by Craig Colvin
When I arrived Marek was already there sitting in his vehicle. When I got out of mine I realized why, it was very windy. We discussed it for a while and decided to setup in hopes that the wind would die down. We both positioned are vehicles so they would block some of the wind. It worked relatively well.
I had brought my new 18" f4.5. Although I've tried a few times, due to fog and car trouble this was the first time I've had it out to a dark site since Shingletown so I was looking forward to using it again. Marek also delivered to me my new Nagler 16mm which I was also looking forward to trying.
Started off with H400s in UMa, CVn and Cam, most were small non-descript galaxies as are so many of the H400. I observed a total of 11 H400s, NGC40, NGC1501, NGC1502, NGC1961, NGC2665, NGC4346, NGC4800, NGC5005, NGC5033, NGC5195, NGC5273. Of those by far the best was NGC40. When I looked at it my first thought was this can't be an H400, it's too cool, it should be on an eye candy list. Turns out it is on the TAC Eye Candy List, the Best 110 NGC list and the RASC list.
At Shingletown and again at Coyote Dan Wright showed some geosynchronous satellites in his scope and at Coyote told me were to look. So around 11:30pm I swung my scope over near the Wild Duck cluster and was able to spot one after about 5 minutes of waiting. Marek and I spent quite a while watching, and playing around with different magnifications. It was fun. Still want to try to catch a formation of geosync sats like Dan had at Shingletown.
I then moved to eye candy, looked at M22, Lagoon, Trifid, the Swan Nebula, the Eagle Cluster, M13 and the Veil. For the Lagoon used my new 22mm Nagler with Marek's OIII filter and I have to say it was the best view of the Lagoon I've ever seen. One of those mouth drop open types of views. Used Marek's 31mm TermiNagler for the Veil and found out I need to trim the truss poles on my scope. It would just come into focus with the focuser racked all the way in.
The wind had died down a little during the evening but was still blowing pretty good, sometime around midnight it went from a warm wind to a cool wind so I changed from shorts into long pants.
Finally packed up around 2:30pm and headed down the hill. On the way down I saw all sorts of wild life. Up top I saw a small fox and a couple of rabbits. Just before the road up to Coe met up with the main road there was a large cat. At first I thought it was a Bobcat because it had similar markings to one but it's tail was too long. The markings also didn't look like a Mountain Lion so this morning I got on the internet and determined it was young juvenile Mountain Lion cub. I saw a couple more Coyotes and a mouse running across the road when I got to Almaden Valley. Totals for the evening 4 Coyotes, 3 Rabbits, Fox, Mouse, a Mountain Lion cub, and a Deer. More wild life than I think I've seen in the past year.
In spite of the wind it was a great evening of star gazing and wild life observing.
Observing Notes 7/14/04 at Henry Coe, 18" f4.5
| NGC40 | Very, very cool looking PN. Central star visible with a donut shaped ring of gas around it. Appears to be some structure to the ring when I look at it using averted vision. Reminds me of the cats eye nebula. |
|---|---|
| NGC1501 | Fairly bright PN and relatively large. Shows up well with OIII filter. Slight structure visible using averted vision. Has kind of a mottled appearance |
| NGC1502 | A V-shaped OC with the point of the V pointing NNW. 2 Bright stars in the middle of the V. Approx 18 stars in cluster |
| NGC1961 | Very faint with low surface brightness. First detected using averted vision. After a few minutes are able to see it with direct vision. Between 2 mag 13 stars to the SE-NW |
| NGC2655 | Bright and small. Stellar core. Both core and haze are elongated in the NW-SE direction. Mostly symmetrical (that means it is almost round except for the slight elongation |
| NGC4346 | Bright stellar core. Appears to be a edge on galaxy with the haze extending E-W approx 3:1, Fairly small galaxy. |
| NGC4800 | Very small face on galaxy with stellar core. Very bright core with not much in the way of surrounding haze. |
| NGC5005 | Very nice and bright edge on galaxy. Bright stellar core with haze extending out in E-W direction. Hint of a dust lane to the W using averted vision. |
| NGC5033 | Small elliptical galaxy with bright stellar core. Haze extends out in N-S direction 2.:1 Appears smaller than NGC5005 which is in same FOV, even though it is supposed to be twice the size. |
| NGC5195 | Large and bright. Bright stellar core. Just to the North of M51. Can barely detect the bridge connecting 5195 to M52. |
| NGC5273 | Very dim with stellar core. Roughly symmetrical but with a slight bulging in the N-S direction.. Not very impressive. |
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jul 15, 2004 13:42:08 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 03, 2005 19:24:59 PT