August 20/21, 2009: Plettstone

Carter Scholz

I had such a good time up at Plettstone this weekend, and it's been too long since I posted an OR. Last month I had an awesome time at Bumpass Hell with Greg LaFlamme, Mark Johnston, and Scott Baker -- my first time there, and thank you all for including me -- and even an add-on night afterwards with Greg and Scott at Lake Sonoma -- but I didn't make the time to get my notes in order. Partly because my note-taking method was in transition, as described below. This is a kind of make-up, for whatever it's worth...

20 Aug 09. Plettstone. 12.5". Arrived about 6 pm to find Albert Highe and Dan Foy and his daughter Amber already there, Albert with his strut 16", Dan with his Meade 12" Dob. I came with a sheaf of prints for specific objects in Luginbuhl & Skiff's Observing Handbook. This is a new method I wanted to try. Astroplanner is scriptable, so I wrote a script to print a three-panel sheet (45-degree sky view, 5-degree finder view, and 30-minute Digital Sky Survey photo) for every object I wanted to observe. The idea is to save going back and forth between a list of objects with coordinates and Uranometria (and too often also Pocket Sky Atlas, when I'm in an "empty quarter" of Urano). I'd like to have just one binder open on my music stand with everything I need to starhop right there. I started out chasing some galaxies in Libra down into the west. All observations with 8mm Vixen Lanthanum widefield, giving 200x.

MCG-02-39-007: G Lib; very faint, barely held direct, no detail; glimpse of stellar core and of some faint nearby field stars
5878: G Lib; fairly large, fairly dim, elong 3:1, brighter core comes and goes with seeing, hint of a bar?
5915: G Lib; fairly bright, irreg core, extensive halo
5916: G Lib; in same field with 5915; barely visible averted
5916A: G Lib; in same field with 5915; small slash, very near field star but not involved
5858: G Lib; fairly bright small oval, suddenly brighter core; halfway between 2 stars, one of them dual
5861: G Lib; in same field as 5858; much larger, low and even surface brightness
5812: G Lib; oval, bright, concentrated core
5645: G Vir; faint streak comes and goes with seeing; slightly elongated EW, no detail
5936: G Ser; hazy faint circle, somewhat brighter core
5957: G Ser; very faint but held direct; in field of 4 stars like tail of Cygnus (head of cross)
5962: G Ser; bright oval core, extensive halo, a hint of structure
5970: G Ser; mod faint, even oval; slightly brighter core
5984: G Ser; very difficult; glimpsed as a slash with averted
So much for the southwest. These targets sinking into haze, I turned south for a few in Sagittarius:
Markarian 38: OC Sgr; pattern identified in very rich field (within M24)
6590: neb Sgr; two stars embedded in conspicuous haze thicker to the east
6589: neb Sgr; less conspicuous, even glow
Took a break to look at Pluto in Michelle's 8" Tak Mewlon in the observatory. Then we slewed to Neptune; I wasn't able to detect Triton, not knowing where it was, and the seeing a bit soft. I had seen both Pluto and Triton easily from Bumpass last month, with the help of charts and altitude.
Trumpler 32: OC Ser; about 10 stars resolved over haze
6631: OC Sct; 12-15 stars resolved over haze
Who loves very small open clusters? Especially in the Scutum star cloud? I took to checking them off once I confirmed the pattern against DSS, unless I saw something noteworthy: Ruprecht 141, Ru 142, Ru 143, Ru 144, Tr 34.
6649: OC Sct; about 15 resolved stars, very pretty spatter
Moving closer to zenith:
6772: PN Aql; with O3 filter a reasonably bright oval, hint of annulus
6778: PN Aql; with O3 small bright round, 5' west of mag 8 star
6954: G Del; faint oval, no detail, barely held direct
Berkeley 45: OC Aql; two resolved or foreground stars over faint glow
7046: G Equ; small oval, not too faint, direct vision, stellar core
6951: G Cep; direct, core distinctly brighter, extensive halo, some structure -- nice
7133: neb Cep; group of 4 stars equal brightness (plus one dimmer) wrapped in nebulosity
7139: PN Cep; dim, hint of structure w/o filter; O3 doesn't improve it much
7127: OC Cyg; oh happy happy, an open cluster in Cygnus; a signal/noise problem...
And so forth with the OCs: 7226, IC 1434, 7245, IC 1442, 7261, 7281.
7354: PN Cep; bright w/o filter; round; thicker to NE; not much different with O3
A very pleasant t-shirt evening. It stayed above 70F all night. SQM readings hovered around 21.40.

21 Aug 09. Plettstone. 12.5". Rashad al-Mansour, Mark Wagner and Richard Navarette arrived this afternoon. I think it has been a year since I saw them last, also at Michelle's. We sat around chatting and enjoying the shade under the big tree in front of the house for an hour or so. Rashad gave me my first close look at a Kindle. As a confirmed book person I was dubious, but it looked awfully good, clearly legible under full sun. If it can do user PDFs, I might be a convert.
After sunset I crawled into my tent for an hour or two of shuteye. I continued with targets from L&S, starting with those low in the southern and western sky about to vanish for the year. All observations with 8mm Vixen Lanthanum W giving 200x.
6506: OC Sgr; this inconspicuous OC is not cataloged in Uranometria. Checking Steve Gottlieb's observing notes, our font of knowledge for all things NGC, he gives the equivalency ESO 521-SC6, and writes, "John Herschel's description for N6506 probably applies to the entire low power milky way field and this object is listed as nonexistent in the RNGC." I certainly saw the entire low power field, and matched patterns to DSS; am less certain that I perceived the "several radially aligned strings" described in L&S.
Cr 394: OC Sgr; large, spread-out, obvious even in finder
5566: G Vir; considerably bright, elong 3:1, brighter rounder core
5560: G Vir; 50% averted; elongated but not slash-like; same field as 5566
5576: G Vir; about 30' SSE of 5566; 3:1 elong, bright core, extensive halo; dim field star 2' to NW
5574: G Vir; same field as 5576; small, moderately dim, elongated 4:1, PA similar to 5577 but slightly more SW
5577: G Vir; same field as 5576; hardest of the 3 in field; 30-50% averted, elongated 4:1
5584: G Vir; very tough; low, even surface brightness and very low in sky; barely detected relative to field stars
5638: G Vir; bright oval, shows very slight elong
5636: G Vir; 3' N of 5638; maybe a glimpse of this <10% avert
5668: G Vir; faint even glow, v. low in sky
5806: G Vir; large bright slash
5839: G Vir; bright, small, round
Many targets left in Virgo and Libra, but too low in the sky to pursue. Moving on...
6741: PN Aql; "Phantom Streak"; v. small dim PN at one end of the hypotenuse of a right triangle of stars separated by 3-4'. Appears as dimmest of the 3 stars, slightly nonstellar. With O3 filter it becomes the brightest of the three.
Along with several of the Virgo galaxies, this object has incorrect coordinates as listed in Astroplanner's "AP DSO" catalog. The signs of the declinations are flipped, but because the objects are within half a degree of the equator, the error is not at once obvious. This is where it pays to have another source like Uranometria available alongside my object sheets. Paul Rodman confirmed to me that there are "many" errors in that catalog and in the AP stellar catalog. These errors are propagated in the plan I posted (and use) to the AP site as "LSOH", so entries in this plan derived from the AP catalogs should be suspect.
6735: neb Aql; even nebulosity around mag 7 star (not in L&S; target of opportunity nearby 6741, noticed in Urano while confirming 6741)
6196: G Her; easily seen oval, near-stellar core; one of an interesting group just west of M13
6199: G Her; in same field as 6196
6194: G Her; in same field as 6196
IC 4614: G Her; in same field as 6196; glimpsed
6702: G Her; bright core pulsing with the seeing
6703: G Her; same field as 6702; more concentrated, brighter
Aquarius culminating now, I turned there. There was a small amount of thin cloud low in the south.
7184: G Aqr; beautiful spiral structure, brighter elongated core, star at the E end of the halo
7252: G Aqr; bright core, seeing poor through thin cloud
7314: G Aqr; mod large, even SB, elong NS, star off W edge
7377: G Aqr; elliptical, mod brt core
7218: G Aqr; some structure trying to show, though hard to tell because at least 2 stars are involved in the view
7302: G Aqr; elongated stellaring
7309: G Aqr; somewhat elusive; traces of a slightly brighter core within a faint glow
7371: G Aqr; brighter core, 2 stars involved in halo
7600: G Aqr; pretty small oval, somewhat brighter core
7721: G Aqr; big swath of dim light with glimpse of brighter core
7585: G Vir; moderately bright circle, considerably brighter core
The thin cloud was now sending streamers up toward zenith, so I gave up on the south and turned north.
7538: neb Cep; substantial haze around 2 stars; DSS shows much mottling, but this was not apparent
King 21: OC Cas; pattern confirmed against DSS
7762: OC Cas; many lines of stars against mostly unresolved background
King 12: OC Cas; yawn
More unremarkable OCs in Cas: Harvard 21, Berkeley 58, King 14, NGC 366
Tonight was even warmer than last night. The cloud in the west and south at dusk came and went in the south all night; at worse, some streamers went up toward zenith, but the east and north remained clear. SQM readings slightly worse than last night, never better than 21.40.
I should learn the Trumpler classification system for OCs, and see if that increases my interest in the tiny ones. I share Michelle's appreciation for the optically excellent OCs, but I'm missing something, at the eyepiece, in the rest.
The Astroplanner page method seems to be a success. I sort the pages by Urano chart number, then by RA west to east. I work that small part of the sky until I'm done, or it's too low, and then move on to the next group of pages. If I need to doublecheck something in Urano, its chart number is right there on the page. There's space on each page for observing notes, fortuitously on the right margin for this southpaw. I might try adding a fourth panel, with a 30-minute sky chart; it can be difficult to suss star magnitudes from the DSS plate. The only downside to the method is that it takes considerable preparation time. Downloading DSS plates directly within Astroplanner is easy; but sorting and printing objects, at least in the Mac version, is very time-consuming.

22 Aug 09. Saturday, clouds built up during the day; it was pretty well overcast by 2 pm. I stayed long enough to greet Rich Ozer and chat, and ogle Michelle's book ASTRONOMICA, but I didn't stay for the barbecue. I bailed and came home to nurse my wife sick with flu. I hope everyone who stayed had a good time eating Paul's famous burgers, and observing or not. As always, huge thanks to Michelle and Paul for hosting. And to everyone else for such good company. What a wonderful place to observe. What wonderful people to observe with.