by Ron Bhanukitsiri
Whew, I twisted my fingers on that title ?. After being wasted by the weatherman for the whole month of Apr. and part of May, it feels like I've just returned from my end of March vacation! Tonight, the moisture (fog) was creeping up but seemed to have been held checked down in the valley. The LM was 5.9 tonight with San Deigo being obliterated by the fog. I spent between 10:15pm-12:00am on challenging GC in the midst of the galaxies quicksand ?.
Burnham wrote that NGC 5053 "may be detected in a 8-inch glass as a faint hazy spot.". Also, one of my favorite monthly site has lots of info on this illusive "ghostly" GC (highly recommended reading). http://www.skyhound.com/sh/iop_04.html I tried in Mar. to find it when I was observing M53 (LM=5.3) but it was no where to be found! Tonight, I decided to take a stab at another low surface brightness GC, NGC 5466, as a "practice" GC near the zenith. Brian Skiff comment on NGC 5053 gave me this idea. At 22x (40mm Pentax XL) through my TV-102 Light Cup, it was *easily* seen as a circular dim smudge. At 44x (20mm TV Plossl), the star pattern composed of SAO 83172, GSC 2012:367, GSC 2012:886, GSC 2012:944, RZ Bootis and GSC 2012:1003, reminded me of Bootis itself! The GC lies between SAO 83172 and GSC 2012:944. The GC has a bright central glow, is circular, large and *very* dim. At 73x (12mm TV Radian), some stars could be seen with averted vision scattered around inside the GC. It is very dim also. While it can still be seen at 110x (8mm Radian), it was way to dim.
With this success, the TV-102 Light Cup turned to NGC 5053. It was nowhere to be seen at 22x or 30x (30mm Ultima). But at 44x, it was clearly there as a very large, circular, *extremely dim* patch with direct vision at the very edge of detection. Definitely dimmer than NGC 5466 and thus NGC 5053 magnitude of 9.8 is completely bogus! NGC 5466 was a very good practice GC indeed because NGC 5053 looked very similar to it. I now realized that I missed it the first time perhaps because I was expecting to see a dimmer version of M53 and no way does NGC 5053 looks like it. The GC lies almost midway between the stars GSC 1454:692 and GSC 1454:802. The annoying mag 7.7 star SAO 100488 had to be moved out of the view to see NGC 5053 clearly. No central glow detected, just a patch of extremely dim smudge. It became way too dim at 73x although it could still be seen with direct vision.
The last object to be gobbled by the Light Cup is M101. i haven't seen it before and heard that it gave a hard time to a few people due to its low surface brightness. Well, the Light Cup nailed it *easily* at 22x and I can see that the moisture has gathered steam and transparency is now reduced. At 44x, it looks circular with brightening glow toward the center. However, it appears almost as dim as NGC 5466 and looked a heck of a lot like this sketch I found on the net. http://www.jwebdale.btinternet.co.uk/m101.htm It forms a nice love triangle with the stars SAO 28976 and SAO 28988. At 73x, it's still a dim gray smudge but averted vision brought out a star in the center of the smudge which perhaps is the stellar core.
Well, after being denied viewing for a while and globbling these extremely difficult GCs, the TV-102 Light Cup needs burping ?