It is also called the winter veil, and I was wishing I had a 2 inch O111 to use with the 31 Nagler on this whole remnant in one view. It's huge and dim, easy to find, but hard to see, quite close to M35 in the foot of Castor.
06h 25.9 +14.47 is the location of PK194+2.1, Jonckheere 900 Planetary Nebula, a green oval halo, nice color.
07h 05.3 -10.38 is the location of IC2177 Gum 2 in Canis Major. Lots of clumps, all with their own names and numbers around here.
07h 18.6 -13.12 is Gum 4 emission nebulae, which I call the Tadpole Nebulas (Thors Helmet and the Duck Nebula are its other names) This is a great object at many different magnifications and even with different filters. It looked great with both O111 and UHC.
My favorite was Sharpless 2-301, gum 5 at 07h 09.8 -18.29, a three lobed emission nebulae near Sirius. It needed the UHC filter, the O111 didn't show anything through my big scope.
As last objects, I did some of my favorite Canis Major objects, NGC 2363, a lovely open cluster I call the dog butt cluster (now that made 6 year old Aaron roar with laughter earlier in the evening.) It is located at 07h 18.8m -29.57.
Finally, the eyeball blasts of Jupiter, with the red spot at central meridian. Even through my hunking 17.5 with a 10 Radian, it just gleamed and so much detail was visible. I tried the 6 Radian but that was just too much power for the bright planet. The glow from the moon announced the end of our observing night, although I did aim the big scope at the golden lunar terminator as it rose above the hills. To the east, the Mayacamas Mountain ranges sported a dozen visible geyser towers in the moonlight.
All in all, it was a perfect third quarter Friday night of observing! Lots of pretty planetaries and gorgeous planets, with a smattering of other stardust in our eyes through new eye-toys. When the moon was up we packed and headed down to Pete's Henny Penny in Petaluma for an all-night diner snack.
Observing from Grey Pine Flat, Lake Sonoma
