by Jamie Dillon
It was well after dark when I got to the lot, and the first thing Jardine pointed out was a bright swath of the zodiacal light in the West, reaching all the way into Pisces and just about touching Mars. Just the right pyramidal shape, lovely.
We had another exotic observation that night. I was hopping between galaxies in Eridanus (gals to you, Jardine) and saw a slow-moving satellite that was around 12th magnitude most of the time. Within a couple of seconds it would vary 1-2 mags, then every once in a while flared easily 6 magnitudes. Joe Bob and I both tracked it a while. It must have been tumbling, catching the sunlight occasionally. Looked all stately and mysterious.
That night it was good in Eridanus again, and I chased more little Eridanus galaxies. Had one "discovery." Just 6' or so to the east of ngc 1417 was a little fuzzpatch that was there ca 30% of the time. Yup, Uranometria showed it, ngc 1418. That kind of find never gets old.
Sat and stared at the tau CMa cluster, 2362, and found something I'd never noticed in that very splashy cluster. Was noticing two little pinpoint stars right next to tau itself, when Bob, multiple star man, piped up that tau CMa is a triple. Cool! Another revisit was to ngc 2467, a real knockout emission nebula that's in the midst of a whole complex area of nebulosity. Jeff Blanchard got me onto there first; it's on the Boyd Edwards list. This really ought to be on more highlights lists. Just east of the main gout of nebulosity is a baby Hyades of stars, filled with bright nebula. The Orion Ultrablock did a good job of bringing out details here.
After sitting and staring at Saturn for a long time, ended the night by going to M65 and M66. Big, wild looking spirals. And yeah, you forget in between times now big and complex 3628 is.
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 and a TV 2x Barlow, with a Lumicon OIII and an Orion Ultrablock. Conditions were good that night. A front that was forecasted coming in from the NW never got there. Sky measured at 6.1 limiting magnitude; seeing stayed about 4/5.
Posted on tac-sac Jan 29, 2006 22:39:42 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 05, 2006 20:53:23 PT