FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Visual observation of McNeil's nebula in 16" dob.

[Joe Larkin <joeclarkin@xxxxxxxxx>]

The conditions last night (Evening of 2/14/04) at Vekol Road were far
from optimal. It started out cloudy and graduated to hazy with clear
patches in the late evening.

Jon Christensen and I were the only ones out there. He was set up for
photography with a Tak 210mm (I think) F3 Newt Astrograph with Ross
corrector and ST-8 Camera.

I had my new-to-me 16" dob and a printout of the finder chart
provided by Tom Polakis.

As the thicker clouds cleared out, I observed the M78 area. M78 was
of course easy, and the brighter parts of NGC 2071 and 2067 were not
too difficult. But the conditions weren't good enough to spot the
nebula. 

Jon wanted to try for the nebula with his setup. I helped him by
pointing his scope at M78. He took some very short exposures to find
the correct field and the new nebula jumped right out, even under
adverse conditions! 

The skies were getting better so I did some other mostly casual
observing. I spotted IC 2003, a bright but small round planetary in
Perseus. Maybe 7", round, and perhaps a bit blue. Spotted it at 90x
pretty easily, but was better at 145x. I also tried for, but didn't
spot, NGC 1465, a small edge on galaxy in Perseus. The transparency
still wasn't great.

Conditions improved a bit, and I went back to the M78 region. More
nebulousity was visible including NGC 2064. This whole region
contains a lot of complicated nebulousity. 

I thought that higher power might help, so I put in a 7mm UO Ortho,
yielding about 300x. I a nebulous spot in what I thought was the
correct location. However, I couldn't spot the 15 magnitude double
nearby. I did see one star, but not a pair. I then realized I was
spotting the star with the comma shaped nebulousity that can be seen
at the very edge of the finder image on the bottom right. Guide
version 6 shows this nebula as HH24.

From there I moved back to the correct area but didn't conclusively
see anything. The power was too high and the field too narrow to be
sure I was looking at the right spot.

I put in my 14mm Meade UWA. This gave half the maginfication and a
much large field because of the 84 degrees apparent field.

At this power I could see M78, NGC 2067, and HH24 in the same field.
I spotted the correct part of the field by using HH24 and the bright
star near NGC 2067 and 2064. I still couldn't see the 15 mag double,
but I did see a small nebulous patch in the correct location. Jon was
able to confirm this, but found it easier at lower power using a 22mm
Panoptic. 

I think that transparency was never quite perfect and it would have
been a bit easier with better conditions. The nebula was harder to
spot than HH24. HH24 wasn't bright but there was clearly nebulousity
around a star. The wide pair of stars to the lower left of HH24 on
the finder chart were of comparable brightness to HH24, but showed no
nebulousity.

Jon took a few exposures of the new nebula while I was looking for it
visually. He took some exposures with colored filters so hopefully he
can make a decent color composite, but the sky wasn't totally
cooperative.  



Joe Larkin

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