by Mark Wagner
My plan for the evening was to continue working on my H2500 list
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I still have 287 items left to go
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most are in the springtime sky
How about that! We're in just about the same place on the same list.
I got one last night... NGC 7246 in Aquila... a VMag 14.6 with SB of 15. It was the first object I went after, since it was the only one on the 2500 list I could go after last night. The rest are in Coma B, Canes V, Virgo (big time), Cancer, and a few in Bootes.
Interestingly (perhaps), my copy of The Sky kept crashing last night whenever I'd try to look at a 1d field of NGC 7246. This had been happening at CalStar too, but I'd forgotten about it. No matter how I tried to get to the object on the computer, find, move to, whatever.... crash. I had to revert to star hopping via Uranometria (which was fun). In order to confirm the object number to write about here, I went to "Find" it in The Sky on my desktop PC. Guesss what? Cuh-RASH. I think this is a crash-spot in the software. Can anone confirm?
We had a great time at Coe last night. Nice group, nice temps, good company. The best views were the entire Veil through Bobby's NP-127, 31 Nagler and OIII, the North American through Mary Farris' 17.5" Earl Watts Dob (gave brighter a image than in my 18), The Horsehead was very distinct through my 18" Dob with 20 Nagler and H-Beta filter. I also felt I was picking up some HII region in M74.... does anyone else think they've seen some?
Did a tour of planetary nebulae and double stars last night. The doubles were pretty soft. The planetaries were very nice - especially liked NGC's 7008, 246 and 2371.
Had a great time.