Wednesday 3 September at Willow Springs

Kevin Ritschel

On Friday night/Sat AM I dragged out dobzilla. The E and SE of the sky were blanketed by smoke/haze, not clouds. I saw the smoke earlier in the evening, before sunset. It was so bad I almost didn't walk out to the dob, which I had taken out after sunset to cool.

Lucky I did, after a bit of encroachment towards the meridian the wind shifted and the stuff was gone by 2 or 3 am. The sky was good enough to see the counterglow and M33 was easy naked eye. I was having so much fun I didn't go inside for the SQM.

Since Uranus was at opposition, I tracked it down for the first time in about 20 years. I know its pretty featureless, but I was surprised more planetary imagers don't go after that, its bigger than mars is at times. Uranus was naked eye. Just for the heck of it, I also tracked down Neptune, since it was close in the sky and close to some good guide stars - its so small, I really had to make sure I wasn't looking at a seeing-enlarged star image even in the 33.

Concentrating in the south, I nailed a couple dozen galaxies the most interesting:

1/ The group around NGC 321 - a nice group of 4 NGC and one ANON, quite nice in the big dob.

2/ NGC 255 - only a half degree from the bright planetary 246, in fact it out to be in the same field with a smaller scope. There is also an ANON M2-3-30 just to the east of 246.

I picked off galaxies till maybe 4 or 4:30 then went for eye-candy that I hadn't seen in awhile - NGC 1300, NGC 1365 ("Z-best" barred spiral in the sky), NGC 1360, the Rosette (80mm refractor - the rest with the big dob)

I again tried the Sculptor Dwarf when it was near the meridian and the haze had cleared to the south... I do think I see the bugger.

Kind of hazy today, sky isn't that blue, but no sign of the smoke plum. I plan on being out there tonight again!