Brief Observing Report From Fremont Peak-FPOA Area Saturday Night, 11/18/06

by Peter Natscher

By twilight, the evening started out ok but was soon after affected with arriving cloudiness from the north and west that at times covered most of the sky except to the south. The continuously passing cloudiness lasted until 11:30 pm interrupting our projects 'til midnight. During that time, I managed to log and sketch only five Herschels in two hours of sucker-hole observing. Although the passing cloudiness stalled our deep-sky observing, the seeing remained excellent through the thinner clouds and haze and still offered us fine high-power views of brighter stellar objects like double stars and open clusters. By midnight, John Gleason not forseeing any reason to stay for good imaging had left and so did a few others by 12:30 am.

By midnight, the sky changed drastically for the better. It had totally cleared up and the seeing remained rock solid. My patience in staying was rewarded. Stars in my 18" Starmaster at over 400X were tight pinpoints and the small mag. My target areas in Eridanus and Orion were now high in the sky with great seeing and the seventeen Herschel II galaxies, open clusters, and bright nebulas I wanted to see were now easy to find and see in my eyepiece. I used my 27mm Panoptic and 12mm Nagler eyepieces for observing open clusters and bright nebula, and a higher-power 9mm Nagler at 251X for most of my galaxy observing and sketching. The Herschel II galaxies are mostly small at 1.5 x 3.0 arc-min in size and need a lot of magnification to appreciate the nuances of galaxy cores and halos. I got back to logging and sketching my planned seventeen H II objects completing them by 3 am.

Mike Koop was the only one with me by 2 am and at that time he was relaxing while his two video cameras were each taping two 45 degree fields of the sky for Leonids. I saw only a few Leonids while I was so immersed with my own H II observing after midnight. By 2:30 am, Saturn was up 30 degrees to the east in Leo and the continued great seeing afforded crisp high power views. Six of Saturn's moons were visible at high power down to tiny Enceladus lying close by the end of the A-ring. The rings themselves showed up very sharply and full of detail last night, and are now closing up in angle to us exposing more of the planet's globe than in the previous years.

After I had completed my H II's for the evening, Mike mentioned a desire to see Sirius and the Pup, and so I swung the 18"er west to Canis Major to see if this was possible. Sirius was on the meridian and the initial low power view at 85X showed a dazzling blue-white star in my eyepiece that was surprisingly sharp, but changing to a higher-power 7mm Nagler eyepiece at 322X immediately exposed the tiny delicate white star called the "Pup". I continued with still a higher power of 452X and the Pup showed up better now being farther away from dazzling Sirius. Mike and I were so happy to have seen it--a first in my 18" Starmaster Dob. The seeing last night was absolutely superb! I drove out of the FPOA area by 3:30 am after a rewarding evening of observing. The evening couldn't have been any better.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Nov 19, 2006 17:38:48 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 Dec 13, 2006 21:29:19 PT