by Jamie Dillon
The sky was clear and promising at sunset. At 8 or so a really ugly-looking front came in, covered most of the sky, then proceeded to disperse. It kept doing that till 0030 into Sunday, when the clouds were there to stay. So we looked mostly at favorites, shared views and had a big time overall. Ron came up with several decent runs at Saturn in his 16" Starmaster. For years he was Ron with the white 12" Orion, now he's Ron with the 16" Starmaster, so it's become necessary to learn his last name. I checked back into my earliest telescope logs, and yup, Ron, you and I met up on 9 May, 1999, in the SW lot. That was the night I figured out how to starhop after a slow 5 month buildup, and had one great night.
Did find two brand new objects when the sky was holding still. NGC 3877 is a galaxy standing right off chi UMa, the next bright star south of the bottom of the Bowl. Been exploring the galaxies that are strewn thru that whole stretch of sky south of the Dipper (plenty still to go, never doubt), but this one is right next to the naked eye jumpoff star for hops. No idea how it got missed time after time. Turns out to be a long pretty edge-on with a fairly concentrated core and long dust lanes.
Also found a pretty reflection nebula in Cepheus, 7129, an interesting bright splash around 4 stars, with some dark veins. 7133 is just off to the NW, haze around a single star, just about touching 7129. These would have to make a good imaging target.
When the sky was clear it was good and dark. Did one count in Perseus when it was overhead, came up with 15 stars in that triangle, so the LM was 6.2. And we did see a superstition hold water once again. When Sean, Mark, Jeff and Ron had left, the sky cleared up nicely. Meanwhile, I got to act out an ongoing 2-year comedy. It was 18 December 2001 on the Peak when I started in on a set of galaxies around 1 Arietis. Ken Hewitt-White shows this hop around a checkmark-shaped group of 7 or so in that month's S&T. That night I picked up the first bright two, 678 and 680 just before the fog moved in. Saturday night I picked up that same thread. Easy hop from that 1 Ari star to that first pair. Nice bright fat galaxies, which proceeded to fade right in the eyepiece. Cloud front had moved in.
.. hours later, Aries was in the clear, now over to the West. Got those galaxies right back and in not many seconds another front came and erased them. When you know someone's laughing at you, it's best just to laugh along. Next time. In between I did get to check out my brand fire new Ultrablock. Where it made an obvious difference was on the Flame Nebula, NGC 2024. Brought out lots of detail.
The seeing was never better than moderate, 3/5, but we got several good hours of observing by 0030.
More next weekend.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Mon Jan 19 23:28:52 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Sat Jan 24 23:27:09 2004 PT