Posts Made By: Dmitri Kulginov

Sue French, the monthly S&T Deep Sky Wonders columnist, has finally published her book! She observe many DSOs with a 4.1" refractor along with her larger reflector!
Celestial Sampler: 60 Small-Scope Tours for Starlit Nights

Truely excellent book with beautiful and very usable charts! I wish it came in hard cover.

What refractor does Mrs French use?

Dmitri

Ron,

Is it a shadow of the A-ring or is it the crepe ring?

Dmitri

Barnard galaxy?

One striking feature of Sagittarius is that all its Messier global clusters look different. Some are not round and some not symmetric, please pay close attention!

Dmitri

You have a nice period of interesting exploration ahead.

I second that!

I can only add to Inge's excellent recommendation that both open and globular clusters respond well to magnification. Often I can see 5 or 6 stars in a small open cluster (for example M103) at low power, that become 10 or 15 at medium and 20 or 40 at high power. Globulars definitely like high power in small apertures.

Dmitri

Get an Ultima or TV.

Dmitri

Alan,

Ganymede was a boy and the love Jupiter had for him was not a parental kind.

Dmitri

NGC 2401 in Puppis showed me a very dim small swarm near two somewhat brighter stars. Had I mis-identified the cluster? Archinal & Hynes rates this as a 12.6-magnitude cluster of 20 stars within a 2-arcminute diameter field.

Luginbuhl and Skiff give the same values, but they also say 'looks like a typical mag.13 galaxy... the nebulous spot is about 2'.5 across and lies N and a little E of two mag. 10 stars'. Sounds just right.

Dmitri

Great shot! The 'propeller' is seen clearly.

Dmitri

Let me sing another tune here:

Karkoschka - an excellent atlas/observing guide
Luginbuhl and Skiff - perfect obs guide without pictures

Dmitri

To me a good example would be a very good help, so I'm posting one. Let's look at (randomly picked) NGC 2903.

Karkoschka:
Galaxy with bright oval center, asymmetric, relatively easy to find. It also tells you that the galaxy has magnitude 9 and surface brightness 13 per square minute of arc, its size 10', shape (elongated), type (Sc), estimate of visibility (low surface brightness but visible in 75mm), distance (25 Mly), and coordinates - all in two lines of text. It also gives you an excellent finding chart with stars to magnitude 9 and scale 1 degree/cm. Weight: 205g.

NSOG:
Galaxy Type SAB(rs)bc I-II 12.0' x 5.6', m9.0v, SB13.4 and the coordinates. There is a finding chart on the next page with stars to mag 8 and smaller scale, which makes it considerably worse than Karkoschka's. There is a nice (big!) b/w photo and 27 lines of description in three different aperture clasess. Here is one of them:
8/10" Scopes - 100x: This is one of the better objects missed by Charles Messier. A bright stellar nucleus is embedded in a large, extended core surrounded by a mottled halo that is elongated 9' x 4' NNE-SSW and has diffuse edges.
(Not so much new information in fact.) Weight of the volume 2: 1675g.

Luginbuhl & Skiff: 13 lines of text.
Dimen. 13' x 6'.6 V = 8.9 sfc. br. 13.5. Easily visible in 6cm, this bright galaxy is elongated in pa 15 deg, about 8' x 4'. The core appears very elongated and some stellarings are associated with this object. In 15cm the middle parts of the nebula appear unevenly bright. The halo grows to 10' x 4' in 25cm. A bright stellar nucleus is visible in the center, and a star is visible off the S side. The remaining 7 lines of text describe the view in 30cm. No finding chart. Weight: 1390g.

[ The copyrights are of their owners. ]

How about posting the description of 2903 from Peterson? I suggest people post the corresponding bits of their favourite guides.

Dmitri