Fremont Peak 6/1707

by Rob Enns

The night started out quite breezy. The wind died down somewhat after sunset, but picked up for a few minutes now and again during the entire night. It was warm, in the mid 60's, until after midnight when I departed. Dry too. Gotta love these Northern California inversions. There was a bit of fog down by Hollister, and once the moon set shortly after 10pm it was dark enough to get some decent observing done.

My plan was to bag a bunch of H400 objects, but I only got 6 objects into my list before becoming seriously distracted by eye candy.

For the record, I recorded the following:

NGC4111 Galaxy CVn 10.6 16" Nagler 12mm
Very bright core in this galaxy, which is seen edge on. It is elongated North/South.

NGC4143 Galaxy CVn 12.1 16" Nagler 12mm
Small, likely a spiral galaxy. Has a very bright stellar core.

NGC4361 P Neb Crv 10.9 16" Nagler 12mm
Central star is visible with direct vision and is brighter with averted vision. The nebula itself is fuzzy, and possibly asymmetric.

NGC4485 Galaxy CVn 12 16" Nagler 12mm
Small and diffuse, off the flank of NGC 4490. Slightly elongated.

NGC4490 Galaxy CVn 9.8 16" Nagler 12mm
Bright with a bright non-stellar core. In the same field as NGC 4485. Possibly some arm detail visible.

NGC5694 Globular Hya 9.2 16" Burgess/TMB Planetary 9mm
Located at the point of a "V" formed with 2 stars on one side and 1 on the other. Core is bright and almost stellar with averted vision. Fuzzy at the edges, no stars are resolved.

After that it was on to the eye candy. Now, many of you hard core TACos have some serious aperture and are all cool and understated about how great that is. But I've gotta tell ya, M51 in a 16" scope is a real mind blower. I drilled into M51 and looked at some of the H Alpha regions, then started cruising Messier objects including M10, M8, M20, M24, M16, M4, M80.

And then I had another mind expanding experience by pointing the scope at M17 and loading up an OIII filter. Whoa. I must have spend 30 minutes looking at M17, with the filter on, and off, and on again. Billowing white clouds of nebulosity separated by clear, dark lanes. My OIII filter, which just kind of made things dark in my 8", is going to see a LOT more use.

Mission accomplished, photons acquired. Next stop, GSSP 2007.

Rob