Jamie Dillon
The night of 29 November, two nights after Thanksgiving, Mark Johnston and I were holding down Ranger Row. Our best sighting was Ranger Derek and his sweetie Hali bringing us fresh homemade pumpkin pie. Nice folks. It was a great night all in all.At sundown we were sitting at the top of the clouds. The lights on top of the Peak were misty, and looking straight level over the valley to the South, it was hazy. By 8:30 the cloud had dropped and we were off and running. Bands of high stuff did move thru, but quickly. Limiting magnitude was 6.4 to the East. The seeing was killer, 5/5 solid.
I spent most of the night in serious telescope mode, chasing galaxies in Eridanus. One purpose as well was to go look at Abell 194, a close cluster of galaxies that Richard Navarrete had been looking at in Cetus. It's one of the Abell clusters where Albert Highe has gone in and gotten scads of 'em. I found 3. NGC 545 and 547 are a close pretty pair. 541 showed up to the SW. In spite of a good chart, I couldn't see any more of this set, though the magnitude and surface brightness numbers of several more look plausible for my 11". They'll be there for a darker sky.
One of the highlights of the night was a stunning view of M43 in Mark's hotsheeit 18. That EN would be on every go-see list if it weren't right smack next to M42. With the excellent seeing and the clarity of that scope, the details in M43 were elaborate and beautiful.
Real fun night, glad to have the winter window.
DDK
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