Observing from Fiddletown Sunday night Jan 18, 2004

by Mike Conley

I was delayed in leaving Roseville and I almost gave up and turned around several times as the cloud/fog cover was still present at Shingle Springs. Since I was arriving after dark, a little after 6:00pm, my plan was to shut off the car/lights and walk the rest of the way in before I reached the turn past the house. Well there were 2 huge dogs barking at my car and my intended unobtrusive arrival was rescued by Shneor and Jane who graciously guided me in. One look at the skies convinced me that all was worth the drive and I had a great time observing with Jane and Shneor.

As I set up Jane and Shneor were taking turns with the hair dryer fighting dew but I was lucky enough to not need it most of the night. My equipment: 16" f/4.5 truss dob, 4.5" f/4 finder scope and E.P's used were 27mm, 19mm Panoptics and 9mm Nagler.

Conditons:

Limiting Mag	~6
Seeing	~ 8
Transparency	5-8
Humidity	Borderline dew point which got better for awhile before degrading badly by the time we called it quits around 11:30 pm
Wind	Very still

With my late arrival I soon gave up on configuring my laptop to be used without producing light pollution so I relied on memory, Shneor and Jane for targets.

I started with M42 and was soon to appreciate how good the seeing was this night. The 6 stars of the trapezium were easily visible and the 4 brighter stars revealed color as well. It seemed much brighter than earlier observations with extensive detail in the nebula visible without a filter and giving a 3 dimensional feeling.

Later viewing through Shneors 22in there was some pink visible in the nebula which was a first time for me.

I moved to Saturn and found that I was pleased at the clear view of its rings and the rust colored area's of color on the planet itself. Jane provided a view at about 800x which was spectacular.

I shared a view of Thor's Helmet NGC 2359 through Shneor's 22in before observing it through my 16in. I was able to try the UHC and O- III filters before concluding that the O-III provided the best view. Although the 16 was as expected not as bright as the 22 it was still a very nice view with it's very distinctive shape quite visible.

I turned around to view M81 and M82 which were both visible within the view of my 27mm (68x) Panoptic. Both were very bright but this part of the sky was not as transparent as the area around Orion. I was able to easily see the disturbed center of M82 through the 9mm (203x) While searching for M81 and M82 I ran across the Helix Galaxy NGC 2685 I later observed NGC604 in the 22in at an optimum power and ran back to my 16 to look and found the enormous M33 through my 27mm (68x). It was then I realized the proximity of NGC 604 to M33 and the 9mm (203x) provided a much better view of NGC604 which is like a tiny version of M42.

The night included many other observations including the Eskimo or Clown nebula NGC 2392 with it's bright center and visible structure surrounding it, Galaxies in Leo - M65, M66, NGC 3628 and 2 other 3 in one view galaxies.

The last thing was a look at Jupiter which revealed much detail in the clound bands and IO cast a shadow on the surface.

All in all it was a great night even with the dew.

Posted on tac-sac Mon Jan 19 21:08:03 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Sat Jan 24 23:17:30 2004 PT