Winds in the Willow 3/17/07

by Bill Cone

We had a persistent breeze almost the entire night, and periodic stronger gusts as well. These caused my lightly attached baffle to bang around, and flip into the light path. I ended up observing without it most of the night, which did cut into my contrast on more than one occasion. Early on, I had a steady view of 6 stars in Trapezium, so although the seeing was quite good, the wind made it difficult to use higher power most of the time. I ended up with a 15mm (145x) and a 24 mm (91x) eyepiece almost the entire evening.

Some naked eye highlights of the evening were the prominent zodiacal cone, gegenschein, and Omega Centauri, floating about 5 degrees above the far hills. Most of these observations were prompted by Steve, who has a wonderful sense of timing about current events of this nature.

I started in Canis Major, worked into Puppis, Hydra, Corvus, then up to Virgo for some easy galactic eye candy. I got in a few quick peeks at Saturn and Jupiter as well, before calling it quits around 4:00

Here's a few of the more interesting objects that I logged:

2362: OC, Canis Major. I am compelled to join the chorus of TACo's that have sung the praises of this cluster. The payoff is at the eyepiece, as the finderscope shows a bright star against apparent nebulosity, doing the averted vision dance. Eyepiece at the main scope shows a tight grouping of small bright stars around a very bright star on N. side of cluster. There is a faint pair in a line, just to the East of the bright star. A real jewel of an object. Gives open clusters a good name.

I went after a few Vdb's that were on the charts nearby, and could not detect any nebulosity. Not the case for ngc 2467.

2467: EN and OC, Puppis. Big, bright round glow, with mottling, visible w/o filter. A bright star sits North from center of the glow. With an 0III filter, a much larger detached, complex, region to the ENE really popped out. Ironically, I focussed on the nebulosity in my notes, and ignored the open cluster aspect that is also part of this designation. I think I was just happy to see something glowing after being skunked on a few objects. This region also has a Sharpless, and a Gum designation. Sh 2-311, Gum 9, respectively, which appears to apply to the entire nebulous region. The 2467 EN designation seems confined to what was visible with no filter. This is a large, rich area.

Sh 2-308: SNR Canis Major: Steve had this in his scope, so I went looking for it in mine. In character this feels like a section of the Veil, albeit dimmer. The section I could see was oriented N/S and ran for about 1.5 degrees. The W. edge is sharp and the E. edge very soft. the North end broaden towards the E. before fading out. I tried a npb, vht, and 0III filter. 0III gave the best result. 2453 OC, Puppis: This cluster has a small center grouping of faint stars, with some much brighter outlying members. Deep yellow star W. of center.

2452 PN: In the same field as 2453. I'm always interested in multiple object fields, for the variety and possible contrast of form, or other variables, they can provide. These two objects easily fit into the field of a 15mm panoptic (24', though with my glasses on, I don't think I'm seeing the whole field) For a long time, I kept assuming one of the outlying stars of the cluster was the planetary. It took me awhile to spot a grey blob to the S of the cluster.

3242: PN. Ghost of Jupiter. I hadn't peeked at this since last year, in my 10". It's a "little" brighter in the 18". ;-) Also, showed a central star with a bright ring around it, followed by a larger shell outside of that. All this in saturated turquoise. A large, beautifully colored object.

Working below 3242 in Hydra for secondary targets on page 20 of SA 2000. I noticed 2 stars about 12 degrees below 3242 that had a plethora of ngc names crammed between them. That's right, plethora. If it was a galaxy cluster, there was no way I was going to make sense of what I could see at that scale, so I went to Uranometria. On page 151, the same area had so many galaxies listed, it looked the white pages of the phone directory. Apparently the wise minds of Uranometria thought so as well, because this area had it's own suppplemental page in the back: A19, the Hydra I cluster, or Abell 1060.

Hydra I cluster: Abell 1060. One nice aspect of this galaxy cluster for a relative newcomer like me to the dim and deep, is that the central group is very tight, and sits between two stars that are around 6-7th magnitude. You can't get lost! Easy to find, and also, you can just start from the central group, and work outward in any direction you choose, following the little grey mice into the lumpy darkness... With Uranometria as my chart, I spent some time working out from the center. Many of these required averted vision to pick up. Instead of taking notes, I simply marked the ones I was able to spot. I'll admit they vary in size, brightness, and shape, but I was more interested in discovering if I could see them. I stopped after about a half hour, as I wanted to move onto something different. These are the one's I did pick up, either directly, or with averted vision: 3285, 3305, 3307, 3308, 3309, 3311, 3312, 3314 a/b, 3315, 3316, IC 1297

M104: Gx, Corvus. I remember my first view of this in the mid-90's up at Fremont Peak through a neighbor's 14" dob. I was surprised that it actually resembled the photograph. The view on Saturday night was as I remembered it. These big and bright Messier galaxies are akin to being at an airport terminal, looking out the window at a large airliner parked just outside. In contrast, a galaxy cluster is like looking at a bunch of jets, flying in formation, very, very far away in the sky. You can tell they're jets, but they are very small and dim. Each type of object has it's own reward and challenge. The sombrero galaxy sports a prominent dust lane, with a glowing upper ellipse and nuclear bulge. The nucleus has a very bright stellar core. South of the dust lane, there is a very subtle glow radiating from the nucleus. Orientation is WNW-ESE.

I spent the rest of evening looking in Virgo, logging a few galaxies, but mainly playing tourist. I did follow Markarian's chain up past the eyes, picking out the ngc pairs that lurk beyond the eye candy grouping. I was struck by the sense of how bright and large this cluster was, though structurally it was similar in character to Abell 1060, Virgo is a good place to orient onesself to the deeper treasures of the sky.

I did notice when I was in Virgo that I was getting an awful artifact in my eyepiece field from something bright. It turned out be Jupiter. At that point the breeze was slacking enough that I could put on my light baffle again. Problem solved.

I turned in after 4, was up around 8, packed up, and rolling by 8:30. The world was all steep green hills up there in the sunny spring morning light. At the bottom of the property, I drove right into a fog that persisted all the way to Tres Pinos.

All this through Mariposa, an 18" f 4.2 Plettstone. It was a good night's work with easy going veterans around to provide interesting input. Thanks to Bob Ayer's for the use of his property to observe from.

-Bill Cone