Montebello 7/29/08 and Coyote 8/2/08

Elisabeth Oppenheimer

All this is pretty low-key compared to the people who went north (keep the ORs coming!), but the weekend back here was nice too. And I finished the Messier list!. So:

Montebello

I had a very brief and pleasant evening up at Montebello on Tuesday night, along with Andy Pierce, who was trying out a new 18". I spent about an hour looking at doubles and re-observing some objects in and around Lyra, which was nice, but the highlight of the evening was my first encounter with the "false comet" in Scorpius. Since I've mentioned it to a few people who weren't familiar with it, I thought I'd write up my notes here.

The false comet consists of two open clusters: a smaller and denser cluster, NGC 6231, just south of the looser cluster Cr 316 (aka Tr 24?). NGC 6231 is just north of zeta Sco, so it's pretty far south--I only thought to look for it after I noticed how well-placed Scorpius was, especially given the good horizons in that direction at Montebello. Naked-eye it really did look like a dim comet with a fan tail. In binoculars, the whole ensemble looked like a giant backwards question mark: three bright stars made a small triangle at the bottom, then NGC 6231 made a starry line up to Cr 316, which was outlined on the east and north sides with bright stars and full of hazy with dim stars in the center. In the same binocular field of view, I could see a bright wide (optical) double on the northwest side, both stars blue-white; a small fuzzy patch just to the north; and another fuzzy patch to the northeast. I switched to my telescope at 50x and counted about 20 stars forming an arrow (pinched in the center) pointing eastward in NGC 6231. Cr 316 contained several dozen stars, arrayed in a vaguely starfish pattern (but what doesn't look like a starfish if you look long enough?), with four mag 3-5 stars on the SSW and NE edges of the cluster. It just fit in the one degree FOV. The double turned out to be Mu1 and Mu2 Sco. The fuzzy patch just to the north was NGC 6242, a sparse but tight cluster consisting of about nine stars pointing north, with some background glow. And finally, the patch to the northeast was the pretty cluster 6281, where about twelve stars outlined a very narrow isosceles triangle pointing south. A trail of dim stars led to a mag 6 star to the SW, which made the cluster look a little like one of those tall coffepots with a spout. (I successfully used this cluster again on Saturday as a jumping-off point to get to the Bug Nebula.) Looking at my star atlas, I think I should have seen one more cluster, NGC 6268, but I didn't notice it at the time.

Disclaimer: I'm trying to include magnitude estimates in my notes, but I'm just starting out with it, and I tend to think everything bright is mag 6 and everything dim is mag 9.

Anyway, that binocular field full of stuff was a lot of fun, and I was glad to have stumbled on it. The sudden "wow!" jolt reminded me of my first view of the Orion nebula, also through binoculars. Anyone who gets up to Montebello this week should take a look.

Andy also shared views in the 18", including the lovely Swan Nebula and the best view I think I've had of M22. Somehow the 18" was just right for it, even better than larger scopes; as Andy put it, it looked like you were inside the cluster.

Coyote

I stopped at the outlet mall on the way down, and those stores are crazy at 5 PM; after half an hour, I was very glad to be speeding towards some peace and quiet. Heather and her daughter Elise were barbecuing, along with Kevin and Eric and later, Lou. (Last names? Don't know.) We had a cheerful hour or two before dark, by which time about a dozen people had shown up to observe. Warm, fine night.

I fooled around a little until Capricornus got decently high, and then found M73, M72, and M75 to (hooray!) finish the Messier list--the last dozen objects had been hanging on my list for about a year. M73 was unimpressive as advertised, but I guess I can imagine how Messier might have thought there was nebulosity there. Maybe. M72 was very dim and fluffy and totally unresolved at 150x. M75 was a tiny bit brighter and more clearly round, with a mag 6 star 15' north. For comparison, I looked again at M2 and M15, which are much nicer-looking, and contrast well with each other. M2 has a much larger bright core, and though I couldn't resolve any stars, I had the strong impression they were there (I can't remember who described it as looking like a pile of salt, but it's apt). M15 had a tighter core and broader halo, but I had no impression of stellar pinpricks.

I also decided to improve my planetary nebula skills and tracked down the Bug nebula, the Saturn nebula, and the Blue Snowball. All three looked circular to me at 150x. The Saturn nebula was the largest and bluest of the trio, but more a blue-gray than a robins-egg blue. The Blue Snowball was similar, but slightly smaller. The Bug nebula barely looked like anything to me--just a faint gray puff--I passed over it three or four times before seeing it. Planetary nebulae are odd--clearly non-stellar, but in an elusive, slippery way, not like the definite fuzziness of globs.

Around the parking lot, people were imaging and sharing views and socializing, and I hope everyone had as nice a night as I did.