by Bob Jardine
It turned out to be a very nice night. We had a couple of episodes of fog rolling through, but nothing stayed very long. Fog diminished the light domes partly, but this was offset by a lack of transparency.
I observed with a 12.5" f/5 Portaball with tracking platform.
I did an early check of Saturn and its moons. All (six) of the usual suspects were there, including Iapetus, which is often wandering way off in the boonies somewhere; this night it was right in fairly close with the rest of them. I couldn't spot Mimas.
| Comet C2002/T7 | an almost round head with brighter center; averted vision tail, broad, not too long -- maybe 5 or 6 arcminutes. |
|---|---|
| NGC 1961 | this galaxy in Cam was one of two highlights of the
evening. It's on the H-400 list. It was a fairly long moderately
difficult hop, but it wasn't too hard to see once I got to the right
place. At first, it looked like a typical medium-sized dim galaxy with
low surface brightness; at first, I thought the core was a little
off-center and almost stellar; on further inspection, that turned out
to be a foreground star.
The galaxy was visually uninspiring. But David hauled out a book -- Concise Catalog of Deep-Sky Objects, by W.H. Finlay. It said, "This is one of the most massive and largest spiral galaxies known ... 10 trillion Suns and ... diameter of 240 thousand light years." Wow! I spent a lot more time looking at this monster. It remained visually weak, but with a little imagination, sparked by that description, it started to grow on me. |
| NGC 2169 | I stopped off at the "37 Cluster" for fun before proceeding with H400 objects. |
| NGC 2185 | I found this nebula (Ori) difficult. I was never really sure whether I was seeing both 2185 and 2183 or just 2185. A very dim glow surrounding 3 or 4 dim stars. It was pretty easy to find the field, but difficult to pick out the nebula. The best view was with 17 Nagler and Ultrablock filter, with the filter helping a little bit. Higher powers made it worse. |
| NGC 2186 | not in SA 2000, but pretty easy to find with Uranometria as a guide. Large, loose, about 30 stars, two much brighter than the others. |
About 10:20 PM, limiting mag check in Gemini -- mag 5.9 for me, which means low 6's for most people. It seemed a lot darker than that, because of the fog down in the valley; so I think the transparency must have been poor.
| B33 (Horsehead) | the second highlight of the night, even though the view wasn't spectacular. I tried out a new H-Beta filter (Astronomik) with a 12.5 LE. I knew the field very well from previous attempts, but this was the first time with the filter. I must say, it wasn't at all obvious, and it was a little bit disappointing, but I did see it. This was a first for me. A vague dark thumb sticking into the brighter nebula. More power (7.5 LE) made it worse. I probably should have tried even lower power, but somehow I didn't think of it at the time. |
|---|---|
| NGC 2204 | about 4 stars in a semi-circle around a (Mag 7?) star that shows up on the chart. Also, a little south of that semi-circle, another dozen stars arranged in a curvy X or Lambda shape. |
| NGC 2354 | nice; 2-3 dozen stars, relatively large, roughly circular; a dozen form an asymmetrical semi-circle on one border; loose, well resolved. |
| NGC 2286 | easy to find, near the most perfect Tetrahedron asterism I've ever seen -- a perfect equilateral triangle with a 4th star centered in it. But the cluster itself is difficult -- which stars belong? One seeming concentration in about the right place; large, loose, several dozen stars, various magnitudes, but no obvious borders. |
| M50 | Eye Candy break -- big and bright; many bright stars arranged in curves and rows going every which way. |
| NGCs 2335 and 2343 | two OCs (Mon) in the same field of view, both obvious. 2335 smallish, about 2 dozen stars in a rough figure 8. 2343 has fewer stars, maybe 12-15, but brighter; roughly oval. |
| NGC 2266 | interesting small OC in Gem. At low power (about 50x), a curve of 4-5 bright stars overlayed on the edge of an unresolved glow. At medium power (about 90x), this glow is partly resolved. At around 160X, it becomes roughly triangular with brighter stars forming one curvy edge and another dozen much dimmer stars filling out the triangle. |
| Jupiter | it was about 1:30 AM, and Jupiter was getting up nice and high. I used the 7.5 LE. The GRS was well placed, a pale but large oval. There was a very distinct black streak in the SEB with it, parallel to the band, extending West from the GRS about 1/2 of the way to the limb, narrowing to a point. I've never seen anything quite like this feature before. The NEB showed a lot of detail, convolutions and mottling, like a twisted braid. The seeing was quite nice at this point. A very pleasing view. |
I wrapped up with a peek at M51. Boy was that nice! One of the best views I've ever seen of it. Lots of details and spiral structure, requiring no imagination.
David and I packed up around 2:00 AM. It had been a very good night.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Mon Feb 16 17:39:54 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Mon Feb 16 20:09:13 2004 PT