by George Feliz
Milt used his TV101 and I had my home-built 6", f/6 dob based on Albert Highe's design. Next to us was Scott & Cathy with a 20" Obsession. It was a sacrifice to have to share the views in the larger scope, but we had to be polite...
Joining us in the lot was a pretty steady stream of folks coming to see the Perseids, so there was the distraction of some ambient light, and the chorus of "Oooohs" and "Ahhhhs". We shared some views with our scopes, but the 20" next to us was a much more attractive prospect, so our public duties were minimal.
The weather throughout the night was clear and shirt-sleeve-warm with a marine layer below blocking out the nearby towns. There was almost no wind.
Seeing was quite fine with the Nu Scorpii double-double split by both scopes with clean separation of the 1.4" pair. Milt bumped up the power on Vega to 360x and saw a steady first diffraction ring with some wavering of the subsequent rings. He estimated the seeing to be 8 of 10 on the Pickering scale.
Transparency was quite good - M33 was nekked eye with averted vision, the Pelican Nebula was clear with an Ultrablock filter, Barnard's Galaxy (NGC 6822) was readily seen. Compared to Plettstone on 7/17 (with some marginal weather) and MB on 7/22 ( a Marek "dark cloud" night ), the skies were somewhere in-between with Plettstone taking the gold, and MB taking an overachieving bronze.
I did a limiting mag check about 3am around Polaris and saw the mag 5.8 star but not the mag 6.1. Must be my eyes, or the overly bright meteors, or the "burn" from looking at globular clusters through the 20". :-)
In between meteors, I worked on the DeepMap 600 list and Milt was working on the Caldwell list (which had us scratching our heads a few times over some of the selections). Galaxies such as 5838/5846/5813 near 110 Virginis were direct vision objects at 100x. B92 and B93 stood out well in M24 near OC 6603.
I tried valiently, but unsuccessfully, to stay away from summer eye candy. I'm glad that there is no caloric penalty, else I would have put on about 10 pounds. As it was, we kept our spirits up with homemade cookies and Dove chocolate.
I took an hour break from the eyepiece around 1:30 to look at meteors and to scan around with 12x63 binoculars. I did not keep a count, but saw several long lasting greenish streaks - such a distraction...
Around 2, Milt was trying for the Bubble Nebula (NGC7635, also C11), and I clumsily tried to help. I scanned the field with low power (37x, 1.7degree) and an Ultrablock filter and came upon an irregularly shaped object (slightly rectangular) about 1.5 degrees west-ish from M52. Had I done a little research I would have know this could not be the Bubble which is much closer (and which I had logged only last October, Doh!). I also came across 7510, the wedge shaped pizza-slice cluster. In any event, we (mostly me) thoroughly mucked up identifying the Bubble, and are still a little unclear on the small, bright nebula which voluntarily showed up in the eyepiece.
I think the object may have been 7538 or a portion of Sh2-157.
From SA2000 Companion:
NGC7538 - BNe (Bright Nebula emission) Cep 23h13.5m +61deg31' 10'x5' - a pair of 11th mag. stars involved in a large, very faint nebula.
Sh2-157- BNe Cas 23h16.1m +60deg02" 60'x50' - Irregular and filamentary.
NGC7635 - BNe Cas 23h20.7m +61deg12' 15'x8' - C11, Bubble Nebula, A very faint, large and luminous shell of nebulosity; illuminated by a 6.9-mag. star.
Not conclusive, but 7538 looks likely - I should have looked it up at the time, but the brain was fading rapidly.
Around 3:30 we packed up after a Great Night at the Peak.
You know you've had a good time observing when you get home after your morning paper has been delivered.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Aug 12, 2004 19:24:33 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 07, 2005 20:25:55 PT