by Ralph Aguirre
The night started early with a view of the Christmas Tree Cluster in Monoceros, near Gemini. The small shape around S Monoceros was easily seen making out the Christmas tree shape in my TV-85. With an OIII filter, we were able to make out some nebulosity in the C14, but there was no sign of the Cone Nebula from where we were.
The Eskimo Nebula was our next target, showing up nicely and taking power well up to about 200x, displaying its fuzzy shape with a bright core.
Orion was giving us a nice view of the trapezium, with the E and F stars jumping out at us at about 150x, even early in the evening. Saturn was fairly sharp early in the evening, but really was at its best when it was directly overhead. Adding a light neutral density filter made the contrass of Saturn stand out, where the body of the planet showed nice brown bands along with sharp contrass in the ring structures. The stars and moons around Saturn were coming through as nice sharp points of light.
We found NGC 2024 in Orion near the Horsehead using an H-Beta filter, but couldn't see any trace of the long faint nebula IC 434. The sky was so crisp and clear, it was worth a try anyway.
M78 was in the same region, so we had a quick glimpse of that, at Mag 8. I tried to view Abell12 in Orion also, but the night didn't support high power viewing, which I thought was necessary to bring out the planetary nebula around Mu Ori. Using the recommended OIII filter didn't help.
The Beehive and The Pleiades were nice open clusters to view in the small 85mm Refractor, getting each of these objects in the full field of view at one time. The Beehive and Christmas tree cluster almost look like twins in size.
Since my house was in the way to view Cassiopeia from where my scope was set up at, I used my binoculars to spot both the double cluster in Perseus, along with finding Comet Machholz just west of Cassiopeia. The coma of Machholz is still fairly bright, and easy to see just panning that part of the sky with binoculars. Just one day earlier I was able to see both Comet Machholz and the Double Cluster in Perseus in the same field of view side by side in my TV-85.
From here we split Castor, went on to split the triple star system of Beta Monocerotis, just barely able to see the tiny 12th mag star making up the 4th star in this system.
The moon was up by this time, but the sky was clear, and with no sign of dew on my scopes, eyepieces or Telrad with my Kendrix heaters going, along with a propane heater nearby keeping us warm, we kept viewing.
Leo was up at this time, and finding M65 and M66 side by side were easy to spot despite the glaring moon. NGC 3628 of these Leo triplets was only seen using advert vision, the moon was doing a good job of keeping this galaxy nearly invisible but the star patterns around it were clearly seen.
Turning over to the big dipper, first we viewed Mizar and Alcor, both the C14 and TV-85 giving a nice view of the four stars making up this system. The split was also easy to see with the naked eye.
From here I found the Owl Nebula, M97, the round shape was obvious, even without a UHC or OIII filter. We couldn't make out the eyes even using the filters under our city skies, with the half moon close by also. Nevertheless, with the 31 Nagler at 125x, the Owls head was obvious.
We also found M108 beside the Owl, and went on to view M109, but this was a dim object to view and a struggle to see because of our seeing conditions. From here we saw M81 and M82, both easy to find in both the small refractor, and larger Schmidt. Using a focal reducer, I was able to get both galaxies in the same field of view in my C14.
The Last object around the big dipper we searched for and easily found was M51. Both cores were easy to find, one being larger and brighter than the other, but the spiral structure wasn't visible again due to our half moon in the sky.
Jupiter was up at this time, but the conditions had deteriorated by this time in that part of the sky, and the planet barely showed any detail, due to the moisture that was around this part of the sky.
The constellation Corvus was visible, so first I found the Stargate, then the Asterism called Jaws, then the Sombrero Galaxy M104 was easy to find, all three showing up in the small refractor, and coming through nicely in the larger scope.
The Last object we viewed that night was the Ghost of Jupiter. It was a huge blue ball easy to find in Hydra. It seemed to take power well also.
It was 3am by this time, and despite there being no fog or dew to deal with, the sky conditions had deteriorated.
Despite the half moon in the sky, it was a good night of viewing, and hopefully next week with a new moon coming around, we can hold onto these clear skies and do it all over again under darker skies.
Posted on tac-sac Jan 31, 2005 23:03:00 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 31, 2005 23:08:36 PT