In the backyard with the 18" on a cold night

by Bill Cone

Not much of an OR here. I've had my 10" out a few times in the last few weeks, and thought I'd haul the 18" out last night to illuminate "That which cannot be seen" from my yard in the 10. While not as humid last night, the temperature dropped into the 20's while I was out. My logbook was covered in frost. The dew heaters were working fine, my old ski jumpsuit got a workout, but the seeing and the light pollution were not good. Despite careful collimation, stars were a bit blobby, and the trap would not show me 6 stars. I could get 5 intermittently. Not a good sign. To give an example of the lack of contrast, m-33 showed a dim glow for the nucleus, and ngc 604 as a faint, but distinct chunk some distance away, but the rest of the galaxy might as well not have existed. The little necklace of field stars that runs E/W just South of the nucleus were visible, but the big, backward, sickle/S form that runs behind these stars was nowhere to be seen. From a dark sky site like Willow Springs to my backyard is the equivalent of going from HDTV to an old UHF station with very poor reception.

2 views that were interesting were ngc 2392, the eskimo nebula, which was bright and large, showing an irregular nucleus. In my 10", this planetary will blink, growing in size and brightness with averted vision, but much less so in the 18. It was nice to see something substantially brighter than what my 10" has revealed in the past. I also picked up NGC 2420, a small OC a little over 3 degrees to the NE, resolving about 30 stars against a background glow.

I saw another planetary nearby on the chart, which I knew nothing about, and spent some time looking for. No go. Turns out to be Abell 21, the Medusa Nebula. It was in the Sky and Tel pocket atlas which led me to believe I might see it. Not from my backyard!

Posted on sf-bay-tac Dec 19, 2006 14:21:56 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 Dec 19, 2006 20:54:35 PT

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