Friday September 5 2008 Santa Cruz Mountains

James Miller

I don't write OR's but I was just so jazzed after last night's romp through the skies that I needed to share at least a little bit... My observing location is my backyard observatory in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The sky was just short of amazing - CSC showed nothing but deep blue, so I knew it would be a great night. Standing out under the sky I would say that the seeing was very steady, but the transparency was a little less than last Friday night's great transparency.

So, what to look for under the great skies? I didn't have an observing plan - short or long term - that I wanted to work towards to this weekend (though in the long run I am nibbling away at a few of the Astronomical League programs). Instead, this weekend will be the swan song of my 11" SCT, as I will shortly be receiving my Planewave CDK 17. So, thinking the 11" should go out in a blaze of glory, I decided that I would pair up the 11" with my Mallincam Hyper Color Plus (which I rarely use, usually preferring eyepiece observing) and a focal reducer, and go fast and deep - look at as many of the faint things that usually the 11" just gives me a wispy hint of - hey, sometimes astronomers just want to have fun.

With no particular plan in mind, I used Sky Tools 2 to identify mainly planetary nebulae and galaxies that have eluded me before. As to the Mallicam, on almost all of the targets I set it at 28 second integration (56 second just seems to wash out too much, but that is probably due to unoptimized settings).

Anyway, below is the laundry list of objects that I looked at. While I took some sparse notes on every one, I won't reproduce them here...

Galaxies:
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IC 1727
NGC 1003
NGC 1023A
NGC 1084
NGC 147
NGC 1560
NGC 214
NGC 2146
NGC 2336
NGC 247
NGC 470
NGC 474
NGC 700
NGC 703
NGC 704
NGC 705
NGC 708
NGC 710
NGC 714
NGC 717
NGC 772
NGC 891
NGC 925
M51
Perseus A Radio Source (and the cluster of galaxies it is associated with)
Pinwheel
Sculptor Galaxy
NGC 672
NGC 753
NGC 7606
NGC 7727
NGC 784
M 74

Planetary Nebulae:
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IC 289
Sh 2-71
NGC 1501
NGC 246
NGC 6765
NGC 6804
NGC 6842
NGC 6894
NGC 7008
NGC 7139
NGC 7094
NGC 7354
NGC 7293

Planets:
---------
Uranus
Neptune

So, I looked at something like 48 objects - at least the ones that I jotted down any notes for. Quantity over quality? Yes, maybe the astro equivalent of speed dating. The great thing, though, is that the Mallincam makes it easy to see objects and spot color and detail, so rather than spend time staring at length at an object with direct or averted vision, details quickly pop out with the camera, enabling more observing in a shorter timeframe. If that sounds like a rationalization, well, yeah, probably... :-)

All in all, my observation session started just after 9PM, with just me and Anna (my trusty Australian Shepherd) indulging ourselves until I dragged our tired, but very happy eyes back inside at about 3:30AM. I wish I could have stayed up a little later - in particular majestic Orion was rising in the East, and while many of its goodies were obviously visible, I have an aversion to looking at objects below about 30 degrees, so I chose to save Orion till later in the year...

Anyway, I hope that everyone else had a great night wherever you were!

James