Briones 4-27-06

by William Cone

I arrived just at sunset, and spent some time driving between 2 lots looking for the least obstructions. One lot had a car parked in it that was shielding an amorous couple with a blanket. "Excuse me. Do you mind if I observe here?" I don't think so. I chose a turnout by the Ranger's tollbooth, with one small tree blocking part of the East, but good horizons everywhere else.

After observing at Montebello last week, I had learned a few things that I put to the test. George Feliz, my next door neighbor at MB that night, was very patient and kind, showing me views through his homemade Highe style scope, loaning me a pair of gloves, and pointing me towards a few objects I had not seen before. He also made the gentle, chiding comment that I must be the "hardest working guy out here tonight.", because I was consistently kneeling down on the ground to use my finderscope. Looking at his setup, I realized how ergonomically good it was. He could sit in one spot, look at his charts, use the red dot finder, the finderscope, and the eyepiece, without having to get up and move anything or anywhere. Efficient AND comfortable. In the long run that equates to speed and endurance. Big win. Man! I had to work my system out better. My main problem was the unbalanced weight of my scope.

Yesterday afternoon, I fashioned an adjustable weight system out of a zippered eyeglass case, a strip of velcro, and fishing weights. Works great! I could slide my finders up the poles towards the eyepiece, put a 9mm Nagler in, and still keep it balanced within a few degrees of horizontal. Woohoo! I'm still working on some other things that should make it even better, but it's on the right track. I also picked up one of those rollup tables.

I'm used to going outside to paint, spreading out the art supplies and having at it. By the time I was setup for observing, I had this little field office going: table, chair, atlas, Burnham, Binos, Logbook (that's right Jamie, no more scraps of paper), Open for business.

I had collimated the scope, centered my finders, using Polaris.... another valuable tip from George Feliz, btw. I hadn't thought of doing that before. Polaris doesn't drift out of the eyepiece. I'll use that one forever.

Ah, the wisdom of the TACos...

Dusk. I was scanning with my binos, just getting oriented, checking out Saturn, when a truck pulled in. It was "General Bates", an MDAS member. He welcomed me to the MDAS, and proceeded to setup up his gear, a C8 on a GP mount. His telrad was dead, so he was down to a straight-thru 6x30 finder. and, you guessed it: he spent the evening like I had the week before...kneeling in the dirt. Is it not enough that we forsake our loved ones, and our sleep, to pursue this nocturnal hobby? Must we kneel in supplication before the finderscope altar? I say No!

I had a few simple plans for observing that night. One was to look at some of the objects that have been popping up on Astro-Concentration, and the other was to work more in Leo and Virgo, either revisiting galaxies, or trying dig a little deeper. Summer skies were comin' up and I knew I would be looking at the eye candy there as well.

Orion was low in the glow, and seeing did not look good at all down there. Four stars in the trap, boiling a bit. Bright horizons in all directions, silhouetting the hills. Frogs croaking, some mosquitos, owls hooting in full surround, a late flying goose honking overhead... Let's Go!

ngc 3242, PN, Hydra -Ghost of Jupiter: One of the recent astro-concentration objects. Stellar in the finderscope, big, soft, and BLUE in the eyepiece. A Cerulean hue in nature ..bluish green, with a bias towards blue... Actually probably grey more than anything else. I rarely have seen much color in deep sky objects through an eyepiece* so it was as if another sensory input was suddenly activated with this object for me. It takes magnification well, just getting bigger and bigger, while the nearby stars just sit there as the fov shrinks. No internal structure, or central star visible.

I showed this to the General, and he wanted to find it for himself in his scope. I know the feeling. We looked at the sky for awhile, I walked him through the star positions, showed him the charts, and down on his knees he went to work on it. After a good period of time he had it. Good job!

M65, 66, ngc 3628, Ga, Leo. The Trio. Seen a few times this year. . Just saying 'hi'. Looked better at MB last week. The skies weren't very dark, or transparent, and the contrast was pretty low, but the tilts and forms were there to be seen. Always worth a visit.

ngc 3593, Ga, Leo, Glancing at the chart showed a galaxy on the other side of the "wall": a vertical line of stars below Chertan, Theta Leonis. Elongated E-W. Bigger w/ averted vision. Stellar core.

ngc 3596, Ga, Leo, I can find 'em, but I can't see much. This one is about a degree south of Theta Leonis. Bigger than 3593. Faint.

Comet S-W 3- The General, whose name turned out to be Nathaniel, pulled this one in using a chart he had brought with him. After seeing it in his scope I borrowed the chart and picked it up in my finderscope. Wow. What a fascinating object. I haven't seen a comet since Hyakutake, in the '90's. I remember camping out on Diablo, staying up most of the night, watching it rise SE of the summit, wheeling overhead all night, while raccoons made circles around our campsite.

S-W 3 lay about a degree West of 19 (xi) corona b. Stellar core, it has a long, fanning tail running N/S that filled 2/3 of a 15mm panoptic, over half a degree. It is probably longer under darker skies. Looking at it later in the evening I could see a few faint stars that were being occulted by the tail...unless they were fragments. I'm going out on Saturday and will check it again. Turns out there's 2 big fragments that are being tracked separately. We were looking at fragment 'C'. Here's a link to a chart showing their positions:

http://forum.nightskyobserver.com/viewtopic.php?p=89&

ngc 2419, GC, Lynx. Inter-Galactic Wanderer. With a name like that you have to pay it a visit. I first saw this in the NSOG, and tracked it down a few months ago...before monsoon season. I remembered it well because I could not see it until I had defogged my secondary with a blow dryer, and voila!, it popped into view. This was my pick for Astro-concentration, and I wanted to check it out. before the game. The view was better from my own backyard in February. It is a faint fuzzy patch at the end of a bright line of 3 stars. There was a good discussion today after the contest about the wanderer's path through our galaxy, it's orbit, and it's origin. This glob is twice as far from the center of our galaxy as the Large Magellanic Cloud.... 300,000 ly out.

ngc 6207, Ga, Herc - Yet another Astro-concentration object. The reward of this one is it's proximity to M13, and the opportunity to view both at the same time and ponder the scale and distances presented to your eye. A similar sort of juxtaposition is to be found with M35 in Gemini, and it's distant Galactic companion, open cluster ngc 2158. In that case you get a near and far view of the same class of object in our on galaxy. In the case of ngc 6207, you see one of the finest globs in the sky, m13, juxtaposed with a distant galaxy, that may contain several hundred globs of it's own. I framed it in the 15mm so M13 was like a pebbly, sparkling sunrise at the bottom, and 6207 floated near the top of the fov and sketched it.

Nathaniel was tired after all that finderscope supplication and packed up to go. We shook hands and off he went. I had the whole park to myself. Well, there must've been a skunk nearby, and the frogs and owls were going full tilt.

m104, Ga, Virgo- sombrero galaxy. Looking good. dust lane visible w/averted vision at 60x. At 127x the southern core appeared brighter, and it seemed that the elongation was longer towards the E.

M61, Ga, Virgo- Round, mottled halo. Large, fairly dim. Stellar core.

I began revisiting Galaxies in Virgo, starting my hop at the downtown Virgo bus depot, 6 coma b.

M98, 99,100, 87/ngc 4478. I got over to Markarian's chain and it was washed out. I could only count 5 galaxies in the field. Either the transparency was getting worse, or the light pollution. Again, I had seen this much better in February in my own backyard.

M4, GC, Sco- I hadn't seen this in years. I've been away a long time. Star chains and strings piled up in front of a more distant glow. Feels like stellar underbrush.... blackberry vines.

ngc 6144, GC, Sco- ~1 degree NNE of M4. coarse, round glow. Faint. Brighter star in NNW edge

Jupiter was up, it was getting late, so i swung the scope over. A shadow transit! I checked my watch, and it was 1:50. A beauty mark of a moon's shadow lay just E. of the meridian on the NEB. The 2 main bands looked like strips of irregular bacon. Right near the transit shadow, the edge of the belt had a clear increase in contrast, a darkening, and then much brighter white between the 2 main belts. Vivid, beautiful stuff. I tracked it for quite awhile, before calling it quits.

Scorpius was dancing on it's tail, peering over the trees, the summer triangle was up in the West, and it was about 2:20. Time to go. it was a good night out. Tomorrow night: Diablo.

Nice to have some clear skies and warm nights.

*Excepting stars

Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 29, 2006 04:51:57 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 May 02, 2006 20:17:04 PT