Ok, Inge, you asked for it. Here's a long one featuring the southern beauties 1365, 1300, and 2477, or,
"How I Spent the Night Sitting on the Dirt."
OR 1/19/07—Lake Sonoma, north of Santa Rosa, CA. Seeing quite soft, transparency good, about mag 6. 16” f/5 dob with 27 Panoptic, 16 and 11 mm Naglers.
This appeared to be my last chance this season of a good look at ngc 1365, which I had only glimpsed once, a year and a half ago, in the pre-dawn twilight of a late August morning. Trusting in the clearskyclock, I got on the road with an hour to spare—an hour that evaporated due to a bad accident on the highway ahead of me—and I arrived about 5 minutes before the galaxy was to transit—about 7:50 local time. So I drove the last 20 minutes with a ski mask over my right eye (probably not a good idea, but I really wanted this target) and achieved a personal best for setup and collimation!
I’m not familiar with this part of the sky, and it took a few minutes to identify the two groups of upsilon-eridani, which point toward a little triangle of mag 4.5 stars (sao 194559) about 3 deg east of 1365: this group was just visible, about 15 degrees above the horizon—I was fighting the light-dome from Santa Rosa. Once I had these, the galaxy was easy to find: it showed a bright E-W bar of 5’ extent, perhaps tilting toward the WSW; the arms extended N/S from the end of the bar another 5’ each. A faint (mag 13, I guessed) star was at the tip of the northern arm—well, I didn’t quite see the arm extend this far, about 8’—I intuited it in AV with a little shaking of the cage, and may have imagined the glow of an HII region nearby—another mag 13 star nestled in the juncture of the bar and N arm about 1.5 to 2’ NW of the core; and a pair of similar stars 6’ ENE of the core were arranged N/S sep 1.5’ or so. The galaxy was best in the 16mm, though a little washed out; the 11mm did not quite let enough light in—it was one of the few times I wished for something in between (sigh). The N arm was much easier, though both arms were strongly suggested at the “corners” where they leave the bar. The S arm required AV, esp in the 11mm. This must be a spectacular galaxy in large apertures from a southern location.
To the south I spotted 1326 (sm., f brt, rd) and the pair 1316 and 1317 (1317 quite bright, 6’ south of 1316, v sm and ft.) and to north I found 1350, a hazy oval. A quick perusal (in my 27mm) of the Fornax I cluster nearby yielded 10 galaxies in a 2 degree circle—I was too lazy to dig out my detailed charts and make IDs, and I was anxious to go north to ngc 1300.
1300 appeared 5 to 6’ long, roughly EW, by 3 to 4’ high. At first glance, it seemed oval with a bright bar running the full 5’, but mottling on either side of the bar helped to define the arms, which curve back, running parallel to the bar EW on the north and south. The W edge of the northern bar is particularly well defined, but overall the S arm is brighter. The nucleus was stellar, at least in this poor seeing. Another fine galaxy.
I turned to Puppis, first to look at M46—the PN 2438 was very bright in the 11mm and showed its ring structure), and then to find 2477, a rich OC far to the south. A week ago I was in Kauai on a family vacation, with my trusty 8x40’s, and I spotted this cluster, about 2 degrees NW of zeta-puppis, not knowing its identity—clearly an open cluster, but very bright and compact, almost like a big globular in the little binoculars, and I figured it had to be a nice target in any telescope. At Lake Sonoma, it was just 10 degrees off the horizon in the heart of the Santa Rosa light dome—the only visible reference star was pi-puppis, 7 degrees to the WNW. In my binoculars I was able to identify ngc 2451 (very coarse, large, close OC), about a degree from 2477 and so point the scope. Well, it was very washed out in the glare, but evidently very rich, compact OC of about 15’ diameter, a little oblong. It must be a beauty in southern skies, perhaps comparable to M 37.
Other objects visited: Orion: M42 (duh! Fabulous, the wings curved around into a full circle of about 50’ diameter, broken only toward iota-Ori—when I placed the trapezium at the edge of my 16mm, the entire field of 40 minutes was filled with nebulosity of varying density); ngc 1977 et al, the nebulosity around the northern part of the sword, very pronounced, running EW in layers; the flame nebula (2024) very bright, in two lobes separated by a N/S dark streak, the easterly lobe showing 3 dark fingers--I preferred the unfiltered view in the 16mm to the UHC; 2023, a bright nebula about the mag 8 star sao 132464 just south of zeta-Ori near the horsehead. Ursa Major, galaxies near the two paws: 2639, NE of iota-UM, f brt, elong 2:1, and little (mag 13) 2684, a smudge 1 deg NW of iota-UM; at the southern paw, just W of mu-UM, 3184, a face on spiral: it showed (in the 16mm) a circular, fairly bright, featureless haze of 7’ diameter, with slight central brightening. And of course M81 and 82.
Best wishes,
George
p.s. I finished at 10:30 with a look at Saturn. It was a mess. I guess the moral is you can have a lot of fun even with mediocre seeing.
