Coyote Lake 02Jul06

by Bill Parkhurst

I could not attend the public star party at Coyote on Saturday, 01 Jul 06. Since I did not have to work on Monday, I was able to drive down to Coyote on Sunday night. Arrived at the boat launch parking lot at sundown. Other observers who also showed up at the boat launch were Dick Cook, Scott Iforgothislastname, and Mike Schwartz with his son Michael-2. Some wind at dusk, but no wind the rest of the night.

Mercury, Mars, and Saturn were all in a nice diagonal row low in the West just after sunset.

Observed with 10 inch reflector on Dobs mount (XT-10).

Looked at Jupiter quite a bit before it got truly dark. Moon was up and bright. Four moons of Jupiter were visible, all on same side of planet. Seeing was pretty steady allowing some detail in dark cloud bands to be seen most of the time. Lower dark band (eyepiece view) had a darker blotch spanning a quarter the length of the band near the center of the disk. Darker blotch extended slightly above the band towards the equator. Drew two pictures at magnification 190X. Time was 21:05.

A husband and wife with two daughters arrived for the "star party" and were surprised at how few people were there. We showed them lots of standard summer highlights, and they left just about the time the Moon set. I showed some of them the Moon; Jupiter; M13, M4, M22, M28 Glob clusters; M7 Open cluster; M81 Galaxy; M57 and M27 Plan neb. When showing M27 to people for the first time, I like to ask them what shape they see before I give then the Apple Core name for the M27 nebula. I asked each daughter what M27 looked like. The first said she saw a rectangle, the second said she saw a "Z" shape.

The Milky Way was barely visible before the Moon set. Moon went behind the trees on the hill to the West at 23:25 and then everyone seemed to start serious observing. I had planned to view objects mostly around Scutum and Sagittarius. The objects I logged are listed below. Based on the stars visible in the Little Dipper, I estimated NELM at mag. 5.5. The standard Coyote light domes were in the NW and SW. Good view to the South with most of the Scorpion's tail visible - only the very bottom hid in the trees. Heard a group of coyotes. We also shared the parking lot with deer that rummaged through boaters left-over garbage. Everyone packed up about 01:30. Slight dew on car windows and papers at the end of the night. No fog at the boat ramp or driving back down the hill, but fog was covering San Jose on the drive home.

Both Scott and Mike, with guided scopes, tried to find Near Earth asteroid 2004 XP-14 that was making a close approach that night in the direction of Cassiopeia. No reports of seeing it.

M11 - OC - Starting point for several star hops. Drew picture of arrow head shaped open cluster. One brighter star amongst cluster. Two bright stars above cluster.

NGC 6704 - OC - Hopped from M11. Cluster was a dim group of stars, all about same magnitude. Viewed at 50X and 120X. Shape is not round. Drew picture of a hook shaped object.

NGC 6683 - OC - Could not find. Too many background stars. Tried many star hops. No cluster noted.

NGC 6712 - GC - Small glob clus viewed at 50X, 120X, and 190X. No stars resolved. Shape is not round. Irregular shape. Small object.

M26 - OC - Easily found in 9X50 Finder after glancing at star chart. Fuzzy object seen in Finder. Unimpressive cluster of a few stars at 50X. 120X magnification showed about a dozen stars. Drew a picture of a bent over box of four stars surrounded by faint hint of more stars. An arc, or chain, of stars dangles from one corner of the box, with a brighter star at its end.

NGC 6664 - OC - Very loose grouping of stars. Located next to Alpha star in Scutum. About twenty stars visible at 120X against a background of many stars. Drew a picture of the brightest stars. On paper, the brightest stars form a shape like a fish jumping out of the water with a triangular shaped tail, an arched back with the head over the tail, and a pointed nose (a bit fanciful, also could be described as a double "U" with the smaller U inside the bigger U).

NGC 6649 - OC - Sparse, small cluster. Only about nine stars resolved at 50X. Haze of unresolved stars amongst resolved stars. Brightest star in cluster at 11 o'clock position at edge. Drew picture.

NGC 6604 - OC + Neb - Very big cluster. Too big to fit in 25mm eyepiece field of view (50X). Sparse. No nebulosity seen without filter or with UltraBlock narrowband filter.

M16 - OC + Neb - Large, sparse cluster. No nebulosity seen without filter. UltraBlock (UB) narrowband filter showed a milky patch amongst the cluster. Drew picture of the brightest stars and the nebula at 50X. Nebula looked mushroom shaped, or oak tree shaped.

M17 - Neb - Classic swan shape. Viewed at 50X with UB filter. More nebulosity extended above the swan's back, and behind the swan. Nebula extended at least double the swan's length behind the figure. Some faint nebulosity viewed below the swan too.

NGC 6605 - OC - Did not find. Found correct star pattern location using star map. Nothing stood out as a cluster. Lots of background stars around that location - rich star field.

M51 and NGC 5195 - Gal - Two faint fuzzies with brighter cores visible through the northern light dome. No details of galaxy arms noted.

M27 - PN - Good view at 120X. Used UB filter. Nebula had same shape with filter but brighter.

M71 - GC - Small, fuzzy object seen at 50X. Started to resolve some stars in glob at 120X. Lots of stars in background.

Bill Parkhurst.