Plettston & Messier Weekend 03/20-21/04 by Stacy

by Stacy Jo McDermott

Friday was my birthday and I had plans on getting out the 120mm for some backyard observing due to a long day at work and work the next morning. My housemates however, had a different plan and after 1 1/2 glasses of champagne, I decided not to observe as I would mostly be seeing binaries. (Not that I don't like binaries, I do, but all night?) Nekked eye was fun as I took my friends on a tour of the winter sky.

Saturday I headed up to Plettstone by the gracious invitation of Michelle Stone. I left Pacifica at 17.25 and reached the darksky site at approximately 2050. As I left the Bay Area, I noticed a gathering of high clouds and hoped that it wasn't a trend that would follow me up to Mariposa.

Having arrived at Plettstone, I set my telescope up and went to my observing plan. While it was Messier Weekend, my intent was to knock off some more of my Messiers toward completion of the 110 and not neccessarily take on all 110.

M3: Globular Cluster in CVn - I found this GC to be very compact and with adverted vision, looked brighter than with direct.

M48: Open Cluster in Hydra - This was a pleasing open cluster and while gazing on it, I found what looked like to me at butterfly outline pattern. It also seemed as though some of the stars had different colours, but this could have been due to less-than-skeaky-clean contacts. (Now why I didn't immediatly realize that M68 was also in Hydra I'll never know. It wasn't until I was looking at my notes the next day that I realized that I could have knocked this one off as well!)

M58: Galaxy in Virgo - I had not planned on venturing into the galaxies at this time as there were some other Messiers that I had wanted to observe, but due to my late arrival, those planned M's where already down. So, with that in mind, I cautiously went to Virgo and started ticking off the numerous galaxies there. M58 looked like a long smudge and I could just detect a brightening center.

M81 and M82: Galaxies in Ursa Major - very cool pair of galaxies. Got the classic view of both in my eyepiece. M81 stood out as an edge on looking very much like a pencil. M82 had that face on view and I could just make out a bright core and faint arms.

M85: Galaxy in Coma Bernices - found this one and had to confirm by going back and forth between the eyepiece and my SkyAtlas for about 20 minutes to make sure that I had the correct star field for identification. It had a little bright core and very faint outer area.

M98: Galaxy in Coma Bernices - Very small, fuzzy, dottish in my 25 mm eyepiece. Confirmed with matching starfield from atlas

M99: Galaxy in Coma Bernices - Low surface brightness, round. Confirmed with starfields from atlas

M100: Galaxy in Coma Bernices - small, fuzzy and low brightness. Confirmed with starfields from atlas

All in all, I observed 9 items, some of which were not on my original plan as mentioned above. This leaves 23 more objects in the Messier list for me to observe. Some of those items might have to wait until later in the season (and in the case of M77, next winter??!!!!)

Seeing was very good. Transparency was very good with a tad of softening around midnight'ish for about 30 minutes, then sharpening up again. Temperatures were quite pleasant and I never did have to don my Soviet military wool hat. I turned in about 0200 - 0230 3/21 :-( but due to a very long day preceding my arrival.

The company was quite nice with Rashad, Kevin, Bob, Drew, Jeff, Michelle & Guillermo (hope I didn't miss anyone).

The weekend of April 10-11 is slated on my calendar of tackling the rest of the M's in Virgo and Coma Bernices as well as M5 and M68.

Big thanks to Michelle and Paul for their graciousness on inviting us all up. It was a grand pleasure to sit out under a lovely sky with great people.

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Posted on sf-bay-tac Mon Mar 22 10:15:53 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Thu Jul 8 21:18:01 2004 PT