by Robert Sheaffer
Comet Ikeya-Zhang C/2002 C1: At 60x a large, bright fuzzy ball, very low in the sky at 7:20. A bright star was next to the nucleus. A faint hint of a tail was seen, not bright.
M74: I probably saw the supernova, but was unable to determine which one it was!
| M 46 PUPPIS OPEN CLU ALTITUDE= 26.6 ø LOCAL TIME=19:57:06 |
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| Very large and beautiful open cluster, containing mostly stars of uniform brightness. Fills the 38mm erfle EP. Contains a planetary nebula that is easily seen. Using the UHC filter in the 22mm Panoptic, the planetary looks almost like the ring nebula. |
| NGC 2232 MONOCEROS OPEN CLU ALTITUDE= 42.5 ø LOCAL TIME=19:40:09 |
| A very large, spread out cluster containing numerous bright stars. Much too large for any eyepiece. More appropriately a binocular object. |
| NGC 1647 TAURUS OPEN CLU ALTITUDE= 69.7 ø LOCAL TIME=20:15:01 |
| Nice, bright, widely-spread collection of stars. |
| NGC 2217 CANIS MA GALAXY ALTITUDE= 24.8 ø LOCAL TIME=20:30:28 |
| Mag. 10.2. Small, bright, round central core is easily seen. Larger disk and/or arms are suspected. |
| NGC 2362 CANIS MA "JUMPING CLUSTER" ALTITUDE= 26.2 ø LOCAL TIME=21:07:19 |
| A very nice collection of uniform-brightness stars surrounding a bright member. I like this one. But why is it called "jumping"? |
| NGC 2298 PUPPIS GLOBULAR ALTITUDE= 16.7 ø LOCAL TIME=21:40:47 |
| Low surface brightness object, nice. Barely resolved. Pretty far south. Using a borrowed image-intensifier eyepiece, the globular is resolved quite nicely! |
I did see the Zodiacal light extending up through Aries after sunset. In fact, it was easier to see than the winter Milky Way!