by Robert Leyland
A new arrival (EQ platform) is still being finished, and so I brought my trusty 8" Dob up to a favourite dark sky spot (Lake Sonoma).
I pulled in a bit late, around 7pm local, to find only three other observers present. Over the weekend the spotty weather had kept people away, and although others had used the site both the day before, and after, it was a small group.
| Observer | Robert Leyland |
|---|---|
| Date | 2 Nov 2002 |
| Time | 1900-0000 PST (UT -8, or 0100-0700 3 Sep 2002 UT) |
| Location | Lake Sonoma CA, 38°43'N 123°02'W Elev ~1400 (Lone Rock Flat) |
| Weather | 14°C Temp, 30% Humidity |
| Seeing | LM 5.5, transparency 7/10, steadiness 8/10 |
| Moon | just before new moon |
| Equipment | 8" F6 Dob, 7x50 binoculars, Pentax XL EPs |
High cirrus clouds spoiled the transparency, but the skies were relatively steady. Early evening we grabbed some pretty nice views of Uranus in David's 14.5" Starmaster, and in my 8". The planet was clearly a disk, but we could only occasionally see Triton.
CEPHEUS
NGC 7023 - Open cluster and reflection nebula. The OC is an extended line with a hook at the end, like a tall crooked 'j', really it looks like a Shepherd's Crook. The brightest star at the top of the 'j' has a distinct glow surrounding it; easily coming out in averted vision and once seen could be held directly.
NGC 6939, NGC 6946 - This is a nice little pairing of a galaxy (6946) and an open cluster (6939), both are bright Messier class objects; easy to see in the 8" occupying the same field of view at 55x, and right at the edges at 85x. 6939 is compact and dense with 6-10 brighter stars and a myriad of fainter ones. The galaxy is of comparable size, being large oval and diffuse. Averted vision shows hints of dusty structure. The cluster shows up my 50mm finder as a faint patch.
Barnard 152 is a splayed out dark nebula, a patch of darkness outlined by the milky way background. It is easily found near Alpha Cephei, and it's whole is best seen in binoculars or simply the finder scope. In the primary scope even at relatively low power (55x) it is a large starless region.
Again with binoculars, IC1396 is a very large fuzzy region with a slightly brighter central area that is more obvious with averted vision.
Next up is a pair of open clusters, NGC 7234 & 7235, both are small and loose clusters, possibly related. 7234 has about a dozen stars easily visible, and 7235 about half as many.
More open clusters to follow, with the poorer transparency this seems to a be a good night to check a few off.
NGC 7261 is a vaguely W shaped open cluster, within an easy drift east from Zeta CEP, and stretches out N-S with 20+ stars across the drift.
A hop-step form there is NGC 7281, a loop and hook shape of a dozen bright stars and many faints ones filling in the area of this dispersed cluster.
In the area around, and between, Zeta and Lambda CEP various inky dark patches abound. Splotchy shapes with dark central zones like inverted amoeba or starfish, with non-entertaining monikers B173 and B174, must surely be many light years across and deep as they cut out the light of all the stars behind.
Delta CEP is very bright (near maximum), which throws off the look of this corner of Cepheus compared to simple constellation diagrams, and thus makes star-hopping a bit trickier. Several times I had to back-step, to make sure I had my bearings correct, particularly since Cepheus rotated almost 90 degrees around the pole during this session.
Nearby is NGC 7380 an open cluster/emission nebula combination. The cluster appears wedge ('V') shaped with just hints of nebulosity. A UHC filter (as suggested in NSOG)) brings out the nebulosity nicely. It extends to the West some distance from the 'V' shape, and encompasses a couple of stars that looked to be outside the cluster but are mostly likely part of it.
Before packing up, very early in the morning, I took a first-of-the-season look at the Orion nebula, and amazing sight as always. So awesome with, and without, filters; spreading great wings of feathery mist.
Saturn too showed well, even at fairly high power (230x), until the steadiness of the atmosphere began to give, and only allowed short glimpses of fine seeing. Still the planet showed obvious bands, with color near the poles, and the glorious rings tilted to fine advantage.
A very nice way to end the night.