MB Wed 28 June 2006

by Pentti Kanerva

As I was setting up, John from San Francisco came by chuckling that he had started with a 5" Mak just like mine, graduating later to 10". We had a nice chat while waiting for the visitors and the dark.

I was talking with a docent about "docenting" and other things earthly when the stars began to appear. We looked at Mercury and Saturn, and she asked me about a bright star overhead. I came up with the name Arcturus and a story about a big red star, although it was not very red in the scope, nor big although bright. We also looked at Antares, another red giant, and then at Albireo at the beak of the Swan where the colors actually show up. (BTW, about a fourth of star names seem to start with an A, while C is most popular with constellations.) That got us to talking about double stars and whether they were a physical pair or a mere chance alignment, and she could spot the double double in Lyra with her binoculars. Its double doubleness was barely visible in my scope but she got a better view of it with Marek.

My night was spent looking for galaxies, for which 62x with 0.77-degree view from 25mm Ploessl worked best, a good compromise between width of field and darkness of background. Not seeing "deep" has the advantage that if you see any galaxy at all, it's bound to be the bright one in the vicinity 'cause they are so few and far between. I started with NGC 5102 (Burnham mag 10.8) next to Iota in Centaurus. It was low in the sky but I think I saw it. Then visited all the Messier galaxies of Virgo-Coma-Canes Vanatici and M101 and M102--it's getting easier by the night! Thus encouraged, I tried my list of the brightest in the area: NGC 4490 4449 4631 4395 4214 4559 4494 4565 4725 5005 5033. All present, I was amazed. Talked with Peter. He's working on faint galaxies (NGC 55xx) in an area toward Bootes void of bright foreground stars. Learned about our Milky Way's pole being suspended from the Virgo cluster. Is the Andromeda galaxy similarly oriented?

I was among the last to leave, with the fog covering the Bay, Marek viewing the Stephan's Quintet in Pegasus. Saw one deer grazing along Page Mill Rd. below the fog line.

Pentti