by Randy Muller
I was joined by the Star Queen, Jane Smith (A.B.); Shneor Sherman; Bill Chandler; Ken Mason; Tony F. (K6ALF); Jake Burkhart; and Friend, Beat Poet and SF Bay TACo Jamie Dillon (DDK).
At about 9am on Saturday morning I had noticed to my dismay that there was a heavy and thick layer of smoke in the east. Fortunately, this had thinned considerably by evening.
The night started off with some excitement as an apparent Iridium satellite flared low (20 degrees) in the east during twilight. I'm guessing it reached about -4. (Comparable to Venus at its brightest).
Another one flared a little later in Cygnus. This one was significantly brighter, at -6 to -7 or perhaps even -8, although it's difficult for me to estimate when they get this bright.
At about 8:45pm PDT, I took a quick look at Jupiter setting fast in the west. Surface details were completely washed out, but the moons were putting on a great show. Pale yellow Io was on one side, and the three others were arrayed on the other side in a gentle curve. Each moon had a very distinctive size and color. Garyish Callisto was the darkest and outermost. Next came bright, but tiny Europa, and finally the large and bright Ganymede. The promimity of the moons made their differences and the fact that they were not in an exact line much more obvious.
I wasn't able to get much observing done because Jane kept pestering me, but I did get intermittent views of the central star in the Ring Nebula (M57) through both her scope and mine. The seeing slowly deteriorated as the night wore on.
Jane also had a really nice view of the Inkspot (B86) and the nearby open cluster NGC 6520. I was completely captivated by the view, and as I looked, I started to see numerous apparent tendrils of B86 which extended into the cluster itself. I scanned around, and saw lots of other dark nebulae in the same area. B289 was particularly spectacular as it overflowed the field of view.
I had a nice view of the Bug Nebula (NGC 6302) in Shneor's, Jane's and my own scope. The view in Shneor's was at low power during twilight, and it looked a lot like a galaxy.
There is a famous Hubble photo of this object, but visually to me it looked a lot like the photo here:
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/stellar/scenes/object_e/bug.htm
The interesting things about this are 1) that it is an elongated planetary nebula, rather than one with spherical or ring shape, and 2) the characteristic blue-green color was completely absent. It was just an indistinct pale white color.
At 226x it looked something like an irregular, mottled galaxy with a bright central region. On a much smaller scale, it was reminiscent of M108 or M82.
I continued my Messier observing program with my 18" by bagging M34. I found it from memory, with Perseus mostly below the horizon. Because of this, I picked the wrong star to launch from, but I saw the cluster in the 8x50 finder.
Shortly before moonrise, I mooched views of Neptune and Uranus from Jamie's 11" dob. His scope gave very nice views of these colorful (blue) disks of light. I might possibly have worn out my welcome at my insistence at pronouncing "Uranus" in the most amusing manner possible.
The strobe light due north beyond the ridge was not operating. I had seen indirect flashes from this on May 8th from this site.
| Observer | Randy Muller |
|---|---|
| Date | August 7, 2004 7:30pm-12:30am (Aug 8, 02:30-07:30 UT) |
| Location | IHOP, 120W 23.864, 38N 47.548 |
| Elevation | 5024 ft |
| Instrument | Starmaster 18" f/4.3 dob-newt |
| Eyepieces | 7.5, 10, 17, 26mm Sirius Plossls; 1.15x Tele Vue Paracorr |
| Seeing | 8 Very steady |
| Transparency | About 7/10 (some smoke near the horizon) |
Posted on sf-bay-tac Aug 08, 2004 20:41:22 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 05, 2005 22:25:47 PT