Willow Springs - Late November

Bill Cone

With the winter solstice less than a month away, the sky is good to go by 6:30, allowing hours of observing, with the possibility of a decent night's sleep. While it did cool down considerably, the absence of any wind, and the addition of a lot of warm layers of clothes made for a very comfortable evening. I turned in around 1 o'clock, after about 6.5 hours of observing, chatting, and sharing views with the others.

Though the weather was good, the seeing was bit a bit soft, and I felt at times the transparency was also off, with a fair degree of unsteadiness at high power, and some lack of contrast on objects I was familiar with. Since I'd not been out observing locally with my 18" in 11 months, perhaps my eyes were just not used to the dim and obscure stuff, nevertheless, I had a great time, and was just happy to be under the stars with fellow observers. I looked at a few new objects, re-visited some favorites of the season, failed to see, and/or find some objects, and shared and discussed views with others... the usual buffet of pleasures that come with group observing.

I started out on Neptune and Uranus, both residing in neighboring constellations. Neptune showed up as a blue-green disc, and I was able to pick out the moon Triton, preceding it by 15", as it scooted across the field. Uranus was a bigger, brighter disc, looking like a star in the finder at Mag 5.81, and had a washed out yellow hue. One of the moons of Uranus, Oberon, was visible about 1.5' to the NNW.

When making my charts for the planets, I noticed a loose trio of galaxies was residing a degree N. of Uranus, NGC 7585, 7592, and 7576. Of these, 7585 was the brightest of the soft blobs, though the other two were not hard to spot with a little searching.

I checked some of the charts I'd made from last year and ran through a few of those, including the Deerlick Group and Stephan's Quintet. It was the first time I'd really spent trying to spot all the members of either group. Stephan's quintet, though dim and small, was actually easier to pick out all 5 members than the Deerlick, I found. They are all equally dim... level playing field. I've also discovered that my Deerlick chart is mislabelled, so besides the big right triangle of Galaxies that lie E. of 7331: 7337, 7340, and 7335, and the averted glimpse of 7336, 2' N. of 7335, I'm holding off on logging the one's that lie to the West, until I'm sure I've got them named right. Messier 45 and NGCIC.org are not in agreement, and Starry Night Pro, has labelled more than one object with the same designation...

The sky is full of large bright objects with many faint ones lurking nearby. Once such target is NGC 247, a beautiful, bright galaxy in Cetus, that has a 5' string of 4 dim galaxies, called the Burbidge chain, running N-S, less than 10' from 247. Mark and I agreed on seeing 3, and he was suggesting the 4th one could be there, but I couldn't see it.

I noticed I could not see several dim objects other's had in their scopes. The Sculptor Dwarf, in Steve's scope, was invisible to my eyes, though Steve patiently walked me through the extent of it, and Bob, and Mark both confirmed it. Same with a Sharpless object that Mark had in his finder. Sometimes dark too me is just that noisy random, hopeful firing of neurons, making a roiling sea of unresolveable nothingness. I don't see a uniform darkness, but what I do often see at threshhold levels is, I think, optical noise my own systems are generating. Perhaps I have to rebuild my patience level for that sort of observing. I also flunked on the Horsehead in my scope, though, when I told Mark, he borrowed my h-beta filter, pointed his scope, and announced that it was plain as day! Hmmm.... I took a look, and after a bit of moving the scope, I clearly saw the much darker notch in a dark field. Some of it is knowing where to look, I suppose, but I am more than a bit out of practice on objects like these.

I did enjoy testing my color perception on several planetaries, and asked others to tell me what they could see. There clearly is a range of opinions about color on deep sky objects. Early on, Mark and I compared NGC 40 to NGC 7009, the Saturn nebula, to see the difference. NGC 40 has a warm, brownish cast to it, while 7009 has that classic "swimming pool at night' turquoise that many planetaries exhibit. Later on, I asked a few others to look at IC 418, a planetary in Lepus, and describe their color impressions. I got gray, rust, and warm, as descriptions of the rim color. To my eyes, I see a pink, or crimson, ring around a star, the whole object resembling a variable star symbol in an atlas.

I also checked in on 2 colorful carbon stars: S Cephei, and Hind's Crimson Star, R Leporis. S Cephei must be nearing maximum, as it was easily seen in the finder, and was a medium orange, while R Leporis showed a deeper hue, though still in the realm of orange. I can remember a night up at Fremont Peak, where S Cephei was invisible in a 50mm finder, and a red spark at the main eyepiece of an 11" scope, betraying its variable nature.

M 42 was a luminous jade green around the Trapezium, which, despite the sizzle of its components, showed 6 stars.

David Cooper shared some great views of the California Nebula and the Running Man in his 7" AP. What a beautiful scope.

An interesting new object for me was NGC 1360, a planetariy in Eridanus. Jamie nailed the gist of it in an OR:

observers.org/reports/2003.02.01.9.html

describing it as looking "... like a pennant with ragged edges." which is a fine, reductive impression. That beats my notes, which are more on the line of ' elongated n/s, bright central star, northern mass slightly brighter, darker on E. side/quadrant... ' Let's just call it a wad of cosmic kleenex, but better yet, go see for yourself.

The next morning, in no great hurry to rush off, I sat for awhile in the shade of the house, re-read my observing notes, and noticed a variety of birds in the nearby shrubs and trees. There was a green hummingbird whirring about a treetop, sparrows endlessly trading places in some juniper shrubs, and a few other birds in the main branches of the hummingbird tree. I pulled out my 15 x 50 Canon IS binoculars and got right up close and personal with a beautiful group of Western Bluebirds. (they look like robins, with an orange breast, but with blue back and tail feathers. Suddenly an extraordinary interloper appeared, golden yellow in breast, profile of a bluejay with a topnot, with a black band, like a raccoon, running across its eyes, and some small red bands on the feathers on the back end. The bluebirds drove it right out of the tree in short order. I went home and looked it up. Cedar Waxwing. Gorgeous. Now, there's your color!

Many thanks to Kevin Ritschel and Bob Ayers for hosting such wonderful expeditions into the cosmos.