[AZ-Observing] Sentinel 27-28 Dec 2002
- From: Andrew Cooper <acooper@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: AZ-Observing mailing list <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 14:30:40 -0700
My thanks to Steve Coe, AJ, Thad and others for welcoming me to Sentinel
Friday night. I decided to take the drive to the low desert for a few
degrees more comfort and to see friends I see all too seldom from the
Phoenix clubs. I hadn't been to the Sentinel site before and had to
check it out after all I had heard on this list, well worth the trip! A
nice site, very dark, comparable to the Chiricahuas. Low horizons in
all directions and the light dome of Phoenix is present but unobtrusive
in the NE. Not very cold either, everyone who had been there the
previous night had said it had gotten quite bitter, but Friday was nice,
never got chilled, without resorting to snowmobile boots ;) But I did
have my heavy capilene undershirt. The lack of any noticable breeze helped.
The road in was just fine! None of these washouts and branches everyone
has been complaining about! I didn't so much as jostle my 18".
Observed all of the H400 objects in Cassiopea, too many open clusters!
I was not the only one working on Cas and the comments floating between
scopes were sometimes less than complimentary. A galaxy in Cas? Yes,
there are two on the H400 list! NGC 185 and NGC 278. That came as a
surprise. All told I sketched and observed about 24 objects on my H400 oddessy.
Jupiter and Saturn, High and beautiful, Saturn's rings near max open,
seeing just a little fuzzy, enough to blur fine detail, I gave it a 6 or
7/10 most of the evening.
IC 413 Almost stellar planetary in Lepus, very sharp stellar core
(central star?) with a small halo. bright, but need to search with
higher power (150+) to recognize from a star. No wonder Herschel missed
this one, despite its brightness, and it was found later to end up on
the IC instead of the main NGC.
B33 (The Horsehead) several observers with different sized scopes
attempted this with Orion high on the meridian, with my 18" and a UHC
filter is was an easy target. With averted vision the dark nebula
became sharper and the horse outline could be well distiguished except
under the horses "chin". Without the UHC the dark cloud was a shapeless
blotch on the brighter background nebula.
NGC2477 One of the Milky Way open clusters low in Puppis, a southern
skies object that is just high enough to be appreciated here in southern
Arizona. Large! not very bright but very rich, a large area filled with
a mist of fainter stars.
NGC 2451 Another low Puppis cluster, large, bright, sparse, a bright
orange star at the center.
NGC 2546 Large, sparse, fills the field with the 35mm Panoptic.
Just a few reminders to check the low southern horizon every now and the
to see what southern surprises we can just catch as they peek above the horizon.
A very good night!
Andrew
http://www.siowl.com
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Andrew Cooper
Tucson, AZ
mailto:acooper@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.whitethornhouse.com
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