Saturday 5 March, Peak

by Jamie Dillon

Last time I had logged a new object was 12 December, so I was pretty excited to be under a dark sky at the Peak. Seeing was good thru the night, 4/5. The limiting magnitude was around 5.3, occasionally a bit better in the East. No one even thought of complaining. As noted, there was a crew at the SW lot, a big Dobs on Coulter, and plenty of imagers plus Turley and Natscher in the FPOA area.

Kingsley showed off a supernova in a galaxy in Hydra, 2611. Joe Bob was showing off asteroid #13. Zaza was showing off M42 and the Double Cluster in his new Vixen binocs, BT80's from Orion. Ron Sherrill was good enough to share his great view of Hickson 68, a lovely close set of 5 galaxies. I started off showing T Tauri, a real live protostar, not yet on the main sequence, in fact a prototype protostar, featured by James Kaler in one more interesting article in the February S&T.

The prize for the night in my finds was a third viewing of ngc 3079. It's a favorite of Czerwinski's. Count the first time in Bob's scope, then last fall, now for a revisit. A lovely long feathery spindle, with mottling throughout, 8' long. Some galaxy. If you must know, I nailed the length of it, figuring it to be 8' in the 10mm. It's listed at 7.9.

Also saw Hubble's Variable Nebula live for the first time. Pretty, like a tidy triangular fan. Plus it'll change over months. Will be on the check-back list. Then headed into the area south of the Bowl, where the galaxies are like dandelions. In this instance, from a halfway down a line drawn from Phecda, gamma UMa, thru the chi star, nudge the scope over to the East. First you run into 4026, a sharp-edged pretty lens with a bright core. Over less then two degrees, there's 4088, looking like a fat flame. Right next to it is 4085, which needed 126x to be direct vision, a sharp bright chip.

(This is all 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 and a TV 2x Barlow. The Barlow got more than the usual amount of use that night, with the steady seeing.)

NGC 4100 is a long cigar in the same 1.2 degree field as 4088 and 4085. Then while I was staring back at 4088, Ron Sherrill was calling out invites to see Hickson 68. Gawked and oohed and aahed at that great view, then ambled back to Felix. Peeked in the eyepiece to move back to 4088, and another new galaxy had drifted in and was centered! This was 4157, which happens to be also on the Eye Candy List, a slim sliver, fairly bright with a diffuse core and sharp ends.

A short ways off, back toward chi UMa, caught my first UGC galaxy, 6930. Clear enough in the 10mm, hint of mottling, some elongation roughly EW, with a lump on the north edge. There are plenty of UGC's charted in SkyAtlas; now I'll go hunt 'em with less trepidation. Have now one UGC and 3 MCG's logged.

Those are some of the highlights of a really fun night. We certainly played with Saturn and Jupiter and their moons. Saw Europa entering onto the disk, plus its shadow transit. Now have fields to explore south of the Bowl, and sets of galaxies to find this spring in Hydra. Also dug out the March '99 S&T, where Gottlieb details the brightest Hicksons. Yes I'll start with #68.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Mar 09, 2005 23:23:13 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 12, 2005 10:44:35 PT