Lassen Peak, 7 /22-23/ 2006

by Marek Cichanski

The sky was almost entirely clear all night. A few small clouds drifted by during the wee hours, but they were barely above the mountains that form the eastern horizon of the Bumpass site, and they didn't obscure much of the sky. For the most part, it was a nice, clear, dark night.

Setting up at Bumpass is always fun, simply because the site is so spectacular in the 'golden hour' around sunset. This spring's enormous snowfall was still evident all around us on the mountainsides. Although the flanks of Lassen Peak were largely bare, many of the hillslopes around the parking area, and on the drive up to it from Summit Lake, were quite snowy. There were still ten-foot walls of snow along the road in a few places. Lake Helen was still mostly frozen over and snow-covered. The Bumpass lot, however, was nice and clear and dry. I took some pictures of the glacial erratic and the glacial striations at the south end of the lot; the striations were nicely picked out by the slanting light.

At 21:45 I made this note: "I knew I liked Bumpass, but I'd forgotten just HOW much. This is a wonderfully aesthetic site, with Lassen Peak, the snowy mountainsides, the land dropping away to the south, etc... This really must be one of the best sites in the Lower 48. The Milky Way is faintly visible in the deep twilight sky. Neat!"

Most of us worked on objects from Steve Gottlieb's SSP challenge list. I found that these objects were a lot of fun to hunt for and observe. Having Steve there was a big plus, too, of course.

I was using an 18" f/4.5 Obsession with a TeleVue ParaCorr. Eyepieces were a variety of TeleVue Naglers. When I took "eye candy" breaks, I usually used a Denkmeier II binoviewer with a 2" OCS corrector (no ParaCorr), and either 24mm Panoptics or 9mm t6 Naglers.

For my first challenge object, I looked at NGC 3172, a.k.a. "Nebula Polarissima Borealis". In the 7mm Nagler, it had a max. dimension of about 1.2 arcminutes, and was round, pretty faint, and had a stellar-looking nucleus. Having spent some considerable energy chasing down "Nebula Polarissima Australis" in Oz last year, it was nice to bag the northern counterpart.

I gave another try at Palomar 5, a globular cluster that I'd tried for at the Devastated Area two nights previously. I managed to get onto the field with the 5mm Nagler, but despite long, intensive study, I didn't feel that I'd seen it for certain.

B72 (23:10): Very nice view of the Snake Nebula using the binoviewer and 24mm Panoptics. I could see all of its curves distinctly with direct vision. Far and away the best view of the Snake that I've had from the northern hemisphere.

Palomar 8 (23:30): This was easy to spot in the 24 Panoptics and the binoviewer. In the 7mm Nagler, it had a maximum dimension of about 2 to 3 arcminutes, and was round, pretty bright, slightly resolved, and showed little or no apparent concentration towards the core.

IC 4603 (23:40): This is a reflection nebula in the Rho Ophiuchi area. Having seen so many spectacular wide-field imaging mosaics of this part of the sky, it was satisfying to see some of the nebulosity visually. My notes say "I feel confident that I've seen it. I saw a diffuse glow around a pair of stars. The size of the visible glow was about 40 arcminutes across, and it was pretty bright to pretty faint. I don't think it's lens flare, because other stars of similar apparent magnitude in this area don't show the same glow around them."

At 23:45, the Sky Quality Meter was reading 21.65 - quite good, but not as dark as I'd expected. Maybe due to the MW? I rated the seeing as about 2 to 3 out of 5. Not terrible, but could have been better.

IC 1257 (00:00): Found it in the 17 Nagler, and in the 7 Nagler it had a maximum dimension of about 3 arcminutes. GC. Pretty faint, round, not resolved (or even mottled), with maybe a slightly concentrated core.

IC 4677 (00:30 and 1:40): This is an ionized knot in the outer part of the Cat's Eye Nebula. Initially I couldn't see it, but after consulting with Steve, he pointed out that it was significantly farther from the main part of the nebula than I'd thought. After having him point it out to me in his scope, I went back and saw it in mine, using a UHC filter that I borrowed from Mark Wagner. Max. dimension about 1.5 arcminutes, pretty faint, irregular figure.

Abell 46 (00:55): I saw this Abell planetary using an OIII filter. About 2 arcminutes in diameter, round, faint, following a triangle of field stars. Couldn't see the central star.

IC 1296 (1:05): This is a galaxy very close to the Ring Nebula. My notes read "I believe that I've I.D.ed the quadrilateral of stars that Steve G. mentions, and I see the galaxy as being in the NW corner of the quadrilateral." I described the gx as being faint to very faint, much extended SW-NE, with a maximum dimension of about 3/4 of an arcminute.

At 2:20 I had to admit defeat on trying to see my favorite object on the challenge list, "Heckathorn-Fesel-Gull 1". I love it just for the name. The Millenium Star Atlas didn't have a planetary nebula at the exact RA/DEC position given on the list, but it did show a PN quite nearby. I scrutinized both positions, with and without the OIII filter, as well as the surrounding field, but no joy. Oh well.

02:55: "Steve Gottlieb just showed Richard Ozer and me something really cool: A glob (6172) in the same wide field as IC 1295 (a big planetary nebula), and between the two was a stellar-looking Kohoutek planetary that we could reveal by blinking with a filter. Neat!:

It's scary how many stellar-looking planetaries there are out there, if you feel like blinking them up...

Abell 70: This challenge object was fascinating. It's a planetary nebula with an uncatalogued galaxy shining through it. I found the PN using the Millenium Star Atlas and the 17mm Nagler, and then I looked at it more closely in the 7mm Nagler. I could make out the extent of the PN, and could see the "slight brightening" due to the galaxy on the N side. Cool!

During the last couple of hours of darkness, I decided to go for objects in M31. Although I had printouts of the pages from the Hodge atlas, this time I used a xerox of an article from S&T in 1997. Using the finder chart from this article, I was well pleased at my ability to find the brighter objects. I used the 31mm Nagler as a 'finder' eyepiece, and then zoomed in with the 7mm and the 5mm. Although the seeing wasn't as steady as I would have liked, high magnification allowed me to see that certain objects - like globular clusters - were non-stellar. I observed the globulars G78 and G213. I also saw A54, an HII region, and it was a discernible, elongated glow. I also saw the sites of C202/2023 (open clusters), but I didn't 'mag up' on them.

G78 was a remarkable example of how useful it was to increase the magnification. along with four field stars, it made a faint "five-die" pattern. In the 31mm Nagler, I couldn't see all five 'stars'. Once I popped in a high-power eyepiece, though, all five popped out, and I could see that G78 was less stellar-looking than the other four. Slick! It made a believer out of me.

Especially on A54, the experience had an "LMC-like" feel to it. When David Kingsley and I were in Australia last year, we naturally spent a lot of time examining the LMC. It's very hard to describe the odd sensation that I had when looking at LMC clusters and nebulae. Their size and brightness was fundamentally different from MW objects, even from things like faint, small MW globs or PNs. Maybe we should call it the "not of this galaxy" sensation - it's kind of spooky, for lack of a better description. These M31 objects had much the same feel.

I packed up after about 4 am, and left the site just before 5. Saw a nice slim crescent moon with earthshine on my way back down the mountain to the campground. Also a nice Venus. Lots of cloud in the east, showing that we'd gotten lucky. It's always great to have a good night at Bumpass. Need more like this, that's for sure.

Marek Cichanski