MB 2/4/08

George Feliz

Six TACos braved the elements last night at Montebello and were rewarded with clear skies and remarkable seeing.

Marek brought his 18" Obsession, Mark had his 11" SCT, Jeff was between them with an 8" SCT, Elisabeth had her 4.5" Starblast, Jeff brought his 8" homemade dob, and I drove my 10", f/5 homebuilt, Albert-inspired dob.

On the downside it was very cold and there was a breeze throughout the evening. On the plus side, there was no dew and no dust (rain is good for something).

The transparency was not very good, but it was plenty clear enough for eye candy.

The seeing was limited by the breeze jiggling the scopes. Six stars in the trapezium were rock-solid all night. There was detail on rapidly shrinking Mars. Saturn was Stunning with its nearly closed rings which still showed the Cassini division at the extremes. There was banding on the globe and pretty grouping of 3 moons close in and preceding . I used up to 254x but found 181x and 141x better in the wind.

I did do some galaxy hunting in Columba and CMa, but bagged only a handful of new objects.

One notable grouping was the NGC 2292/3/5 trio within 4-5' of each other. I had difficulty teasing out 2292 from 2293, but had no difficulty with 2295 which is a higher surface brightness slash. The bright core of 2293 made it fairly easy to see, but 2292 is only 1' away and is much lower surface brightness. I spent a lot of time of this group, but then Marek came to the rescue and placed them in his 18" scope which gave a very pleasing view. I'll revisit this group at a darker site.

I picked up a new-to-me comet - 46P/Wirtanen in Pisces. It looked pretty much like a mag 9-10 galaxy. We've been spoiled lately by comets Holmes and McNaught...

Comet Holmes showed up in binoculars as a very large, low surface brightness smear that was adversely affected by the poor transparency.

A serendipitous observation was suggested by the Sky and Telescope "Deep Sky Wonders" column for February which pointed out an asterism that Sue French has named "Nagler1". It is an assymetrical, upside-down "V" over galaxy NGC2217 (she calls it a north-pointing chevron). It's a cool low-power view with a double at the start of the east end, and fitting to be observed through one of Al's eyepieces. :-)

It was a worthwhile night and was capped by the Thoughtful Astro Spouse who had left a heating pad set to high on the Astronomer's side of the bed.

Clear Skies,
George