November 14, 2009: Dinosaur Point

Jamie Dillon

There was a decent crowd that night at Dino, including Joe Bob, Albert, Julien, Peter N, George F, David Cooper, Chris Kelly who walked down from the gate, Eric Schrader, Andy Macika a new guy, Al Howard an addicted imager, and others. Was good and dark, 6.3 limiting magnitude for me. Seeing was moderate, 3/5, expected for Dino.

I caught up for the first time with ngc 1569 a DeepMap galaxy in the wild wastes of Camelopardalis, looked very much like a comet. It's close at 4 million ly. Also brand new to me was IC 3568, a planetary, also a DeepMap object in Cam. Showed concentric swirls, interesting.

The big work of the night was going over M33 with a fine-tooth comb. There are a lot of bright knots we can see with at least medium-sized scopes in that Local Group galaxy. I caught 5 of 'em, ngc 604, 595, 592, 588 and IC 136. Julien very kindly gave me a finderchart he'd printed for imbedded objects in M33. Luginbuhl and Skiff has a big finderchart, with every available knot. Julien's was pared down to plausible members for our scopes. This was serious fun. M33 goes on and on, it's a particular favorite of Jim Everitt's in his 15.

This was all with Felix, a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with optics made by Discovery Telescopes. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians. Ended up the night peeking into the Fornax Cluster, which had risen over the hill to the south. They are packed so tight in there.

May we have a good weekend coming up, this being February and all.
DDK