Central Oregon 8/9, 8/11 & Willow Springs, 8/18/07

by Bill Cone

I observed 2 nights later from the edge of a road on the other end of the property, within walking distance of the cabin we were staying in. My daughter, and several of my young nieces and nephews came out to visit me in the dark, and I enjoyed showing them a range of objects that were contrasts in structure and scale. Being able to get kids to see these wonderful sights can be really rewarding. Eye candy is born anew through their eyes. We looked at M-57, M-13 w/ NGC 6207, the Double Cluster, Albireo, and M-31. During this time we saw some great Perseids, bright enough to cast shadows, radiating from the NE shoulder of Black Butte, leaving faint smoke trails that rapidly disappeared. Eventually the wind gusted so much I had to grab the scope to the keep it from blowing over. In spite of sprinklers, wind, and visitors, I did manage to log a few objects. At 46° N., the lower regions of Scorpius were innaccessible, so I looked elsewhere for targets.

10", f/6 Starsplitter newtonian 24, 15mm Panoptics, 11mm Nagler, Lumicon OIII filter.

NGC 6567, PN, Sgr: I had halfheartedly looked for this up at Lassen, and found myself befuddled and dazzled by the extraordinarily rich star field of M-24, where this little planetary resides. This time I had made a chart from a DSS photo, and was able to triangulate between Jenn's Confluence, and a bright, golden star in the minute, open cluster Markarian 38, to the correct spot. I could not detect any color, but the star was a bit soft compared to the ones around it. Using a handheld OIII filter, one could see that the 'star' remained fairly bright while the rest of the field was diminished to some extent. So there it was. Not much of a visual reward, but a good exercise in searching a crowded field. Maybe good prep for the likes of Pease 1 in M-15...

B72, DN, Oph: I took a look at this to compare it with my view from Bumpass Hell last month. Moving onto the field, Barnard 68, a distinct dark cloud to the S. of the snake proper was there, as was the lower frontal belly, or bulge, of the 's' . The contrast was quite low, and I could not see the overall form. In fact, I could have easily missed this completely if I hadn't known what to look for. I suppose a combination of lesser aperture (18" to 10"), transparency, and relative darkness all played a role.

M 39: OC, Cygnus: A loose, speckled concentration of bright stars. This cluster is an averted vision naked eye patch in a rich region of the sky, ~9° WNW of Deneb. In my 10 x 50 finderscope, I could count 10 stars. At 63x in the main eyepiece I counted 20 stars. Roughly triangular in shape with an apex to the North. Unequally bright, widely spaced pair is near the center. A better sense of the cluster as an object was had through the finder.

M31 and companions, Ga, And: The season for hunting globulars in our distant neighbor is approaching, and I couldn't resist a preview as it was rising high above the sharply raked silhouette of Black Butte. This huge galaxy is a bright glowing ellipse, over 3° in length, tilted NE-SW. 2 prominent parallel dust lanes were easily seen on the NW side of the ellipse, originating near the minor axis and moving to the SW, gradually widening and curving to the South, fading out before the major axis. With a 24mm Panoptic giving 1° and 63x, I could pan over a full field above and below the bright, gradient bulge of light at the center to observe the scale and extent of the galaxy. NGC 206, a massive star cloud, was visible as a faint concentrated glow more than halfway from the bright core to the SW end of the ellipse. M32, one of 2 companions, is a bright, soft-edged, ball of light on the SE side of M-31. M-110 is to be found off the NW side of M-31, along it's minor axis, roughly 1° degree from it's center. It is elongated NNW-SSE, and has a soft gradient to a small, bright core.

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This last Saturday I drove down to Willow Springs, to try and pick up a few more summer targets. As Willow's southern horizons are quite good, I focussed on some objects in Scorpius that I wouldn't get a chance to find until next year. I was glad to finally meet Bob Ayers in person, as I had observed at his property several times over the last 10 months, and we'd never crossed paths. Bob was setting up in the "owner's spot", as he'd slyly described it, as I drove up around 7 o'clock. The temp was in the 70's and there was a slight intermittent breeze. Gazing at the golden rolling hills, in the warm light of the end of day, and looking out to the more rugged, distant mountains to the South, I was glad I had made the drive. Willow is a very peaceful and beautiful spot to observe from. Bob Ayers welcomed me, gave me some time to set up, and then showed me his latest scope: an 8" inch folded refractor that he had crafted from an existing scope, designing, and having parts fabricated to complete the job. At first glance I didn't quite grasp the intent of his design, but it was perfectly evident after using it throughout the evening. On an alt-az mount, the light path of his design terminates quite close to the altitude axis. In addition, the secondary mirror diagonal rotates so the viewing position remains quite stable and comfortable over a great range of motion of the scope. As this was his second version of this design, Bob incorporated some new features, the most notable being a 4" lens mounted so that a secondary mirror could be flipped into the 8" light path, and the scope becomes a 4" finderscope with a 4° field of view. At the eyepiece one could easily push the whole rig around, nicely balanced, flip the 4" in and out for a wider field, and also access a filter slide with UHC and OIII filters in it. A really interesting and functional design that allowed for some excellent, and comfortable, widefield viewing.

The weather was mostly warm, with a light periodic breeze that cooled things down quite a bit. the breeze shifted later in the evening, coming from the NE. Some wispy smoky clouds in the south drifting towards us till the wind shifted. The transparency seemed to be off as I could not detect color in some planetaries that I've seen before, however Jupiter showed excellent detail.

18" f 4.2 Plettstone Newtonian w/Paracorr 35, 24, and 15mm Panoptic, 11, 9, and 7mm Nagler eyepieces, Lumicon OIII, Omega VHT, NPB filters.

At dusk, Jupiter showed only 3 moons in an interesting configuration: 2 moons were about equally as far from Jupiter on either side, and the third (Callisto) was *very* close to the North pole of the planet, just a tad West of the meridian. Turns out the 4th one (Io) was transiting the face at that time, which brings me to this question: Has anyone observed a transit of a moon across the face of Jupiter? Not a shadow transit, a moon transit. Inquiring minds want to know. As a bonus, the great red spot was right on the meridian of the Southern Equatorial Belt. The seeing was intermittently pretty sharp, and one could see how the SEB was interrupted by this large, pointed oval with a yellowish outline. The color of the red spot was sort of a dusty rose, or sunlight on brick. The last time I'd seen the red spot, it looked more the color of an uncooked salmon.

NGC 6441, GC, Sco: This glob is located about 5' East of G Scorpii, the easternmost star of the scorpion's tail. The bright, golden yellow mag 3.18 star makes the glob look rather faint in comparison, but it was easily seen at 145x. At 311x, there was some resolution of stars around the edge with averted vision. Haro 1-36 is a small, bright planetary that sits a few arc minutes NW of G Scorpii. It was visible with no filter, but it was fun to confirm, and blink it "on", by knocking down the rest of the field with a handheld OIII filter.

NGC 6302, PN, Sco: The Bug Nebula. This unique specimen has 2 extended, tapering, lobes on either side of a bright central core, somewhat resembling a bow tie, or a propellor. Oriented WNW, the W. lobe is longer than the E. one, and appears to have a slightly brighter patch at the W. end. Central area is a bright mass, not stellar.

NGC 6337, PN, Sco: Faint, small, annular, with a field star inside the ring on the N. side. A VHT filter gave good contrast, and showed the field star nicely.

B 72, DN, Oph: Visible, besting my view in Oregon a week earlier, but much fainter than the view at Lassen. The lower bulge and tip of the 'S' being the most prominent dark regions of this object. The position was pretty far past the meridian at that point, and some of the smoky clouds in the SW had been seen drifting towards us at dusk, though the wind had shifted to the North.

A useful method of composing a view of this object is to use an eyepiece that gives about a 40' field, and place Barnard 68, a fairly prominient, small blob of darkness, at the SW edge of the field. The Snake will occupy about the half the field opposite B-68, tilted NW-SE, and be inverted. The tip of the 'S', and the lower bulge will be oriented on a line running NW-SE through the center of the field. Can't see Barnard 68? Then you're not gonna see the Snake.

M24 Star Cloud, Sgr: Bob and I took turns at his scope, enjoying the widefield views of this object, including Barnard 92, 93, and 304, which runs to the SW from 92, splitting above Jenn's Confluence, into 2 regions. NGC 6603, an OC on the E. side of the star cloud was faint, but visible. There's an excellent downloadable chart to this region from the skygx project available on this page: http://www.skygx.com/index.cfm?go=proto.home The chart is 06-3382

Another region that looked great in Bob's scope was the North American Nebula. It was very interesting to slide the different filters in, go between 2° and 4° degree fields and pan around this extraordinarily dense and glowing field, bracketed by the oceans of darkness. Best view was with a UHC filter, IFIRC. Contrast was excellent, and the whole region started to look like one of Richard Crisp's images.

Fairly early on, Bob showed me an asterism he called "The 4 Juanitas", a straight line of 4 equally spaced stars about 2° NNW of the tail of Scorpius. In looking at it in his scope, he mentioned that several of the stars were supposed to be involved in nebulosity, but he'd not seen it. Later that evening, In looking for NGC 6357, I realized that the same stars were charted in Uranometria as being part of a large nebula complex. This area was sinking low, and I briefly studied it in my scope. I could see no nebulosity around any of the 4 stars, but could see a very small patch of nebulosity near a star, just NW of the Northern end of the 4 Juanitas. Apparently this is the only part that is visible, and comprises NGC 6357. I did not investigate further, as I wanted to get out of the muck.

We looked at M-33 in my scope, and picked out a few of the NGC HII regions. Still fairly low in the sky, but showing a reasonable amount of contrast.

Back at Bob's scope we went after IC 1396, the nebulous region South of Herschel's garnet star in Cepheus. By careful panning of the region you could detect "less brightness" outside of a certain area. You can only call it a glow, because the region next door is darker! it isn't much to go on, but we both agreed on the effect. Suffice it to say, this view did not resemble a Richard Crisp image.

NGC 6712 GC Sct: A ragged edged globular in a fairly rich field. At 198x, averted vision resolved stars across the face of this cluster.

IC 1295 PN Sct: This planetary is a nice find, situated about 30' E. of 6712. Visible with no filter, a VHT filter provided good contrast. At 198x it showed a soft edged disc w/ a faint star embedded in the W. edge. 2 fairly bright stars bracket the disc to the W. and S.

K 4-8 PN Sct: This is a little 'blinker' that was mentioned on one of Paul Alsing's pages in the charts he provided for GSSP. It lies about 7' SW of IC 1295. What was interesting is that the planetary is very faint, and is near a slightly brighter star. Blinking with a filter feels like the star jumps over to the planetary position, as one diminishes and the other appears brighter. All three of these objects lie in one field.

6749 GC Aquila: I tried twice to find this one at Lassen last month. No dice. This globular is severely reddened (obscured) by dust. It's surface brightness is listed as 16.1. Armed with a "can't miss" field chart, I went to work, scrutinizing the area. A tight pair of mag 9.5 stars in an ENE-WSW line about 10' NW of 6749 were my guide. Field stars were stepping on a glow so weak that it resembled lumpy darkness around those stars, yet studying the field carefully showed that one zone was brighter than the surrounding areas. No core brightening, a small diamond of field stars lay over the center of the glow. Very subtle and irregularly round. No visual reward. Just a lesson in how something dim can be even harder to find when it is overlaid with field stars. Think suspect nebulosity around a very dim Pleiades on a dewy night with a small scope.

As Bob packed up and was leaving around 2, he pointed out a pair of bright stars parallel to the horizon, floating a few degrees above the mountains. well below Formalhaut. They turned out to be Alpha and Beta Grus, down around -46°

I kept at it until a colder, stronger breeze made viewing at higher powers impossible. In bed after 4, and up at 8 to pack up and drive home. Thanks again to Bob Ayers for generously allowing observers to use his property.