by Bob Jardine
I went to Coyote Lake last night, Saturday, to try to remember how to use a telescope prior to Calstar. (I was out last Wednesday at MB, but apparently couldn't figure it out; it seems that everything I tried for was a DNF that night. Saturday was much better.)
Only one other astronomer was there, a lady named Lou (is that how it is spelled?) whom I had never met before. Neither of us could believe that we were the only people there. It was a pretty nice night.
The highlight of the night for me was one of the best views I've ever had of M33. Pretty apparent spiral arms, with the one ending in the little bright spot NGC 604 and a nearby foreground star.
It was a little breezy early on, but that died down mostly. Cool but not too bad. Very slight case of dew on the charts, but nowhere else. Seeing was poor, improving to fair by the end of the night. LM was probably around 5.8 or 5.9.
We packed up and left around 12:45.
OK. I'm ready for Calstar now.
Here's the blow-by-blow (without all of the eye candy breaks):
Observations with 12.5" f/5 Portaball.
| NGC 5907 | galaxy in Draco. I had observed this H400 galaxy before, more than once even, but I found when I was recently compiling all of my H400 notes that I didn't have much of a description for this one and a few others -- especially the earlier ones. Pretty easy location, a little 3-star arc pointing right to it. Pretty large, long and thin, but pretty dim (although I'm it would be brighter a little earlier in the year, and North isn't the best direction from CLP, with the San Jose light dome in that direction). Hint of a bulge near the center and very slightly brighter there. Elongation not quite N/S. |
|---|---|
| 16 Psyche | asteroid in Capricorn. Drew a chart for the AL folks. |
| Struve 2948 | this is one of the doubles suggested in the AL H-II book for seeing test. Splits only occasionally at 176x. Seeing isn't too great. (This is supposed to be 2.8 " sep.) |
| Struve 2950 | another seeing test. Splits only at over 200x, and then only suspected (dumbell). (2.3" sep) |
| NGC 23 | galaxy in Pegasus. Quite small, pretty dim, but can hold it with direct vision. With AV seems slightly elongated, but not thin -- between 2:1 and 3:1. A bit brighter in the center. 176x. |
| NGC 7331 | galaxy in Pegasus. Nice. Bright, elongated, bulge, brighter center. Pretty small. Hints of its friends, but not solid enough to claim. 93x and 176x. |
| M33, NGC 604 | Spiral arms are really clear tonight, wrapped
counter-clockwise. The one to the northeast has a brighter clump way
out near the end near a star that appears to terminate the arm. The
clump is clearly fuzzy, not stellar, even at 93x. Holds up to 176x for
confirmation. The clump is pretty bright, brighter than a fair number
of little nebulae in our galaxy! Must be NGC 604.
This view of M33 was surprisingly good. Lots of detail, even though neither the seeing nor the transparency was tops. This will definitely call for another look at Calstar. |
Posted on sf-bay-tac Oct 10, 2004 22:35:57 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 14, 2005 19:31:05 PT