by Craig Colvin
I arrived at 7:00pm to find Mark Wagner, and Richard Navarrete just setting up. There was little wind, but there was a fairly thick haze visible that was made even more visible by the setting sun. Shortly after sunset but before I started observing everything got covered in dew. Didn't really affect anything but my telrad since everything else was still covered. By the time I started observing the dew wasn't a problem and was completely gone by midnight.
My project for the night was the H400. I have 38 left most of which are in Gem, CMa, and Mon which I haven't been able to get this winter due to weather. The window of opportunity is rapidly closing for some of these objects so I wanted to go after those objects that I won't be able to observe next month. Unfortunately most of these are low in the west and just in the haze that was visible, I got a few, but some where just too low in the muck to even try.
In Mark Wagner's report he mentioned that I thought I might have found a SN in one of the H400 galaxies. It was NGC2974 in Sex. There was what appeared to be a bright star on the west edge of the galaxy and that star didn't show up on either SkyMap Pro or The Sky. After getting home and checking it out on the internet it turns out that there is a mag 10 star on the west limb. But it was fun to speculate and made me look at the galaxy a little closer than I might have otherwise.
Someone asked about wind at Coe. It was relatively light most of the evening but there was a brief period around 10:30 or 11:00 where there were some strong gusts. Didn't last more than about a half-hour.
By about 12:30pm I had gotten all of the H400s that weren't in the sky glow from San Jose or in the haze low in the west. 24 left to go and looks like some may have to wait until next season.
Packed up at 1am and was home before 2. An enjoyable night out.
All observations were with my home built 18" f4.5 Dob.
| NGC3166 | Nagler 9mm |
|---|---|
| Bright stellar core, haze extends out in E-W direction. No real structure visible. Much fainter than NGC3169 which lies to the E and is in the same FOV | |
| NGC3169 | Nagler 9mm |
| Bright stellar core, haze is elongated approx 2:1 in the W-E direction. The core appears almost as bright as the mag 11.2 star in the haze at the E edge. Galaxy NGC3166 lies just to the W in the same FOV | |
| NGC2355 | Nagler 9mm |
| Quite dim OC. 2 stars visible using direct vision. Another 7-9 appear with averted vision. Mag 9.5 star on E edge. Need to check this because Skymap Pro lists this as both NGC2355 and NGC2356 | |
| NGC2395 | Nagler 9mm |
| Fairly large dim OC. 4-5 bright stars visible with another 6-10 faint background stars. Fairly unimpressive. | |
| NGC2421 | Nagler 16mm |
| A loose OC with a group of stars that look like a greater than sign pointing towards the SE. Each leg of the this L-shaped asterism is composed of 5 stars. There a 3 brighter stars within the > sign that appear to be an equilateral triangle | |
| NGC2440 | Nagler 9mm |
| Small and fairly bright. Roughly symmetrical although appears to have a slight bulge towards the S | |
| NGC2360 | Nagler 22mm |
| Very large and relatively bright OC. Almost too nice looking to be a H400. Approx 20+ stars of roughly similar mag. | |
| NGC2395 | Nagler 16m |
| Fairly loose OC. 14-15 stars of the same relative brightness. Appear to be perhaps 4-5 more much dimmer that might be part of the same OC. A pair of mag 10 stars off the SE edge | |
| NGC2548 | Panoptic 35mm |
| Big and bright! Was confused as and thought this couldn't be an H400 but then discovered it's also M48. 30+ bright stars in a diffuse OC. Appears to be close to 1/2 deg across | |
| NGC2506 | Nagler 16mm |
| Quite dim OC. 7-8 faint stars, another dozen or so visible using averted vision | |
| NGC2539 | Nagler 16mm |
| 20+ stars of uniform brightness in a fairly dense OC. Just to the NW of mag 4.8 star 19 Pup | |
| NGC2974 | Nagler 9mm |
| Faint galaxy, elongated in the EW direction not quitw 2:1. Very bright apparent star in the WSW edge. Approx mag 9.5. Does not appear in Skymap Pro or The Sky. Possible supernova? | |
| NGC3115 | Nagler 9mm |
| The best H400 object I've looked at in months. The Spindle galaxy. Very bright central core, The galaxy is edge on and extends out 3:1 in the SE-NW direction. | |
| NGC2859 | Nagler 9mm |
| Relatively small galaxy with a bright stellar core. Haze appears to be roughly symmetrical with perhaps a slight bulge in the NS direction. No details apparent. | |
| NGC2782 | Nagler 9mm |
| Very faint galaxy. Stellar core with haze roughly symmetrical around core. Spiral structure visible using averted vision. 2 mag 12 stars just to the south. | |
Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 11, 2005 10:01:42 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.3 Mar 18, 2006 21:24:21 PT
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