Henry Coe 29 July, 2006 - Better late than never

by Tony Hurtado

Early and before it was dark, I was approached by 2 women that turned out to be mother and daughter from L.A. touring California. They had heard somehow of the astro activity at Coe and had hoped to encounter us. They spent about 45 minutes with me viewing some of the early eye candy and were amazed at what could be seen... and it wasn't even really dark yet. They feasted on a reasonable view of Jupiter, Luna, which was bound for an early departure ~10:30pm, the Ring Nebula (always an attention getter!) and Alberio. They had quite a barrage of intelligent questions about what they were seeing. Seems like I find that more and more, which is a good thing for our hobby.

I was using my new Stellarvue 9x50 finder that night. What a great finder! The removable and rotating EP is great, and it allowed me to stuff in a 25mm Plossl with OIII filter affixed for my first view of the North American nebula. I hadn't seen it before since it covers such a large expanse and I didn't have anything with a large enough FOV.

So, here's my dump from AstroPlanner for the night. Some good firsts for the night. I'm really surprized I saw mag 15 galaxies in the NGC 7331 group at Coe! I packed up at about 2:15am for the drive home.

-Tony Hurtado

Equipment:
18" f/4.2 Night Sky Scopes dob
9mm Nagler
25mm Plossl
22mm Pan
Lumicon OIII filter
Carte du Ciel charting program
AstroPlanner planning/logging program

NGC40 Cep P Neb 12.4 Nagler 9mm
Tiny PN similar in appearance to the Eskimo Nebula. Almost stellar in 25mm Plossl and a little difficult to find. Very regular circular appearance with very bright central star. Some hint of structure in outer circular portion suggestive of shells.

NGC7142 Cep Open 9.3 Plossl 25mm
Dense cluster of many (>50) dim stars. Triangular in shape and spanning approx. 5 arc min, it is marked by 3 brighter stars along its E border.

NGC278 Cas Galaxy 11.28 Plossl 25mm
Very small buy relatively bright spiral galaxy. With averted vision can see very bright core and spiral structure (maybe an arm or two). Face-on view.

NGC7160 Cep Open 6.1 Plossl 25mm
Small cluster of 12-15 brighter stars and more dimmer stars elongated E-W. Two very much brighter stars arranged N-S stand out.

NGC6946 Cyg Galaxy 8.8 Plossl 25mm
Very large galaxy appears to be face-on spiral. Can see one spiral arm with averted vision. Very bright but rather featureless due to poor seeing at the moment. Candidate for revisiting.

NGC7000 Cyg Neb 4.5 9x50 finder w/ 25mm Plossl
Seen in 9x50 finder scope with 25mm Plossl using OIII filter. Nebulousity can be seen without the filter but detail and differences in density as well as improved contrast are had with the OIII. More dense to the south ("Mexico") and Gulf Coast is well defined.

NGC7062 Cyg Open 8.3 Plossl 25mm
Rather difficult to see as an OC since the ambient star field is very rich already. Some definitely bright marker stars to the S, but this is a pretty nondescript OC. No distinctive shape to speak of.

NGC7008 Cyg P Neb 10.7 Nagler 9mm
Roughly oval shaped and 2:1 longer in the N-S dimension. Looks like 2 lobes of cloudiness, denser on the north end. Two close stars tight at the SE end, and 3 very dim stars stretch across it. Maybe C shaped, open to the E. Very high contrast object.

NGC7331 Peg Galaxy 9.5 Plossl 25mm
Fine nearly edge-on galaxy. Fairly large and fairly bright. Very bright central bulge is obvious as are extended outer regions. About 12' across including extended regions. Beautiful textbook edge-on galaxy.

NGC7337 Galaxy Peg Plossl 25mm
Very dim galaxy in 7331 cluster

NGC7335 Galaxy Peg 15 Plossl 25mm
Very dim galaxy in 7331 cluster. Dimmest obj I've ever observed in this scope.

NGC7340 Galaxy Peg 15 Plossl 25mm
Very dim galaxy in 7331 cluster. Dimmest obj I've ever observed in this scope.