Glacier Point, 2002 Aug 8-11

by Bob Jardine

It was PAS's turn at Glacier Point last weekend. I went up on Thursday and returned on Monday, and I observed all four nights from around 9:00 to 3:00.

Friday night was cloudy off and on up until about midnight, but it then cleared up nicely. The other three nights were quite clear. There was some smoke from fires somewhere (I don't know if it was from the Southern Oregon fires, the Sequoia fires farther south in the Sierra, or some other), but it didn't seem to bother the viewing much.

I counted stars in the Bootes and Pegasus (Finnish areas 11 and 6) each night, and I consistently came up with Mag 6.0 in Bootes (late PM) and 6.2-6.3 in Pegasus (early AM), which is quite good for my eyes. (For comparison, I got Mag 6.0 in Bootes at Shingletown last month, while others were seeing much deeper than that.)

We saw several meteors each night, including several very bright ones that left bright trails for up to 5 seconds. It didn't seem to me that there were many more on Sunday than on the other three nights, but I wasn't really counting.

Here are a few highlights:

Split Antares. 150x (9mm + 2.5X Powermate). A little dim dot right adjacent to the big yellow one. Lots of artifacts coming and going all around, but now and then, momentarily, the secondary comes out clearly.

Not knowing the PA, I estimated it at about 280. Checked NSOG when I returned home...it says 275.

M26 and M56 in binocs (Orion 9X63). (I'm working on a project to see how many of the Messier objects I can see in hand-held binocs; I'm up to around 75.)

North America and Pelican Nebulae in binocs.

Awesome split of Epsilon Lyrae (dbl dbl). Wide, clean, very black space between (150x).

Mira, nice and bright nekked eye. Brighter than Delta(4), maybe brighter than Gamma (3.5), not as bright as Alpha(2.5); so perhaps it was around 3.5 or so.

NGC 253. Huge and bright, even in this small scope.

Comet Hoenig (C2002 O4). Fairly large, reasonably bright, roughly circular, like an unresolved Globular Cluster. No tail. Slightly brighter center. Thanks to Paul Mortfield for providing the location.

IC 289. Failed to observe. Looked for this thing for over an hour. With and without UHC. Why is ths thing in the RASC list? Does anyone know if I should be able to see this in a 10-inch in very dark skies? NSOG describes it only for 12-inch+ scopes.

After the crowds thinned out, I looked for the Cave Nebula (Sh2-155) for over an hour. No luck. I found the field, for sure. Lots of "milkiness" and dark lanes, but it seems like just unresolved Milky Way, not like a nebula.

Bob Naeye was observing nearby with his 12.5-inch Portaball, getting a pretty good view of Neptune. We suspected 3 possible moons. None could be held steady, but all three came and went. Bob N. and a friend of his named John Shibley (a very knowledgable observer and a fine person) from Michigan and I all confirmed the same orientation for the three moon candidates. (I'm still checking on whether these were really moons or "averted imagination").

M24 (Small Sagittarius star cloud); the entire thing just fits in the field of view of the 27mm Panoptic (20x, 3.4 degree field). At higher powers, lots of dark nebulae (including B92 and B93) are very clearly seen, as well as NGC 6603.

Double Cluster and Stock 2 (Strong Man); awesome views with 12mm Nagler.

Uranus with naked eye. Thanks to John for pointing this out; I wouldn't have tried had he not mentioned that he could see it. I said at the time that I thought it was mag 6+, but when I returned home, I saw that one source pegged it at 5.7.

Neptune in Binoculars & in NP101. Very small at 150x, barely a disk, but definite.

Also observed Neptune with Bob and John in Bob's Portaball. We thought

we might have observed Triton. It is certainly bright enough (13.5), but difficult due to proximity to Neptune. I made a sketch of the field and the position of the suspected moon. All three of us confirmed the orientation. However, checking at home with Starry Night Pro, the PA doesn't match, so I guess we didn't really see it. But what did we see?

IC 1396 (OC and Nebulosity in Cepheus) and Herschel's Garnet Star. Nice view both in Binocs and in NP101 (with 32mm Plossl and UHC filter). Really interesting area. I see Mu as distinctly different in color from the mainly white stars around it, but not red. This is supposed to be one of the "reddest" stars in the sky, but it looks just pale orange to me. I wish I weren't color blind!

Overall, an awesome trip.

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