How was FP last night?

by Jamie Dillon

Peter's telling the truth. You guys talked yourselves out of some decent conditions. Those clouds had all dropped shortly after dark. LM was around 5.7 thru the night, seeing 4/5, decent. It was good enough that I bagged those two globulars Natscher mentioned, both of which were on my list as improbables. NGC 6749 in fact is a bonafide certified SGNB, yes a Steve Gottlieb Nut Buster. Palomar 11 looks like it might be prettier from a darker sky, like say at Lake San Antonio.

Seriously, those two were exciting finds. With the two globulars in the winter sky coming up in Columba and Puppis, I'll have every globular cluster feasible in moderate aperture north of -45 dec.

What I did first last night was follow Sue French's Deepsky Wonders from the September S&T. She'd mentioned some OC's in Aquila as very pretty. Yup, 6709 has 20 of its brightest stars forming interesting shapes and strands, including a distinct right angle of star lines. Background stars started to resolve at 79x. 6755 showed 3 roughly parallel dense skeins of stars, with scatters in between, nice. Also took a first-time look at Barnards E in Aquila. In the 9x50 finder and the 1.2° field of the 22mm, could see plenty of dense dark nebula, but not yet the E shape. Darker skies.

Just went back to my log database, and I'd seen 6709 and 6755 before, 6709 exactly 5 years ago from Coe, a week before the first CalStar, on the same night Rashad first ran down ngc 1023, big long-armed galaxy in Perseus, over which several of us went gahgah. Pal 11 I'd tried before, from CalStar 3. Couldn't see it in Felix, but did in Jeff Blanchard's 14.5. LM that night was 6.5, with excellent seeing. I must be getting better at this.

(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.)

Finished up that set of galaxies around the Circlet in Pisces that I'd been working on. 7785 esp has an interesting shape; looked like two short sausages smooshed end to end. Brighter core to the NW, but another spot not as bright on the SE end.

Mars was showing all kinds of detail, both in Felix and in Peter's 10" Mak-Cass with bino viewers. Truthfully, the view of Syrtis Major, Tyrrhenum, Iapygia and Hellas, as well as the south polar cap, in Peter's scope was not to be sniffed at.

No dew, stayed short of cold, good company. Very good night.

Next weekend's gonna be fun!

Posted on sf-bay-tac Sep 25, 2005 23:51:15 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 12, 2006 16:24:57 PT