seeing 9, visibility no show, game set & match to seeing

by Mark Bracewell

How dark it wasn't can best be described as ngc 891 was not visible, at all, no way, and I really tried hard to get even a hint of it. Except for Bill Cone's OR wherein he sees it, I would say you all are fooling me and there is no galaxy there. Same with M1 later on, nothing at all. On the other hand, the seeing was so good I had many pleasant hours visiting some old and new stuff with my 10" f/5.6 dob.

M76 - I hadn't viewed this before, go figure, it was a pretty easy find. A largish, bowtie shaped patch - or rather a pair of patches, it really looks like 2 objects, or one with an echo @ 200x. Southern edges sharply defined, fades in the north, brighter in the west. I can see why it got 2 NGC numbers.

Spent some time gawking at Mel 20 through the 9x finder, that's a pretty cluster because it's a whole bunch of different magnitudes unlike the usual OC. I chuckled remembering how when I first started out I would go looking for this in a 4" scope because it was marked on my charts as BIG. I figured if it was big I would be able to see it, but no matter how much power I threw at it, I just couldn't seem to find anything but a bright star here and there.

Some more clusters, M's and others from the Eye candy list; M 34, NGC 1528, IC 1985 - a little loose group of stars next to Atik - was looking for any of the IC 348 nebulosity, none apparent. M 38 with its curvy 4 armed starfish thing, M 36, NGC 1907 - the rich background of this only barely detectable. M37 was too low in the muck at the time to be much fun.

The real winners were some doubles, all beautiful in the great seeing - one I stumbled on, it probably has a better name than TYC1310-01195-1-2, is just east of M1 and is kind of interesting as it is almost an exact copy of 118 Tauri which is very close by, 4 deg. NW. Both pairs are about mag 6 to 7 and 4" separated.

Best view of the night - Almach @ 200x in 7 nagler - I think this is way better than Albireo. The seeing was just stunning, rock steady disks with rings which I don't often see in the 10" and never before at less than 400x. Why is it that I like those Airy disks so much? Maybe all the jumpiness one usually sees makes me nervous :)

I dropped by my old nemesis, Theta Aurigae, a 3.5" sep double with mags 2.6 and 7.1 - when trying for this in my 4" refractor a few years back it really gave me trouble, the dimmer star is reddish and drowns in the glare of the bright one. It took several nights and 300x in the 4" scope - /reports/2005.01.03.html

This night you could drive a bus between the 2 components.

After banging my head against M1 for a while and having another go at 891 (higher now, but still not dark enough) I went over to Meissa. This 4" pair is nice always, seems whiter to me than other stars, almost silvery or chrome, like little bearings. Orion is such a big dude, with a little pinhead and lopsided eyeballs.

Backyard observing is really good for me despite the LP, I have my computer handy in my office/sandbox/playpen a few feet away, tear down takes about 2 minutes, and there are possums, cats and raccoons for company. Good stuff.