May 16, 2009: IHOP

Teri Smoot

I went to IHOP Saturday night intending to do a "dry run" for GSSP and ensure that I had everything together and all worked. I had intended to image a few objects with Frank Dibbell. Unfortunately, after getting everything set up for imaging, I found that the focuser on my guidescope was not working at all (it wouldn't even hold a focus position with the tension screws all the way in let alone allow me to use the focuser knob for focusing). To add insult to this, the guide camera wouldn't work with the newest version of MaxIM and was having intermittent dropouts with the older MaxIM and with the other program I use for guiding. As far as imaging is concerned, I have some stuff to get ready if I am going to image at GSSP (and, in this sense, the evening was a success).

Since imaging was a bust, I decided to use the scope visually -- something I also enjoy but rarely undertake. My first target was M104. While looking at M104, I tried several different eyepieces from my meager collection and decided that my 25mm Antares Plossl was giving the best views and I used that on all objects after that (I probably should have borrowed one of Alvin's Naglers but didn't think about that till later). The telescope is a TEC-180FL refractor mounted on a Losmandy G11. (And the scope and the mount performed like champs.)

On M104, I could easily see the galaxy and, with the use of averted vision, could even see the dust lanes in the galaxy.

Since I was in this area, I then toured a bunch of the galaxies in Virgo. M87 was first. Easily seen but, as an elliptical, it is just a fuzzball. Then M84 and M86 in the same FOV. Both M84 and M86 were clearly there and looking harder, I could also see NGC4388 in the same field. I think I was also seeing NGC4435 and NGC4438 along with M86. They were dim and I had to move the scope over to M86 to really make sure they were there.

Continuing on this path, I then went and viewed M49, M60, and M59. Again, M59 and M60 were in the same FOV.

After looking at this subset of the Virgo galaxies, I went over and visited some of the globular clusters starting to come up. I started with M13 and M92. Both of these were really beautiful. Diamond dust on black velvet. The stars in the clusters also looked resolved to the center. And the shapes were obvious. M13 filled about half the FOV of the eyepiece. I then went on the M5 and even dipped down to take a peek at M4. My impression was that M5 had a denser center but looser outer regions. M4's central bar was obvious as well.

Then more galaxies. I started with the Antennae galaxies in Corvus (NGC4038/4039). Both galaxies observed as faint smudges with some shape (a more talented observer would probably describe this better) but no traceof the tails of the Antennae (not that I expected to see them). I then moved to M81 and M82. These made a beautiful pairing in the eyepiece and they were very bright and distinct. My final target was NGC2403. Again, I definitely saw this galaxy. It was pretty large in the eyepiece but pretty indistinct. I couldn't really see any structure.

As Alvin has said, it was a very nice evening. Not quite shorts and a T-shirt weather but not very cold either. Eight of us were there for the views. I called it a night around 12:30-1:00 since I had stuff to do Sunday but it still was a successful evening (at least visually).

Now, on to fix the issues.....

Teri