Kevin Ritschel
I observed Thursday night, 8-4-08, from moonset to 03:30 on the 5th. Generally the conditions were about the same as Wednesday night, except the seeing is settling down - it became quite good after midnight.I am going to claim that I can detect the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy. I looked at the are in everything from the 80mm widefield refractor to the 33". I believe I can detect it by moving the field of the 80mm - there are good guidestars and there is a fuzzy patch right where it ought to be. Nothing can be seen in the big scope, too narrow a field for such a big, dim object, although I could easily detect the two small galaxies just below the Sculptor Dwarf, IC1608 and NGC 334. The Dwarf is about 2X the size of NGC 300 (about 5 degrees S, SW from the Dwarf) and 2 mag dimmer - so its a tough target, like Barnard's Loop without an H-Beta filter.
By the way, I could use the 80mm Widefield to see the California Nebulae and Barnard's Loop at ~3:00 without a filter. With an H-Beta, the CA nebulae is an easy, direct vision object in that scope.
Also saw the outer shell around the Ring Nebulae, M57 with Dobzilla and an OIII at 165X.
Picked off some nice galaxy groups in Aquarius and Lyra.
..... more early morning observing runs planned in the next few days.
Kevin
| Observing Reports | Observing Sites | GSSP
2010, July 10 - 14 Frosty Acres Ranch Adin, CA OMG! Its full of stars. Golden State Star Party |
|
Mailing List Archives |
Current Observing Intents Click here for more details. |
||||
|
|