by Jamie Dillon
Dang, sure enough we had 6.3 limiting magnitude, with excellent seeing, 5/5 hands down. As noted earlier this week, Charlie Wicks had the Blue Snowball at 1000x in his 20", showing all kinds of detail.
There was a cohort of Montebellistas at the pads. Ranger Row for some reason was empty. But there was a bunch of telescopes on Coulter Row, and in the SW lot we had an imager named Ajay, Alan Zaza, Steve and Jean Sergeant, Charlie, Jane of the Valley herself, Jim Whippersnapper Everitt, the BP, the Beastmaster, and Mars. Quite a set of what the boys used to call talent.
I spent the night alternating between planetaries in Aquila and galaxies in Pegasus. There's an interesting combo of a PN next to a dark nebula, 6778 next to Barnard 139. The PN itself is blue and stellar, took an OIII to blink and identify. But just to the West there are strands of dark nebula running across the field.
This was all done with Felix, 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. Sonotube, no trusses, honest weight.
There were two galaxies in Pegasus I'd logged in SkyAtlas as still to see. Turns out I'd worked on both before, but the comparisons were interesting. 7553 was a no-show to me in Aug 2001. Now here's where taking notes pays off. The conditions 3 years ago were 5.8 LM, seeing 4/5. So it wasn't just that I was a chump observer back then. Now it looked like a wisp at 79x and 126x. At 210x a triangular shape came out, with some concentration toward the center.
7457 is an interesting galaxy. This night is looked bilobar, like an asymmetric peanut. Almost exactly 2 years ago it'd looked like a pretty but well-behaved spiral, "with bright core, some swirls and dark lanes." I will definitely go back to this one and get views on various nights.
Category also turned out to be non-linear. Mark while looking at it said, "Sure looks like a spiral." It kind of did to me, along with the peanut shape. But SkyAtlas Companion labels it Ep, a peculiar elliptical, as does Sky Catalogue 2000. Gottlieb's NGC+, in the version I have, labels it E-SO, a lenticular elliptical.
OK, so as not to be helpless, I answered both my own questions. Looked at the POSS image tonight, and there are two foreground stars, each right in the middle of what I was seeing as a lobe. This must have made for the impression of a pinched waist. Saturday night, I looked the thing up in SkyAtlas Companion and it mentioned an anonymous neighbor galaxy. So I got onto thinking these were two close galaxies, with two tiny stellar cores, like a mini Whirlpool. The neighbor is actually a ways off in the POSS image.
The POSS image shows 7457 to be a nice normal spiral, as did my earlier observation. And NED, as well as UM2000, lists the type as SA (rs) O-?. That is, nonbarred spiral, ringed and S-shaped both, maybe lenticular. One more example of the complexity of life in the New General Catalogue.
- Side note to Colvin regarding galaxy details. 6503 isn't an elliptical but a very fancy spiral, was my jump up and down object in July '03. And 7479 certainly deserves a place on the Eye Candy List. You should wash your mouth out with soap for suggesting otherwise; it's a complex barred spiral with distinct arms. Raw sex.
And back to Saturday night, all praise to the Star Queen for bringing such a great night.
More of this next Saturday!
Posted on sf-bay-tac Sep 14, 2004 22:23:28 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 11, 2005 20:43:46 PT