Montebello 13 Jan 2004

by Bob Jardine

It was a Tuesday night. The forecast for the usual mid-week MB night, Wednesday, did not look promising, so I opted to leave work a little early on Tuesday and give it a try. It was a good decision, even though it wasn't the best of nights - partly cloudy, but with some very decent holes. Not too cold, and only minor dew early and none later. Although there was some attenuation of the light domes by fog down below, the partly-cloudy skies compensated for that by bouncing light back down on us...it wasn't very dark.

I observed with TOBY (10" f/6 CPT).

Venus	a quick check; not as good as Saturday at Coyote.
Comet C2002/T7	I thought I could just barely see it in the 9X50 finder; with TOBY and a 9mm Nagler, it was pretty dim (or at least low surface brightness), medium-large, and had a pretty good tail (averted); a nice looking comet.
NGC 1778	OC Aur (Deep Map list); one of the larger cloud holes was in Auriga, so I went there. Small, well resolved, about 18 stars, loose. No easy-to-describe shape here.
Saturn	a quick peek; good, but not outstanding; the seeing was only fair at this point.
M35 and its little friend NGC 2158	nice view; M35 almost fills the 17mm Nagler. Nice curves of brighter stars; 2158 is grainy, but unresolved.
M1	not really dark enough here for a good view; just a large, diffuse smudge, no structure.
Rosette	again, not really dark enough to see much.
Sirius	Peter McKone notified us that the seeing had improved...a lot. We spent a long time trying to split Sirius/Pup. Definitely the tightest star image I've ever seen of the primary. Still, no luck for me - lots of "hair" (light spikes dancing). Eventually, Peter said he got it in his 6" Mak-Cas; maybe it was hidden behind one of my spider-vane-induced spikes.
17 CMa	nice easy wide quad; worth a look.
Ceres	tracked it down again with binocs; it is always fun to track Ceres over a few days; its opposition was a few weeks ago.
NGC 2204	OC in CMa (H400 list); easy location due to easy stars in finder; but the cluster is hard to find among all of the stars; maybe 1/2 dozen mag 8 or 9 stars, well spaced; another dozen or more dimmer stars (mag 10 or 11?) arranged in a couple of curving lines. Did I see the cluster? Probably have to try again - maybe it is dim and hiding from me in this field.
NGC 2215	OC in Mon (H400 list); nice; very easy to find near Beta Mon and 7 Mon. About 20 stars, approx. equal mags, spread well out in a triangular pattern; pretty large; also some dimmer stars hinted at; not much color, if any.
NGC 2286	OC in Mon (H400 list); this one is a maybe; I'm sure I'm in the right place; lots of stars here, but no obvious cluster; a couple of candidate concentrations, one roughly rectangular outlined with dim stars and filled with even dimmer ones. Another field to re-check on a darker night.

Moonrise was on the way, and the sky started to deteriorate at about the same time. It was late enough for a work night (11:30 or so), so I left, happy to have observed anything at all in this grey Winter.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Sat Jan 17 19:48:25 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Sat Jan 24 21:35:30 2004 PT