Greg LaFlamme
Like Steve said, sqm averaged 21.30 and got down to 21.34 around 10:30 or so. The three of us migrated to our scopes and kicked off the evening under a nice, dark transparent sky. I continued working on my current list from Sky tools and was logging galaxies for the first hour or so with my 15" f/5 Dob and decided to check in on the neighbors. Little breaks from the wee and faint are kind of nice so I walked over to Bill Cone and gave him the ole "whacha looking at"? Bill was hunting some pgc/ugc galaxies near NGC 906, 911. I took a couple views then remembered that this is the region I came across one night in AZ. I found this sprinkling of galaxies while slewing away from 891 and happen to remember ngc 911 for obvious reasons if you like Porsche's;-) Bill had a neat project going and next door Steve was zeroing in on a blazar! Using Steve's scope, he talked me through the star field right to it. I saw a blazar:-) Too cool. It looks like a tiny star but considering the fact that were seeing down the length of polar jet from a black hole in another galaxy,,,, its pretty incredible. He also helped me to understand what "epoch" meant as referred to in star charts and a wealth of other important informational tidbits. All great info and thanks so much for the time you spent helping me along Steve, it won't go to waste.
Bill asked me if I wanted some charts of M31 so I could hunt some extra-galactic fuzz. I took those charts to my scope and got to work. The evening was steady enough at this time and I was using a 9mm Nagler @ 212X for delicate star hopping within the huge glow of M31. I used a barlowed 7mm Nagler providing 540x for zeroing in and observing these little dudes. You don't need this kind of magnification but the stars stayed sharp enough and contrast improved with each step up so 540X it was:-) Just like star hopping, you use little star patterns or asterisms as guides to help zero in on the object your looking for. This was my second experience with this sort of thing and I kinda knew what to expect as far as what the globs might look like. After finding three of the objects on the chart, I'd have to say the hunt is as fun as the objects are rewarding. First up, G286, a 15.5 mag globular on the Western edge of M31. There is a nice little four-star pattern nearby that practically walks you to the thing. Very cool to look at when you consider that it is an entire globular cluster in another galaxy 2.5 million light years away. Those types of objects always get me. I knocked off G280 and A40, an association of clusters. A40 was a bit tough at first because I didn't know what to expect on that one necessarily. It sorta looked like a small, irregular, dim, extended galaxy within M31. Thanks for those charts Bill, I had fun with them and will give them a good work over.
The seeing started getting a little rough so I jumped back onto my list and cranked out a few more ngc galaxies when I came across a lovely site around ngc 7783. Right away I could see two galaxies flanking a little star and after a moment, a third galaxy popped into view. I got all excited and went right to Urano Metria. It shows the three galaxies in a tight grouping but no further information. The Sky 6 wasn't too much of a help either other than getting their magnitudes (14-15.5) Again, I went to borrow a cup of knowledge from my next door neighbor, Steve Gottlieb. Took about 30 seconds to gather the good info and he found it in Alvin Huey's book of Hickson groups, evidently I stumble onto Hickson 98 and it looked exactly like his sketch:-) I did a modest sketch of it as that's been an ongoing theme with me on the eye candy objects. Yes, I consider Hickson 98 eye candy despite its dim nature. It was a super-fun night but I paid for it the next day with heavy lifting and sleep-deprivation. Chalk it up to "The price of exploration". When can we go again guys!
GML