Jane finds new Barnard!

Jane Smith

Steve,

Many thanks for providing the plate of Aquila Barnards. It may actually redeem my observing reputation. Here's the story....

Saturday night I was at Plettstone without a scope. I'd learned earlier in the day my 10" wouldn't fit into my new Honda Civic. So Marsha convinced me to go without a scope and kindly offered to team-observe with me using her 14.5" Starmaster.

Our first object was from a Cloudy Nights publication titled "Small Wonders in Aquila". One of the objects was a pair of Barnard Objects. Beneath their picture was a caption containing the descriptions, and directly below the caption, the last thing on the page, was the notation "NGC6804 and NGC6803". So, unlike the vastly more experienced observers in this thread, I paired the NGC designations with the two objects in the picture. Seemed reasonable to me!

Marsha and I then commenced the hunt for Barnard "NGC6804". Needless to say, we had a merry goose chase, during which I made my infamous Barnard observation. Eventually we asked Bill Porte to find the object with his Plettstone 18", so we could compare fields. Alas, Bill's field looked far different from ours, a most perplexing turn of events. This was the first indication something was amiss. After a bunch of head scratching and confused discussion, I finally discovered my error: the NGC6804 notation at the bottom of the page referred to the object on the following page, two planetary nebula, not the Barnards. My folly was complete.

During this mass of confusion Randy was loitering around uttering a rash of negative verbosity. We mostly tried to ignore him. And I suspect Mark was over at his 18" having a good laugh at us blundering around Aquila looking for Barnard NGC6904. .

Still, it was tremendous fun working with Bill and Marsha, a great workout for my new laptop, and a rare opportunity for my friends to have a good laugh at my expense. What more can one ask?

Jane