by Jamie Dillon
Albert has a new telescope, a 12.5" scope that weighs 40 pounds, with an elegant design even for him and sharp optics. Alan on his end has a new Orion XT 10, the very model that was being asked about on TAC, nice scope. People were sharing views of big and little planetaries, globulars, the works.
On my end I started with one more tour under the Bowl of the Dipper. Eager to hang around there next spring. Like just between Phecda, gamma UMa, and chi UMa, there are scads of big distinct galaxies I haven't seen yet, several on the Eye Candy List /observing/eyecandy. Like 4088, a big pretty lens, with smaller 4085 in the same field. The marine layer was in and we had unusually good skies to the West.
This was with Felix the happy, exact and inky, with his bag of tricks. 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, with a Lumicon OIII.
When that act finally ran its course, I ambled over to Scutum looking for planetaries. There are a bunch charted on pg 6 of SkyAtlas. First one was lovely, 6804, just off Altair. Looked like a radiating flare coming off a following star. Caught the central star 20% of the time. Then onto something cruel, 6803. My advice is stay away. Was a solid half hour right on top of the thing, at 126x and 210x, blinking with the OIII. Was half convinced it was the one star that got more blue when the field was blinked. Rashad helped with Big Dog, 16" with a tracking mount. Found the same teeny little thing behaving the same way. I said, "So what was that for?" He replied, "Exactly." The thing has a total diameter of 10", 6" in SkyAtlas Companion, of which we were seeing less than half with our scopes. There are enough observers who like stellar planetaries that they won't go neglected.
For relief, looked at the Wild Duck, M11, then moved on down a short way to 6712, a lovely globular, also on the Eye Candy List. Ragged edges, bright star in the center, dark land inside S edge, running E-W. With averted vision could see more than 2 dozen stars resolving across the face. Impressive cluster.
Later that night, when Perseus had swung over the trees, did a mini-project I'd had in mind for a while. 1023 is one of my favorite galaxies, very long, with an impressive bright core. First saw it thru Blondie, Rashad's fine 12.5, one night at Coe about 4 years ago. Unforgettable object. Turns out it's the main galaxy in its own cluster, along with 891, at about 30 million lightyears from here, somewhat more than halfway to the main Virgo cluster. A whole set of that cluster is in SkyAtlas: 1023, 891, 925, 949, 959, 1003, 1058 and IC 239. They cover a fairly wide area of sky, from Perseus down into Triangulum. It was exciting to realize that one could get an idea of the shape of that local cluster from this angle. At this point the lot was empty and quiet, just the sound of a light breeze across the mountain. As Czerwinski would say, I was kicking butt and taking names. Lined up each field in the finder, and another galaxy was centered in the 10mm. The new one I liked best was 925, in interesting object, like a puff of smoke caught between 3 stars, 2 on the north side, 1 on the south. Oriented kind of E-W, mildly brighter toward the middle. Went for dessert to look at 891 for the nth time. Took up just about the whole field of view in the 6mm, most of 17' long. What a dark lane.
At this point it hit me that the sky was pretty transparent. Did a star count in Pegasus overhead and came up with 15, a 6.4 sky. Seeing was solid 5/5 thru big chunk of the night. Went on a tour of M34, 752, that big distracting OC in Triangulum, and M33 itself all spread out and complex. Such a night. Just before packing up, was cruising between delta and epsilon Cas, an incredible area, and caught a bright patch that wouldn't go away. Turned out to be IC 166, a distant very dense open cluster, charted in UM2000. This was my first time observing an open that didn't resolve into any individual stars, a patch of haze like a diffuse galaxy. Cool!
Orion was showing off the south end of the lot, Venus was way up. When I got home my next-door neighbor was just getting up at 0545 (on a Sunday!). Genial guy, he knew right away that I'd been out stargazing, but his eyebrows went up when it hit him that I was headed for the sack.
Happy, too. Glad to hear of TACos having fun across the whole region.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Aug 16, 2004 23:22:44 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 08, 2005 20:34:09 PT