by Bob Czerwinski
| Observer | Bob Czerwinski |
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| Date | May 14-15 & 15-16, 2004 (Two nights) |
| Observing Times | 9:00pm to 2:00am PST May 14-15 (UT -7, or 0400-0900 15 May 2004 UT) -and- 9:00pm to 4:00am PST May 15-16 (UT -7, or 0400-1100 16 May 2004 UT) |
| Location | Michelle Stone's Plettstone property, near Mariposa, California |
| Moon | Approaching New Moon -- Moonrise after 4:00am; not visible |
| Equipment | 18" f/4.3 Newt/Dob e/w Telrad and Paracorr (eff. f/4.95) |
| Eyepieces | 31mm-63x TV T5 Terminagler; 17mm-133x and 12mm-188x TV T4 Nagler; 9mm-251x and 7mm-323x TV Nagler, and 6mm-377x TV Radian (except for the Terminagler, magnifications include Paracorr) |
| Filters | O-III (for various items in and around Cygnus) |
| Sky Conditions | Friday: Zenith LM 5.7 at Midnight; average transparency 6/10; average seeing 6~7/10 |
| Saturday | Zenith LM 6.4 at Midnight; average transparency 8/10; average seeing 8~9/10 |
| Temp/R.H. | Friday: 59-64F/38~44% all night. Midnight: 59F/44% |
| Saturday | 52-57F/32~60% all night. Midnight: 52F/60% |
Traveling from the South Bay, I hit the expected Friday "get-away" slow-traffic scene on 101 south, and then experienced quite a backup on Hwy. 152 east, about two miles from the intersection of Hwy. 152/156. At the location where eastbound Hwy. 152 and westbound Hwy. 156 cross, even though eastbound 152 traffic has the right of way, the eastbound motorists had basically turned the intersection into a 4-way stop, allowing westbound 156 traffic to make its way through the intersection. Recognizing the general impatience of many drivers out there, I found this to be *very* refreshing, even if the activity delayed my trip by 40-minutes or so. I don't think I've experienced cooperation like this since moving through Loma Prieta earthquake-affected traffic back in October '89. Once past the 152/156 intersection, it was smooth sailing all the way to the foothills.
Arriving at Plettstone, I found several observers already in place, to include Michelle herself, Albert Highe, Rashad Al-Mansour, Guillermo Ortiz, Rob Hawley and Kevin Roberts. As I started to set up my gear, clouds could be seen to the far west and the southeast, but overall things looked pretty promising. After sunset, however, high cloud bands would still pass through the area during the night, generally moving NW to SE, dimming or blocking various sections of the sky. It appeared we might be in for an evening of sucker-hole observing, but this turned out not to be the case. If you just waited patiently for a few minutes, an obscuring band would pass on through, returning your section of the sky. Transparency was still an issue for most of us, and the seeing remained soft through the session. This would NOT have been the night to split Porrima! ;^)
Not long after sunset, while waiting for the skies to darken enough to view Comet NEAT, the gang began turning its 'scopes on Venus and Jupiter.
| Venus | It's not very often that I comment on this SSO, but the late waning crescent phase is always fun to observe, especially in light of Venus' June 8th rendezvous with ol' Sol this year. Quite beautiful in the relatively bright sky, blazing away at mag. -4.5, but shimmering a bit more than hoped, a sign of the night's seeing conditions. |
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| Jupiter | Io had already egressed from Jupiter's disk, but Io's shadow was just past mid-transit. When the seeing would steady for a moment or two, the shadow was inky black and distinctly round'ish at 188x, even though the rest of Jupiter, to include the NEB and SEB, remained rather pale. About 45-minutes later, a number of us noted the "pimple effect" as Europa made first contact with Jupiter's disk. As soon as it ingressed, I lost all sight of it against Jupiter's shimmering clouds. |
| Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) | A wonderful sight, as already described in detail by many. When the sky was dark enough to show off the tail, I think the most pleasing view in my 'scope came at 63x, with the tail visibly extending a good 3-degrees behind the nucleus, perhaps even a bit more. The most memorable view of the night, however, came from Rashad's wide-field refractor, with the comet in the same field of view as M44. Just beautiful. At higher magnification, it was interesting to watch the comet as it moved through the star field. Moving slower through the eyepiece field than a week ago, I estimated a movement of about 8-arcmins/hour, compared with about 13-arcmins/hour just a week back. |
| Comet C/2003 K4 (LINEAR) | Sitting just over a degree to the west of Eta Cygni, I estimated this comet's magnitude to be about 10th mag. or so. No tail at all, just a nice small glowing "star" in the midst of a beautiful Cygnus star-field. Quite breathtaking. Taking a break from some DSO hunting, I actually identified the comet around 1:00am or so. |
DSOs
Most of my evening was spent chasing H2500 objects in Virgo. Given both the seeing and the transparency, it soon became clear that those diffuse items with low surface brightness just weren't going to show themselves, even though I tried in vain to find a number of them. Still, there were a number of brighter objects that were easy to locate, and here are a few "edge-on" galaxies I observed at 188x and/or 251x:
| NGC 3976 | A nice edge-on galaxy, pretty bright, with a distinctive - but small - core. |
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| NGC 4129 | A small edge-on galaxy, pretty bright, with an even brightness to it. |
| NGC 4215 | A moderately sized edge-on galaxy, pretty bright, with its noted "lens" shape definitely visible. |
| NGC 4348 | A small edge-on galaxy, fairly bright, with a large bright core. |
| NGC 4388 | A thin edge-on galaxy in the heart of Downtown Virgo. Forms a "large" triangle with M84 and M86. Pretty bright, considering its thinness. A number of other galaxies nearby, to include faint IC 3303, which, with averted vision and a fair amount of time, would just flicker into view for a brief moment when the transparency and seeing allowed. Maybe one second out of ten at best. IC 3303, 1.0 x 0.6 arcmins, which TheSky's catalogs list at mag. 13.7 and 14.7 (take your pick), really defined the limiting magnitude of my 'scope this night. Anything beyond this was just invisible. |
Okay, so I did take a look at some eye-candy items, to include M101, M53, M92, M13, The Veil, etc., as well as just march along Markarian's Chain in Virgo for a bit. Given the conditions, M101 was just "barely there," as expected.
A final wave of clouds, and the fact that I was beat, caused me to call it quits at 2:00am. Skies to the W-WSW had become just a bit too "challenging," to put it mildly, and after covering my mirror and stowing my eyepieces, I crawled into the back of my car and my sleeping bag about 2:30am.
I woke to completely overcast skies, but a wonderful blue opening to the west opened up and kept moving our way, and soon we were enjoying bright sunshine and warm temperatures. The Plettstone observers group grew by a couple of people when we were joined by Sean McCauliff and Andrew (Drue?) from SF.
Following a potluck dinner, the early-evening observing started off under the watch of a fair amount of light overcast, with Venus first "glowing" in the west, and then, thanks to a well placed contrail, even turning into "Comet Venus" for a while.
| Venus | Yes, sitting between cloud bands, I began the evening by taking another look at the waning crescent phase of our Sister Planet. The first thing I noticed was that Venus was only slightly shimmering in the western sky, with much less pronounced color than I'd noticed the evening before. A sign of good things to come, even though the cloud cover then said otherwise. |
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| Jupiter | Much better than the night before, with the NEB and SEB much more distinctive. Europa to one side, with Io, Callisto and Europa to the other. Still, I didn't spend more than a minute's total time looking at ol' Jove, wanting to get to the comet. |
| Saturn | Just a quick look to judge the seeing. *Very* steady ... and beautiful as always. |
| Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) | With clouds passing through the general area, I immediately picked up on the same thing as everybody else: NEAT was heading directly for an 11th mag. star. I was at 323x as NEAT approached the star, first thinking that the comet would miss it. But a few minutes later, it was clear that NEAT's track would likely occult the star. Albert Highe, with the magnification cranked up on his 'scope as well, noted that the comet actually "wrapped around the star." Given the comet's speed through the field, this was quite an occultation to observe! Although I didn't time how long the star remained hidden, I agreed with Albert's subsequent comment that, as the comet pulled away from the star, NEAT presented an optical illusion of "speeding up." Pretty cool! |
After NEAT, it was on to the DSO stuff. Now although the seeing was very good (~30 stars in the "Bootes triangle" at Midnight), the early-evening sky suffered significant transparency problems. Now the only reason the Plettstone skies cleared - and cleared *very* quickly, mind you - was due to Guillermo and Albert both making the ultimate sacrifice. Yes, they packed up their large-aperture Newt/Dobs early on! Following this brave and unselfish act, the skies quickly cleared, transparency issues became a distant memory, and the seeing continued to be very good for the remainder of the night. No kidding!! (Just think what the sky would have been like if we'd had a 6" APO to sacrifice!)
As I did the night before, I immediately headed back to Virgo to chase H2500 objects. Rather than list them all, I'll just say that the sky conditions were wonderful, and that I was able to find the objects I sought during the time the objects were in a position for me to chase 'em. I still need to do the verification work, but it appears that NGC 3848 and 3852 are just duplicates of NGC 3822 and 3825, respectively, so beware. This night, IC 3303 was relatively easy to hold with averted vision, demonstrating - at least to me - the remarkable change in the conditions from the previous evening. When Virgo was too far to the west, I just turned to other objects, to include Comet C/2003 K4 (LINEAR) again. I also turned the 'scope back on M101, which was *much* more distinctive than the previous evening. Unfortunately, in my haste to leave the Bay Area, I'd failed to bring along my June 2004 Sky & Telescope, containing Steve Gottlieb's article on observing M101's H-II regions, so I'll probably save that action for Shingletown. I also did a fair amount of other eye-candy viewing, playing with magnifications, filters, etc.
| Comet C/2004 F4 (Bradfield) | With my car initially blocking my view, Rob Hawley first spotted this comet with his SCT, needing to peer through some tree branches to do so. But with a bit of persistence, Rob had Comet Bradfield in his eyepiece, low to the NE, probably around 3:30am. About a half-hour later, with the comet having just cleared my car (from my 'scope's point of view), I, too, had Bradfield in my eyepiece, sitting about 5-degrees from M31, with 5th magnitude 41 Andromedae in the same field of view. With 41-And as a reference, my guess is that Bradfield was probably about 8th magnitude now. That lovely tail from a few weeks back had all but disappeared. In the horizon glow, I'd guess it extended no more than 15-arcmins, if that. |
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Comet Bradfield was a great way to finish up the weekend. With the eastern sky showing the approach of dawn, I crawled back into the car and my sleeping bag around 4:30am ... mumbling thanks to Albert and Guillermo for clearing the skies for the rest of us!
A wonderful visit to Plettstone; thanks again, Michelle!
Posted on sf-bay-tac May 19, 2004 00:30:00 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 22:25:12 PT