by Jamie Dillon
The place has great horizons. Played around the bottom of Scorpius' tail thru much of the night. Along with the horizons, the company was great. Ooh, TACos and tAC-SAC lurkers, anytime you figure on hanging out with tAC-SAC be ready to play rough. ZZ and the Astrogoddess and Shneor and them are verbal ruffians. And Gary Manning, the Dude, was even thousands of miles away.
That said, I caught a new PN off the Eye Candy List, the Little Ghost, which did look interesting with a wavering brightness across its surface. Then one more globular, 6139, just NW of the False Comet, easy and goodlooking for being way low in the sky from those northerly parts.
In my project of collecting globular clusters, this gives me some half dozen more NGC's and Palomars north of -40 dec. One of 'em is in Lupus and was right there just a bit to the West of 6139! Ack, shoulda checked the chart, woulda been my first object in Lupus. In any case a fine object for CalStar.
Tried for 6380 just south of Shaula in Scorpius. It's an official Steve Gottlieb Nutbuster, and sure enough just not there in Felix, nor was it in Jane's rollicking Zambuto 18. My first ever try at an SGNB, and brothers and sisters, when the Astro Animal announces an object as a toughie, it's a toughie. Czerwinski hissef has also taken a stab at this globular. Turns out the maximum brightness for the constituent stars in this thing is listed at ca 20. A clue mebbe?
(Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with optics made by Discovery Telescopes. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians and a TV 2x Barlow, with a Lumicon OIII.)
Caught 6369, the Little Ghost, a pretty PN in southern Ophiuchus. Does have a kind of ghostly appearance, check it out! Another cool object off the Eye Candy List.
Spent plenty of time staring at the Small Star Cloud, M24. Just never get enough of that field, with all those stars and its imbedded open cluster and two Barnard nebulae, just loaded. M15, Uranus and Neptune, time staring at the Milky Way and the stars from the Teapot over to the Circlet in Pisces, and then bingo the Moon was up.
Thanks to the Quality for their fine hospitality and airy banter.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Aug 09, 2004 20:40:48 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 06, 2005 22:31:41 PT