Menlo Park, Wed 22 Feb 06

by Pentti Kanerva


My purpose for this front-lawn outing was to see from down home the faint neighbor of the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy that I had missed two nights before, and perhaps also to check on Mira. It was going to be brief as all three were headed toward the horizon.

Patience pays off: found both M110 and M33. But with a 5" Mak-Cass and less-than-ideal skies they don't just pop out at you. Looking in exactly the right place helps, as does the right eyepiece. 25mm, 62x, worked the best.

By now Mira was in the trees, but I could check out a few good doubles before retiring: gamma o'Aries, Almach (gamma o'Andromeda, what a pair of jewels!), Rigel B in Rigal A's halo (gamma o'Orion), lambda o'Orion, beta o'Monoceros (a triple), and Algeiba (gamma o'Leo). High contrast in Rigel was the only real challenge: mags 0.1 and 6.7, 9.4" apart.

The Big Dipper was getting up by now and I was yet to see for sure its three Messiers by the bowl, so decided to take a quick look. M109 may have been there, but M108 and the Owl Nebula were absent. Need better skies, maybe MB in May.

The quick look at the dipper was not all that quick, and now Leo was high up in the sky. Its five Messier galaxies were still blanks on my list, so I went after M65 and 66. Both were relatively easy although without features. Thus encouraged I turned to Ms 95, 96, and 105. M105 was relatively easy, M96 more difficult, and M95 took about half an hour. It is the faintest of the three, and in a field without bright stars. What finally worked was studying the area in wide field at low power (40mm 39x) to establish patterns and signposts among the faint stars, switching the eyepiece (73x), finding the mag-10.6 star next to M95, and then zooming in on M95, best seen at about 110x. I'd say that M95 was no sweat only because I was getting cold.

The night was now far enough along for Corvus to be seen between two trees to the south. I have a 1-hour window there, with a chance at the M68 globular in Hydra. Seeing is very poor so low down, but a good chart let me point the scope right at the thing and to see it. I did not care to wait any longer, left M86 for another night, took one last look at Jupiter--an easy find!--and went in.

One good thing had lead to another, and so my brief outing ended at 2:45am with a tenth of Messier's list left to do.


Posted on sf-bay-tac Feb 24, 2006 15:54:54 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 01, 2006 23:51:04 PT