FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Sentinel-Schwaar revisited

["Peter Argenziano" <pargenz@xxxxxxx>]

It seems to have been a very long time since I had as nice an observing
session as I did last night at Sentinel. It was breezy with streaky clouds
before sunset, but the wind calmed and the skies soon cleared. Transparency
was somewhat soft all night and seeing was not great... but the combination
of good company and plenty of lists to work on kept me going until 05:00.
There was a light wind for an hour or so after 01:00 that proved bothersome
as I studied Saturn, but it calmed down shortly after 02:00 The last time I
checked the thermometer before climbing into the truck it was 38° F. The
mirror in my 18 stayed within 4° of ambient all night long.
A beautiful crescent Moon (Venus too) provided entertaining views as I
waited for darkness. Mars, Neptune and Saturn rounded out the solar system
targets of the night.

As I continued work on Tom's Celestial Portraits list, I knocked off the
Crystal Ball PNe in Taurus (NGC 1514), Hind's Variable Nebula, open cluster
NGC 1817, and the Flame Nebula. I also enjoyed looking at the visually
unremarkable Horsehead in two scopes (thanks Joe).

I was able to observe seven objects on my edge-on galaxies list (5 in UMa,
1 in Sex, 1 in Ant). While observing NGC 3917 (edge-on spiral) I hopped
over to NGC 3953 (face-on spiral) to enjoy the contrast of positioning.

I also made great progress on my list of open clusters, observing two dozen
(in Cas, Cam, Per, And, Ori and Tau). The most noteworthy was NGC 1502 in
Camelopardalis. This bright, arrowhead shaped grouping of about 22 stars
contains two with a slight greenish tint (maybe it was my eyes?) and lies
just off the end of Kemble's Cascade.

My planetary nebulae list is down to four after observing nine on this
outing.

I also observed all six dark nebulae in Taurus on my Barnard list.

And rounding out the night's activities was a test run with an eyepiece:
the 3mm - 6mm Nagler zoom (thanks Tom). I am working my way through a list
of 100 Hickson galaxy groups, and wanted to test out this eyepiece for just
such a task. It performed admirably and was considerably more convenient
(not to mention less costly) than having four separate oculars in this
range. For example, this eyepiece (in conjunction with the Hickson Group
Observer's Guide by Alvin Huey) made realtively easy work of Hickson 10 in
Andromeda... especially the small, faint spindle D-component (NGC 542).

While some complained of the cold, I was quite toasty in my winter gear
(UnderArmour ColdGear is great stuff).
Already looking forward to the next night out!

Peter

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