Saturday night SW lot 8 Sept, mostly above the smoke

by Jamie Dillon

There were in fact two tarantulas in the road as I was walking toward the Observatory and Mark was simultaneously driving in. Plus next to this one tarantula was this big ole wasp, honestly 4-5 inches long. Hadn't seen this critter before. Deer were bounding down the ravine from the SW lot, and there were plenty of grey foxes everywhere that night. The peepers and crickets kept up a rolling symphony all night.

It was Rob Toebe Night at the FPOA area, small group but festive. One great surprise was seeing Miguel, this young man whom Liam and I know pretty well from volunteer work with the town library here. Turns out he's hooked on observing and is spending a bunch of Saturday nights at the Observatory. Very good guy.

Back in the SW lot, we had some interesting finds that night.

Jupiter - just when I started looking at Jupiter, there was a moon just exiting the western limb, Europa as it turns out. Even cooler, when Mark came over to gawk, he spotted a shadow transit starting on the east edge, yes Europa's shadow.

All 3 of us looking at ngc 6823, this open cluster in the middle of a big emission nebula, 6820. Went back to my notes since, and I'd studied it at the last CalStar. The EN looked good in an Ultrablock. That whole OC-EN set is in DeepMap.

Triangulum. Made sure to go find all the galaxies there in SkyAtlas I hadn't seen yet. Came up with some extra excitement. Now I should have seen some of this coming, as Bobby Czerwinski had made a big project of finding all the galaxies in this pretty compact constellation that would show in his 18. He got scads of 'em.

That part of the sky runs thru a rich part of the Pisces-Perseus Supercluster. For some context and drooling, check out - Gottlieb
http://www.astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/supercl.htm Dillon, why not?
http://www.observers.org/tac.mailing.list/2002/Sep/0392.html

Timely heads up, with these parts of the sky wheeling overhead about now. The whole area from beta And to M33, Crazy Ed Erbeck calls the Happy Hunting Grounds. The 383 group, the 507 group, the Perseus Cluster (Albert's Birthday Cluster) will all make a show in an 8" scope.

What was fun last Saturday night was bonus galaxies popping out near the target objects. NGC 750 looked a little lumpy, with what I thought was a foreground star looking caught in its halo to the North. Turned out sure enough to be another galaxy's core. Luginbuhl and Skiff's Observing Handbook (vital book) have a thorough description of this field. 751 is the bigger one, the little caught-up core is from 750. Then looking at 1060, a bright little brushstroke with a stellar core, "discovered" a neighbor just 0.2° to the East, 1066. All these, along with 777, are part of the Pisces-Perseus Supercluster, listed as 230 million lightyears away, 4 times farther than the Virgo Cluster.

This was one night I'd left Uranometria behind, figured we'd be eating and talking with all that smoke. Just goes to show you never know. Also of note is that there were three 11" scopes in the SW lot, the whole set that night. Two SCT's and a Dobs. Cosmic.

And yup we were looking at the Orion Nebula again, just up above the branches. Solid night.

Cheers,
DDK