OR: Lake Sonoma 1/13/07

by Bill Cone

These mini-expeditions involve so much gear in different packs and containers that I'm still paranoid about forgetting something... eyepieces, poles, finder, charts, chair, battery, etc. Some you could get by without, forget other items, and you're hosed for the night. I use a checklist now, as I haven't yet carved out a spot in one place in the house for it all to be schlepped from...unless you count my side of the bed, which resembles a small used bookstore/astro rummage sale. I'm still a bit incredulous how much gear works its way into this process. Once the scope gets big, everything else seems to multiply as well. Then you're driving several hours to the darkest skies you can find within reason, plus you're hauling a lot of accessories and warm clothing to combat the elements. Is it worth it? I can say 'yes' for now. This is not yet a habit for me, more like an adventure every time I head out.

A drive into the countryside in the golden light of a winter afternoon is one of those simple pleasures that I probably wouldn't be doing unless I was in this hobby. As most folks are heading home for supper and a warm bed, observers are headed OUT into the world, often in what becomes the most beautiful and mysterious light of the day. When warm light comes between you and a shadow, what color are you actually seeing? The rational mind says one thing, while your eyes are telling you something else. As long as I don't drive off the road at times like this, I freely indulge in the sensory paradox that the hours before sunset offer up. One of the great pleasures of vision is to witness the dynamic shifts of light and color in nature, imho.

It took 1 hour 50 minutes for me to get to the diner in Healdsburg, where Steve was already seated at a table. I was perhaps overly concerned about keeping warm, and ordered a bacon and brie burger, as it just plain sounded 'hearty'. Maybe digesting this sort of food actually saps the blood from your extremities but, psychologically, it felt like the right thing to do. And it was tasty! Thus fortified, we set off to try and catch the comet, or at least the tail, which charts showed to be passing just a few degrees W. of Venus. All afternoon the sky had been cluttered with mare's tails and a few mackerel patterns, which, as we drove north, began to look even messier. The wrong kind of messier.

Exiting at Geyserville, we drove west through some low, tree studded hills, past the ubiquitous, white wooden arrows stacked on posts, pointing up and down the roads, leading to various wineries. A large, earthen dam came into view, spanning the valley, and the road ran across the base, then climbed up a hill, bridged the lake, which looked like a miniature Shasta, and continued up an incline for a few miles. The observing site was a large, level gravel lot with good horizons north, east, and south. West was partially blocked by the hill that crested beyond the parking lot. We found Matt Marcus already setting up his 8" SC, and bundled in numerous layers of clothing. Setup commenced, and then around 5:20, Steve and Matt went to the other end of the lot to look for the comet, while I changed into my warm outfit: ski jumpsuit, rubber toed hiking boots with chemical foot warmers, two ski hats, polartec jacket, down parka, and glove mitts. Wispy clouds were covering the sky in almost every direction, with more stuff further to the west. Even Venus was being extinguished from time to time. It was a no-go for the comet, and the evening didn't look very promising. I resorted to using Deneb to initially align my finders, as Polaris was invisible. After a few false starts with sucker holes, I decided to take a break and lay down in the back of my car. At least my clothing was keeping me warm. I briefly closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew, I could hear Steve and Matt talking about the sky clearing up. It was smooth sailing from then on, as all the gunk slowly drifted east, unveiling a dark sky with decent seeing. The east/southeast horizon has a good size light dome from Santa Rosa that probably comes up 20 degrees or so. south, west and north are dark. Matt pointed out a large cone of faint light rising up from the west, which was agreed to be zodiacal light by both Matt and Steve. That's the first time I've seen that phenomena, having first read about it some 30 years ago in a college astronomy class.

Steve had a new finder, and put it through a rigorous workout all evening, swapping out the reticle eyepiece for a variety of Naglers and Panoptics, with and without filters. Through it, we all caught good views of the California nebula, various sections of Barnard's Loop, Thor's Helmet, and even an Abell planetary! It was an impressive display of a finder with good optics doubling as a widefield alternative for extended objects. Added value.

I had assembled a list of various objects, starting in Cygnus and ending in Cancer, that I could busy myself with. I began by observing a few planetaries, bright nebula, and some galaxies near these objects, progressing to some dimmer objects, including what I would call a "Gottlieb special": JE-1, Jones I's near twin in Lynx.

NGC 7008: PN, Cygnus. Mag: 10.7 This is a large, fairly bright, thick ring, with an obvious central star. The brightest portion of the ring was on the north side, just below a star "in" the ring on the east side. A bright, N-S oriented, pair of stars lay just to the south of the object. 145x with an OIII filter.

NGC 7635: BN Cas. Mag 6.9 The Bubble Nebula. There was no bubble to my eyes, and I didn't have a photo to tell me where to tease it out. What I saw was two bright stars in an E-W line in the field, both with nebulosity around them, resembling in character, the glow around stars in the Pleiades. The eastern star had a brighter glow, that extended further east with averted vision. Deserves revisiting, as the photos I've seen since are compelling.

NGC 246: PN, Cetus. Mag: 10.9 Large and round. Apparent central star, and 2 others, in the interior mass of the object. There is a 4th bright star tangent to the NW edge. West side is well defined, East side is vague. An 0III filter shows the northern mass to be brighter. 145x, with and without OIII filter.

Jones 1: PN, Peg. Mag: 15.1 I was having trouble finding this one, so Steve pulled it up in his scope and, after studying the field, I could pick it out in my scope. In addition, I had been using a 15mm Panoptic, while Steve had a 20 Nagler. After switching to a 21mm Plossl, the object brightened considerably in my scope. I didn't expect that much of a jump, but it really helped. This is a large, ghostly object, like a very dim Helix Nebula, with one side empty. It somewhat resembles a toilet seat, I have to say. Optimally viewed at 103x, OIII filter.

Jones-Emberson 1: PN, Lyn, Mag 12.1 (JE-1, PK 164+31.1) Interesting that a planetary of remarkably similar character is also named like it's (almost) twin. I could say that this was another dim toilet seat, but that would be disrespectful. Its larger and, I thought, dimmer, than Jones 1, though the listed mags seem to say otherwise. Thick sides, darker center, NW and E areas are the brightest. This object is in SA 2000, as well as NSOG.

Those last 2 objects I recall labelling as "awful" as in awfully hard to see. Somewhere between a good awful and a bad awful. Still, they are worth looking at.

M-33: Though it was heading down into the west, the contrast was decent, and I spent about a half hour working through my chart, successfully picking out 9 HII regions and stellar associations. NGC 604 was it's obvious self, a large detached chunk of light floating off the end of the northeast arm of the galaxy. With a 9mm Nagler giving me 242x, and about half the galaxy in the field, I could slowly pan around and triangulate my way to the dimmer objects, using field stars, and in many cases, averted vision. In this way I picked out A85 and A87, 2 very dim spots a few arc-minutes SE of ngc 604. Following the northern arm towards the west, I could identify the following regions: IC 143, A71, IC 142, all of which required averted vision to get them to pop out of the arm. NGC 595, 592, and 588 are three discrete, detached regions, like mini-NGC 604s, that form a curve to the west, starting about 4 arc minutes NW of the nucleus, and spaced about 5 arc minutes apart from each other. These 3 objects were seen with direct vision, with 588 being the brightest of the 3. There was plenty more to track down on my chart, but the view wasn't getting better, and I wanted to move onto other things. I have a lot to come back and look for, including C39, an M33 globular that should be doable.

B-33: One of the most memorable views of the evening for me, was my first ever view of the Horsehead Nebula through Matt Marcus's 8" SC scope. Having read so much on TAC about this object, it has no shortage of detractors, I was intrigued by my first opportunity to study this one. Matt advised me to take my time, and I did. The first thing I could determine was that the field was evenly divided vertically into 2 regions: dark, and less dark. There were 2 fairly bright stars in the 9 and 11 o'clock positions. A faint star was visible just off the center of the field, around 4 o'clock. So where was the Horsehead? I let my eye drift up and down the zone between the two regions, and finally I could see where, above the center of the field, the darker region was moving into the less dark zone. In fact it was a big invasion of subtle darkness into that area, forming an apex of an equilateral triangle with the aforementioned stars at 9 and 11. I found this one to be a subtle and mysterious object, as it slowly revealed information in a sequential fashion. Why did the dim, toilet seat shaped planetaries flummox and confound me, while this object was beguiling? Is it the 'bad boy' reputation it has? Michelle Stone has labelled the Horsehead as nothing but a "notch in the lumpy darkness", but I dare say it is an interesting notch. I'm going back.

Galaxies in the Beehive: To top off the evening, Steve agreed to run through M44 with me, tracking down galaxies, though his wife had already phoned him twice, as Matt and I had urged him to hang around longer than he intended to. Inspired by a great OR from Randy Muller I had read in the TAC archives, called 'Assault on the Beehive' /reports/2002.02.09.7.html , I had made a chart from a DSS photo of M44. Of course I found more galaxies in the photo than appear on any chart, but I was able to label 8 of them. Of special interest to me was CGCG89-56 on the west side of the cluster, as the photo showed it to be 2 edge ons very close to each other, forming almost a perfect right angle. First Steve said he had no chart, then, the next time I checked, he had pulled one out that had MORE galaxies labeled on it than mine! Off we went, but before I could move from the finder to the eyepiece, Steve had the first two in one field. I was floundering about and asked him to describe the field, which led me to the correct spot. NGC 2624 and 2625, on the west side of the cluster, a dim and dimmer pair respectively. True faint fuzzies. So this was what they were going to look like. The DSS photos really can get your hopes up. CGCG89-56, the edge on pair, was damn near invisible. Even with averted vision, only one object seemed to be there, not two. Again, Steve had it quickly, and by describing the field, I was able to pick it out. IC 2388, just west of the center of the cluster, fell in the same fashion. Next up was a CGCG on Steve's chart that I didn't have. We both settled in the same field and discussed whether it was a star or a galaxy we were seeing. Abort. Another promising edge on was U4526, kind of looking robust and photonically vigorous in the photo, but requiring averted vision to pick up. Perhaps it was averted imagination that led me to believe I could read the edge on character in this one. Steve was taking notes, so I rushed ahead and found NGC 2637, east of the center of the cluster, on my own. Woohoo! Though very dim, this one was much larger, and showed a fat oval. The most distinctive galaxy of the bunch so far, which tells you something. About 10 arc minutes east of that lay NGC 2643, and beyond that, NGC 2647, another 10 arc minutes further, on the east rim of the cluster. Both were dim objects, but not as difficult as the UGC, CGCG, and IC's. By then, I was getting a little better at hopping around. It was a good workout.

Steve started packing up, while I gorged myself on Saturn for a bit. By the way, if you look at Saturn's pattern with the head of Leo, it is VERY close in shape and scale to Auriga. One could get confused up there. Matt was long gone, and Steve and I were rolling around 2:00, temperature reading 32 degrees a few miles down the road.

All this, unless otherwise noted, through Mariposa, an 18", f4.2 Plettstone. Designed by Albert Highe, crafted by Michelle Stone. Buy local!

-Bill Cone