Montebello: Catch of the night - NGC2818

Mark Johnston

Marek, his new 10", and myself had a classic Montebello pre-spring observing session on Thursday from dusk just after midnight. This will be more of a descriptive OR of the general feeling which was good and details will be spared as I have to get to work ...

The south-west remained the best skies with transparency coming and going in lower altitudes. Skies got to 20.15 by 11:30 and wind was not to be found. In a period of excellent transparency

The noises up there were a constant chatter from frogs intermixed with Marek periodically expressing how nice it was to just sit by his 10" dob and check out the skies. He was right, it was a great night to just browse the heavens. Later on Marek had some killer views of Saturn in his new baby and as I gotta say that scope moves nicely, well done.

Later in the night classics like Leo Triplet we looking good (my current windows desktop picture) but the 'stars' remained objects from overhead to the south and south-west.

Will only list a few but all targets were assorted DeepMap objects mostly to the south but here is my favorite of the night: NGC2818. This is a DeepMap object and I found it 'special'. I sort of like things that resemble other more famous objects and this one has to bring up images of M46 with it's own planitary, NGC2438. The planetary is of the same apparent size as NGC2438 but the cluster is only about 1/3 the diameter and of much fainter stars so the planetary is dominant in this object. Deepmap shows 2 objects with one for a PN outline and one for a larger outline of the cluster but both are labeled NGC2818. I think the Planetary is the real NGC2818 but need to research that.

While observing planetary NGC2346 (which is REALLY small and Mag 11.8 to boot) the Monoceros backdrop of fine stars was really a nice view as seeing was really good from time to time.

Was also happy to catch IC 2395 about 1 degree off the tree line to the south which is a fairly bright, low star count (non-impressive) little cluster with a distinctive pattern of it's 10 or so higher mag members. But that was a lucky catch as it did get more mucky more than half the time in the lower altitudes to the south. After we had packed up: a nice binocular scan of the skies M42 was just setting and it was refreshing to spy M13s arrival as a binocular object which as Marek put it is a nice reminder of spring's approach.

Clear Skies,

Mark