FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Re: M74 Last Saturday Night

["Brian Page" <brpage@xxxxxxx>]

What I saw was just a haze, which could have been crud on the EP, except
that when I slewed the scope it moved with the field.  I knew I had the
right field, when I found it, because of the familiar star pattern in the
finder, but I still couldn't see M74.  I must have slewed around the area
for about five minutes before I noticed the moving haze that was it.  Prior
to this, it took even longer to be sure I'd found the correct field in the
vanishing twilight.  Must've been at least 15 minutes to find the field, I
was definitely starting to get nervous about the time it was taking.  I used
a 27mm Panoptic with my C9.25 SCT, which gives around a three-quarter degree
field at ~90x, in fact I never took this EP out the whole night.

BRP


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Polakis" <polakis@xxxxxxx>
To: <AZ-Observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 12:11 PM
Subject: [AZ-Observing] M74 Last Saturday Night


> AJ's unofficial count has 14 people seeing all 110 Messier objects last
> Saturday night -- 15 if you include one person who didn't get the form in
> on time.  That means all of these people managed to see M74, which had to
> have been at the very end of its observing window.  I wonder if folks can
> describe what they saw.
>
> For the first two objects, I dragged my scope 50 feet away from my car to
> gain a western horizon that was unimpeded by camper shells and tents.  I
> also set up my laptop computer running MegaStar at a spot next to my
> 10-inch scope, and zoomed in on a 1-degree star field around M74.  A
> couple faint field stars pointed roughly toward the position of M74, where
> the faint, barely non-stellar core of the galaxy turned up.  I could never
> see the surrounding haze of the spiral arms in my scope, though next to
> me, Frank Kraljic's scope hinted at it.
>
> M74 only became visible when the last detectable twilight had descended
> from the western sky.  It remained visible for five minutes or so before
> abruptly fading as it shone through more horizon crud.  I wonder if it
> would have been visible on the night of the 30th.  As everybody noticed,
> M77 was downright easy thanks to its very bright core.
>
> Tom
>
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