[AZ-Observing] More DSO Challenge Clusters...

Just got up and cooked breakfast (at noon!?!).  Feel good, my body is 
just getting well adapted to a nocturnal schedule after four nights, one 
night left and I will have to go back to work!  I hope I am not actually 
expected to be productive when I get back Wednesday.

The night was pretty good, none of the wind that bothered Tucson and 
Phoenix area observers, just a slightly gusty breeze from time to time, 
but more calm than anything else.  No clouds except low on the northern 
horizon, transparency great, seeing better than the last couple nights 
but still not great(6/10), a high frequency fuzz blurring Jupiter's detail.

http://www.siowl.com/photos/CasitasDeGila20060528s.jpg

Stopped by old favorites and enjoyed, but the challenge in the night was 
more tough Berkeley and Palomar clusters. Some of these were as tough as 
I have ever seen, even with Violet and very dark New Mexico skies!  A 
laptop with a wireless internet connection was great, allowing me to 
call up DSS images and other data to be sure of star fields and 
identification. Using the charts and often higher magnification helped 
find and confirm these challenges...

Berkeley 44 - Just detectable as a small unresolved 5' hazy patch with 
averted vision, star field matched with DSS image, one brighter star at 
edge of cluster visible directly

Berkeley 48 - Faint, poor, coarse open cluster, matched star field with 
DSS image to confirm location, a faint 5' hazy patch visible, with 
averted vision it begins to resolve into a coarse group of stars

Berkeley 49 - Small, rather faint, resolved, a 5' patch of stars 
distinct in the Milky Way star field

Berkeley 50 - Small, faint, resolved, a 5' cluster centered on one 
brighter star, fairly difficult to locate in a very thick Milky Way star 
field, once located is fairly obvious and distinct

Berkeley 51 - Difficult to locate, matched the star field to the chart 
and found a small 5' hazy patch with averted vision, one central star is 
visible directly, faint, small, unresolved

Dolidze 1 - Star pattern matches the DSS image, no obvious cluster, the 
field is filled with very heavy Milky Way star field with knots and 
clumps of stars, but nothing at the coordinates fits. There is nothing 
on the DSS image that looks like a cluster, and nothing apparent to the 
eye with its wider dynamic range

Markarian 38 - A very small 2' triangle of stars dominated by one bright 
7 mag. star, a faint glow of unresolved stars or nebula fills the triangle

Palomar 10 - Just visible on the very edge of detection tonight even 
with excellent New Mexico skies at 5000' elevation, confirmed star field 
with DSS image, located a 5' hazy patch at correct position visible only 
with averted vision and rocking the 'scope, about as difficult as it gets!

Just one more night...

Andrew

Andrew Cooper
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.siowl.com



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