Eridanus

by Jamie Dillon

The Saturday after CalStar 6, that being 8 October, moonset was right around 10, weather looked good, so off to the Peak it was. Up in the SW lot, Joe Bob was already set up with his PortaBall. There were two guys from Orion Telescope, Ariel and Steve, and Ron of FPOA with his C14. Over across the way, Gleason was holding down Ranger Row, Hawley was in front of the Observatory, and Marko S. and Ron Dammann were running the 30". Zaza and the Chaser had posted OR's but were no show; still tacitly figuring they're OK.

It was decent till midnight, then got real good. Seeing was good, 4/5, not breathtaking, but the limiting magnitude improved to 6.1. I hadn't looked in Eridanus with a telescope since February, 2003. Some winter we had last year. There it was, The River looping from west of Orion, down into the South. Tons of galaxies there, many of them in close groups.

I stayed in one area and scooped up a set of new ones. Prettiest was ngc 1700, round with swirls and a bright core. Commented in my log, "more like it," after several dimmer ones like IC 382. Had a discovery as well. 1587 and 1589 are close in the first place, fitting in a 0.4° field in the 10mm. A star just east of 1587 wouldn't come to focus; sure enough it was in Uranometria as 1588. This kind of surprise I never get over.

This was 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.

32 Eri is a lovely double, pale yellow and blue, fairly close. And yes I took time to stare at 40 Eri. Also charted as omicron 2, it has a proper name, Keid. We had some excitement over this triple a couple of years ago.

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It's a killer - a regular main sequence star with a white dwarf and a red dwarf orbiting it. One old cinder of a star all degenerate matter, and one star that'll never change in human time. Just fascinating that we have no idea of what becomes of a red dwarf, because the universe isn't old enough for one to have run out of fuel. Very patient stars.

The white dwarf here is the only one we can plausibly get with our scopes, at least until Sirius A and B widen. And the only other red dwarf I've seen is Barnard's Star. I've seen it alleged that the secondary star in eta Cas is a red dwarf, but it's not. It's red to us, but a K star.

Joe Bob and I both swapped a bunch of views of Mars. Fine opposition we're having. After 2, I ended up with the place to myself, polishing off that one set of galaxies. Lovely place, the Peak.

But let it be said, my days of rolling into the sack at dawn are ending. I was sandwich spread on Sunday. Gonna take lessons from Joe Bob and others on packing up before getting a third wind.

New Moon's not far away! Mariposa, that being the locus of Plettstone and Meherana!

Posted on sf-bay-tac Oct 17, 2005 23:52:36 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 15, 2006 19:13:15 PT