by Robert Leyland
A little work overload, plus the World cup, have conspired to drain my time, and limit my astronomy of the last month or so. It was good to get out even though the weather predictions were less than rosy.
Even though it was a tad breezy, conditions at Lake Sonoma were very good. Clear sky, and dark, with reasonable steadiness considering the wind.
As this has become a more regular event, third quarter moon draws a good sized group to our favourite haunt, Lone Rock flat, with a few spillover folks down at Grey Pine who were worried about the wind. We had a good 15 or so telescopes, and over 20 people. Some newcomers, some old hands, and a few missing faces.
I setup my 17.5" Dob, with attached 5" wide-field Newtonian as the sun set, and spent some time in good natured chat with other observers arriving and setting up.
Even before dark, we got some great views of Venus, showing about 3/4 phase, and Albireo showing excellent color, and steadiness high in the sky. Indications were that it would be a good evening, better than my last trip out on Wednesday.
| Observer | Robert Leyland |
|---|---|
| Date | 6 July 2002 |
| Time | 2200-0230 PDT (UT -7, or 0500-0930 8 Jul 2002 UT) |
| Location | Lake Sonoma CA, 38°43'N 123°02'W Elev ~1400 (Lone Rock Flat) |
| Weather | 21°C - 17°C Temp, 35-40% Humidity |
| Seeing | LM 6.3, transparency 9/10, steadiness 7/10, sporadic breezes |
| Moon | late third quarter moon |
| Equipment | 17.5" F5 Dob, 5" Newtonian, 9x50 finder scope, Pentax XL EPs |
Continuing my program of constellation coverage, I had brought lists for several constellations, but found myself observing in Lyra, hitting the highlights early as a warm up to going for deeper stuff.
Even at 10pm, before it was truly dark I got a clean split of Epsilon Lyrae at 160x into the double-double. A good look at M57 down in Lyra's parallelogram, at this power revealed a point source in the center, visible with averted vision. Also darker regions offset from the center, and a fainter segment to the outer ring made themselves visible.
Approximately 2.5° from Vega (reminder, don't look at Vega in big scope, loss of night vision results!) is a faint circular galaxy NGC 6646, and nearby, in the same FOV (less than 1/2 a degree away, is another faint fuzzy patch. NSOG doesn't show anything there, and checking Uranometria later (Chart 49), there are two smaller galaxies listed IC 1288, and 1289. I am fairly sure it was 1288 that I saw, just a dim glow adjacent to a bright field star.
Continuing around Vega, brings up NGC 6675, and 6685, a nice galaxy pair, like eyes in a channel of stars, the fainter 6685 has two or three field stars embedded within it, although one might be the core. The brighter (6675) is more circular, and easier to see.
NGC 6695 is a very faint smudge, about 1° from Eps Lyrae, and needed averted vision at 100x, but I could hold it steadily at 160x. With surface brightness of 13.0, it was a tough object to find.
NGC 6688 is a faint oval patch, that forms a triangle with Vega and Epsilon, with an outrider of nebulosity next to a pair of stars (NSOG labels this smudge UGC 11325). 6688 appears to be a 3:1 oval with a softly brighter core.
Nestled in an arc of stars, NGC 6703 is a compact circular galaxy, that looks like an unresolved globular cluster. Less than 1/4° away, and about a magnitude fainter is NGC 6702, also a circular galaxy. This pair is a short hop from R Lyrae, a gorgeous golden variable star.
Amid scattered foreground stars is a dense concentration of dimmer background stars, that makes up the open cluster NGC 6791. It was quite visible in the 5" as a faint patch, but resolvable in the bigger scope. The cluster appears to be somewhat triangular in shape, and is relatively easy to find projected off 20 and 21 Lyr.
Finding NGC 6745 was an interesting exercise, holding it in view even more so. The star hop there is through some of the less interesting regions of Lyrae, but once I reached the star, the galaxy popped into averted vision. It is a little "grain of rice" galaxy, just close enough to a moderately bright field star, that concentrating on the field star makes the galaxy shine in averted vision. Looking directly at the galaxy, it dims down considerably.
While bopping around in the region I came across Struve 525, a nice double star blue/gold like Albireo, but with greater separation.
Next up was PK 64+15.1, a nice little planetary nebula, tucked inside the parallelogram. It appeared grey in color, small, with a clear disc at 100x. The better view was at 160x with an OIII filter. It is nicely positioned by a small trapezoid of stars.
Pushing down off the parallelogram, brought up NGC 6700 a faint glowing galaxy, with a dim field star adjacent, in the midst of a clutter of bright field stars.
Then on to the overlooked Messier object in Lyra, M56, a nice globular cluster, with a couple of bracketing bright field stars. M56 was visible in the finder scope, as well as the 5", quite a good example of Globular clusters, reminding me of M4.
I vainly hunted for a couple more fainter objects, but fatigue, clearly caused by lack of recent practice, set in, and I took a short break.
To close out the evening I moved over to Sagitarius, at Mike Z request, we brought up NGC 6822, aka Barnard 1, a dwarf irregular galaxy in our local group. It appears as an amorphous blob of stars, needing low power to see (50x), but with very low contrast as a result.
Nearby, I happened upon NGC 6818, the Little Gem planetary nebula, while hopping to 6822. A fortuitous find, as this is a pretty little green PN, well named as it is like a little emerald in the sky.