by Steve Gottlieb
Despite cloudy conditions in Albany as I left for Lake Sonoma in the late afternoon, it ended up as a very nice evening at Grey Pine with good seeing conditions easily supporting over 300x for a half-dozen observers including David Silva and Matthew Marcus. Transparency was a bit down, perhaps 6.0 LM but I was still able to track down several new M31 globulars in the mag 15.5-16.0 range and reobserve HS 1946+7658, the z = 3.0 quasar in Draco.
Although I had viewed the brightest globular G1 several times, I had never tried for much fainter G2 which is just 10' ESE, in the same high power field! As a bonus, there is a faint galaxy, UGC 330 within a couple of arcminutes from M31-G2, so this is a pretty interesting field!
| M31-G1 | 00 32 46.5 +39 34 41 | V = 13.7; Size 0.6 |
|---|---|---|
| 17.5": easily picked up sweeping at 220x because on first glance it appears to be a close but cleanly resolved mag 14 triple star! On closer viewing, the central "star" is soft or slightly nebulous and surrounded by a very faint and small halo ~10" diameter. The foreground companion stars are situated at the NW and WW edges of the halo just 8" and 9" from the center of the globular, respectively. UGC 330 lies 11' ESE and the faint globular, G2, lies 10' SE. | ||
| M31-G2 | 00 33 33.8 +39 31 19 | V = 15.8 |
| 17.5": at 324x, this M31 globular appears as a mag 15.5 (V = 15.8) "star" just 51" SSW of a mag 14 star and 2' SW of UGC 330! M31-G1, the brightest globular in M31, lies 10' WNW. | ||
| UGC 330 = MCG +06-02-009 = CGCG 519-011 | 00 33 41.9 +39 32 41 | V = 13.7; Size 1.4x0.5; SB = 13.3; PA = 140d |
| 17.5": very faint, small, elongated 2:1 NW-SE, 0.5'x0.25", very small brighter core. A mag 14 star lies 1.3' SW and M31-G2 is 2' SW! Located in the field of M31-G1 11' WNW. | ||
I also tracked down several other globulars closer to the main body of M31 including G226, G256, G287, G302 and G305 bring my total to 26. As I finished these up, I remarked to David that someone with a *really* large dob and good finder charts might be able to observe more globulars in M31 than in our own galaxy (150)!