First OR of the new year

Jamie Dillon

Most of the night, it was the Animal and me, doing that paced parallel play of observing, quiet most of the time, with views shared back and forth and the odd bits of family talk and gossip and movie news. Pure fun. Swapping shortbread for homemade fudge as well.

It was also silly fun to be wrapping up the winter objects I hadn't seen in DeepMap and be able to give immediate feedback to the cat who made up the list. We had a dark southern horizon, well down not only into Fornax but into Eridanus south of Fornax. Got ngc 1291 at -41 dec, just east of Acamar. Very bright core, bright inner halo, outer halo extending out in a fat oval, with a bright star on the northern end.

Oh yeah and went back to look at HCG 16, the Hickson group I'd stumbled onto last time at Dino. 833 and 835 were still there, looking more like two close galaxies than they did at Dino and less like a peanut. As Gottlieb mentioned, the seeing was rock solid steady past 5/5 excellent. Now the two other members of the Hickson group were right there in the 10mm field, 838 and 839. No idea how I missed them on 1 December. Easy to direct vision, all 4, and a very pretty field.

This was all in Felix, who will celebrate the 9th anniversary of first light on the 21st. An 11" f/4.5 Dobs made by Discovery Telescopes, with a helical focuser designed by Kevin Medlock and made by Crazy Ed Erbeck. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians and a TV 2x Barlow, with an Orion Ultrablock. Figured the limiting magnitude to be around 5.8 to 6.0 thru most of the sky. Finally did a starcount in Gemini and came up with 5.9 overhead. The seeing killed.

The prize of the night was 1532 and 1531, hands down. Also in Eridanus, 1532 is a snazzy, fairly large edge-on with moderately bright core, with 1531 just off the west edge, a round even patch, yes an elliptical. They're listed as 44 and 47 million lightyears from here, respectively. Excellent pair of galaxies.

Did some other New Year touring, like diving into the Fornax Cluster for the first time in a while. Amazing, all on top of each other. Also visited other objects I'd seen first at just this time, including ngc 253, the Sculptor galaxy, reliably magnificent. The 507 group in Triangulum made my first venture outside our own Virgo supercluster, 7 years ago. By the time I swung into Perseus to look at Abell 426, Albert's Birthday Cluster, the wind was up and scud was moving in from the northwest. They're still there and waiting patiently.

Mars showed Syrtis Major clearly, the big bikini bottom. Saturn was surrounded by 4 moons, with beautiful bands across the southern disk, and those rings really starting to flatten. And for more shallowsky, Holmes really jumped out naked eye, and still looks like a fat jellyfish in binocs, and Tuttle was at the limit of naked eye in Aries, with a bright core and wide extended halo in the scope.

NGC 1535 really did put on a show. In Felix at 420x the central star and both main concentric shells were clear, along with some of the filigree structure between the shells. The view in Steve's 18" Starmaster at 700x was memorable for intricate detail.

Steve at one point showed off ngc 1206, a really cruel little bugger that made for a mild brightening in the background mottling about 30% of the time to averted vision, after, mind you, a good 7 minutes in two runs at the exact field in his scope. While I was polishing off the reliably pretty objects in DeepMap, here the Astro Animal was scraping the silt of the New General Catalogue. Gimme 20 more years at this.

Stopping as ever at the saddle on the way home, Berenice's Hair was some 40 degrees up in the East. Spring is definitely coming. Thanks to Steve for the company, and thanks to the Peak for another solid night of observing.

As Joe Bob has taken to saying, more of this,

DDK