Observing at Deep Sky Ranch

Kevin Ritschel

Yesterday was cloudy and I was looking forward to a long night's sleep. But, it started to clear at sunset. The sky was really murky from the weather front and some smoke far to the West from the NEW fire near King City, so I didn't drag out Dobzilla, but I did take out the old 17" Coulter.

My intention was to go for a couple of pieces of eye-candy while I contemplated ways to upgrade the 17" (Big issue for me is that images in the 17" look far more "contrasty" than the 33" - must be the baffling - but not nearly as sharp). Somewhere about 10, I looked at the Double Cluster and noticed, there was no image movement - the seeing was possibly the best I've seen this summer. The sky will still kind of murky, but after midnight it became more and more transparent - Galaxies and PL in Grus and Sculptor were some of the best I've seen, certainly from here with the 17.

Questions:

1/ Has anyone seen the ANON next to M31, about a quarter degree past M110, U394? (Uranometria P.30) At M=14.5 it ought to be easy.

2/ Has anyone caught the PL next to Mu Herculies (86 Hercules) , P51.9+25.8? (Uranometria 68) Bigger than 30 arc sec, it ought to be fairly easy to see and its only about a half degree from 3.5Mag Mu, so easy to find.

Weather forecast is decent for tonight but I might get some sleep the rest of the week..... Next Sunday night is supposed to be clear in the Sierras and the moon will set ~10:30, so a field trip may be in order.

Kevin