Observing Report 20020302 (belated), and Friday 20020309

by Robert Leyland

With the run of 'interesting' weather we've been having recently, it gives me time to post a couple of observing reports that I've been holding.

Arrived at Lone Rock flat, about 5:30 to find Dave Silva already setting up his 14" Starmaster. Not too much later Steve Gottlieb arrived, and a number of folks soon after. So that by dark we had a small clan of telescopes, ranging from 17.5" down to 5", with the latter being a "Striking Sparks" 5" Dob. It was neat to see one of the youngsters, from that program, out and using his telescope.

Early in the evening I took peeks at Jupiter in twilight, and M42. There is quite a bit of detail that can be seen in the big planet, even before it gets dark. This was to be a short evening of deep sky stuff, as the moon was due to rise around 10:30. So as the darkness got deeper I warmed up on he NGC 3190 group in Leo, before getting started on my lists. Not too shabby, I could see the brighter three galaxies fairly easily, and after a few moments the fainter 3187 as well.

Beginning with NGC 3184 in UMa, a nice face on circular galaxy near the feet of the Bear (Tania Australis). An adjacent field star to the North complements the star like core. Some breakup of the coma hints at a possible bar or arms, especially with averted vision.

Earlier in the week Steve G had posted an observing challenge (NGC 3158 Group in Leo Minor), and as it was quite dark by this time, I gave it a go. It's an easy starhop from Beta LMi, and the primary member of the group is easily seen. The challenge is seeing the others.

I counted 6 galaxies in the field of view at 100x, and made a sketch in my notebook for later verification. At 200x the grouping fairly comes alive with fuzzy patches. Checking against NSOG (p252), I had sketched in all the NGCs except for 3152, and had included one of the un-labelled galaxies. This group is worth another view, at higher power. Conditions were good, but later in the year Leo Minor will be better placed.

NGC 3319, galaxy in Ursa Major, showed as a nice elongated stripe next to two pairs of pointer stars aligned N-S. A larger diffuse, and faint, halo surrounding it was just visible with averted vision.

Switching sides of the sky, in Canis Major I went for a couple of objects before moonrise.

NGC 2204 is an interesting open cluster with a vague X shape, two brighter stars marking the ends of crossing lines. It reminded me of a time lapse motion diagram of colliding billiard balls.

NGC 2283 was tough, a faint galaxy inset in 3 field stars, moonlight was starting to take effect, and it made this one harder.

For several of the people coming out, this was their first session of the season, and although short was a lot of fun, and quite social. This was the first time we used Lone Rock this year, as it is closed through winter.

A group of us took a chance at the lake Friday night, and got a little bit of observing done, knowing that the rest of the weekend was likely to be a washout. It was ugly, coming into a new moon, and the weather is getting worse.

Definitely not a good night for galaxy hunting, but the air was relatively still, and despite the clouds, we got some good views of double stars and planets.

Steve Gottlieb had Comet Ikeya-Zhang (C/2002 C1), already in view. and I appreciated the view, even in the murky clouds that made up our horizons. It is very bright, and displayed a nice tail. Steve said it was much better before the clouds messed with it, and the tail stretched out over a degree.

I got their a little late and hurried though my setup. Of course that meant I had to recollimate later when my scope had cooled down. Still I took quick looks at usual eye-candy objects, and came to the conclusion that I was best off going for open clusters tonight!

In Puppis I looked at Cr135 a bright yellow star (Pi Pup) surrounded by a complement of blue pin points, very pretty. At short starhop away brought me to NGC 2298 a nice globular cluster but really messed up by the conditions.

With the clouds rolling across, it was catch as catch can, and I tried for objects all over the place. So I took a look at NGC 2158, open cluster adjacent to M35, which I had previously observed in my 8" Dob. In the small scope it is a fuzzy patch with few resolved stars, in the 17.5" many more stars resolve, and the cluster seems almost 3D. Of course it is 3D, but there is no parallax to judge depth, so our impressions have no real basis.

Quite a few folks packed up and left around 9, as it really wasn't that pleasant, cold and cloudy. Leaving just George Goltitzen, Steve Gottlieb and myself, with our larger dobs.

In Gemini, NGC 2265 "open cluster" is loose, perhaps too loose, as NSOG describes it as a non existant NGC object. It might be more distinguishable at lower power, as at 100x it is very difficult to discern any grouping apart from the milky way background stars.

Some of the others were viewing double stars, and it is an interesting challenge to view doubles in different telescopes. Steve had a good few "challenge" doubles, which George and I would then try to match. Usually these were close doubles with large magnitude differences between the components.

Some highlight doubles/triples include:

Eta and Zeta Orionis, Eta is more the difficult double to resolve, as Zeta was relatively easy at 220x, while Eta was noticeably closer.

Epsilon Hydri, a triple, the close component splits at 220x with a large magnitude difference, at 90° a faint third star (caught in my diffraction spikes).

Iota Cassiopeia, easy, and very pretty with contrasting colors and magnitudes. Last seen in my 8" almost two years ago. Only difficult tonight because we couldn't see it naked eye!

With clouds rolling in we took a last look at the big planets. Saturn was poor, being well and truly in the clouds, but Jupiter was excellent. The moons arrayed on one side spaced in a power series, and a couple of dark markings in the NEB quite prominent. Good color, and details showed all the way to 320x, of turbulent clouds and bands.

Once again a short session, uncooperative weather, and thus an early night.

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