by Jamie Dillon
The Wednesday night I set up in front of the Observatory, expecting the place to be empty. The 30" was opened up and full of eager young folks. Liam Grady is a young man who's joined FPOA on his own ticket and gotten checked out on the big scope. He'd brought a set of his friends to show 'em the sights.
Then in the SW lot, as it turned out, there were two guys with their scopes who'd brought an entourage for a sky tour. One was named Scott, who has an 8" SCT. The other, Jean Charles, had just bought a new 100mm refractor from Orion to take home to Paris. Nice scope, crisp optics. Both of these fellas were working with reverse-image finderscopes and no reflex see-thru finders, a formula for drooling madness I remember all too well from my first loaner scope, ole number 31. I helped them find the Ring and the Double Double.
Back at work by the Observatory with Felix, I found two pretty open clusters (Joe Bob and Beastmaster take note) in Vulpecula, 6885 and 6882, both in Skiff's Bright Star Atlas. Also started catching up with galaxies in Aquarius, south of the Water Jar. See below for details. Showed the folks in the Observatory some goodies. Waited them out, then really enjoyed the wind and stars and quiet when it was solitary.
Sunday night the sky was spectacular, with limiting magnitude at 6.4 by 0100, seeing good 4/5. Had company in the SW lot early on, a couple named Joe and Kate, who'd come up to gawk at the sky, but for whom telescope views were new and appreciated treats. The other human around later was our very own Rob Hawley, who was over at Ranger Row. After the bustle of Wednesday, I'd figured on the SW lot being empty; of course as it turned out, Rob had the FPOA area to himself. Nice scope he's got, another Plettstone gem, Albert Highe design.
There's a whole set of galaxies south of the Water Jar. The most visually interesting one was 7606. Turns out I'd looked at this galaxy twice before, in August and October 2001. Saw a lot more this time, with both sky and observer being improved factors. The earlier nights had had LM's in the mid 5's. This time could see a long lens, fairly bright core, a seam along midline, lots of mottling.
Other highlights there - interesting in a different way was 7556, on account of it being ca 330 million ly's from here. That's about halfway between the Hercules cluster and Coma cluster in terms of distance, with the Coma cluster being some 400 mly away. Remember to pack a lunch when you go. Saw a dim oval with no clear core. Must be huge. Nearby, I "discovered" 7566, a dispersed dim rag in Felix. 7723 was big, diffused, with irregular shape. Looked like a distant globular. Had dim foreground stars across the western half of its face, looked to have a stellar core offset to the west of center.
(Felix is 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, with an Orion Ultrablock.)
Ended up in Cassiopeia, to see IC 1805, a bright big open cluster surrounded by large area of nebulosity, with especially bright gouts of nebula ca 0.5° to the west. Featured both in the Skiff Bright Star Atlas and on Gottlieb's DeepMap. NGC 1027 is in the same area, just out of the haziest area of nebula. Then finally went to see IC 10, one of our local group, only 4 million lightyears away, a haze 4-5' long, just off Caph, beta Cas. Now I'd better try and catch the Draco Dwarf, the local group being another mini-project.
By moonrise, I had my first telescope view of Mars this year. At 210x could see a dark area off the southern edge, and the south polar cap was clear. A dim red crescent Moon was rising by then. Great night, very tissue-restoring.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Aug 12, 2005 00:29:21 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 07, 2006 19:20:02 PT