[AZ-Observing] Sentinel Saturday Night

Well, at long last we had a night worth staying up for. I arrived with Steve 
Perry about 1630 and there were already about 17 cars at the site. By night 
fall our count was up to 22, quite a good turnout.  My expectations were buoyed 
by AJ who told me that the previous night was good.
First thing on the agenda was to take a peek at comet T7 LINEAR, now residing 
in Pisces just east of the Great Square of Pegasus. An Easy starhop off Gamma 
Peg and I was rewarded with the nicest comet I've seen since Ikea-Zhang. A 
Bright concentrated core was surrounded to about 5 minutes with a gradually 
diminishing haze. The was an obvious tail even at low power about 10 minutes 
long 
and about 5 min wide. The tail was oriented to the NE. I gradually increased 
power to 200x at which there were several dark spots within the hazy part of 
the Coma and possibly the hint of an anti tail? At least one other observer (I 
forget who also thought there might be an anti tail). I stayed on this for 
quite a while and made several drawings at various powers. I also looked at it 
through several other scopes, including Steve Coe's 11' Nextstar, Rick 
Rotramels 
scope (I'm not sure what size he was using last night) among others. 

Next on the agenda was to get a few observations in Perseus., so AJ has 
something to write about this month :). This gave an opportunity to break in 
the 
new Orion Expanse Eyepieces my wife had Santa bring me.  Open Cluster NGC 957 
was seen at 200x (6mm Expanse) as a fairly loose concentration of stars about 
10' across in a roughly pentagonal shape. There were about 20 fairly bright 
stars and a slightly mottled haze toward the center. The cluster seem a bit 
elongated E-W.

Open Cluster NGC 1245 was a seen as a circlet of bright stars surrounding a 
mottled haze, which made it stand out from the busy starfield. The cluster was 
about 10 min across and gave up the most detail at 133x (9mm Expanse).

The nightly enigma was NGC 1605. This is listed as an open cluster of 5' 
diameter at mag 10.7. It is within 2 degrees of NGC 1582. I kept looking for a 
small knot of stars among the rich starfield but all I seemed to find were two 
groupings of 4 stars about 1' apart. Nothing in the area suggested a cluster. I 
used the ETX 60 to try to match the starfield and Finally after discussing it 
with AJ, he turn his Sky Commander to it. I eventually drew the starfield I 
had, which didn't really seem to match what I saw in AJ's Scope. Turns out I 
drew the correct field Although where SkyMap shows the cluster, there are no 
star 
plotted, the closest thing to a cluster is jus to the edge of the cluster 
symbol. The best thing I'll say for this was it'll make you appreciate NGC 
1582, 
which is an odd shaped cluster nearby. The cluster is basically two chains of 
stars curving around each other in a sort of Ying/Yang pattern, The western 
chain is longer (about 20') and more defined, with about six bright stars 
including a nice double. The eastern chain takes a little more imagination to 
see 
and is maybe 5' long. 

Around midnight I was finally able to finish my SAC 110 Best of the NGC's 
with NGC 2440 in Puppis. This planetary was found with a careful starhop from 
M46 
and with some blinking of the O-III. At 200 x with the O-III it was your 
typical planetary, Pretty bright, small, and round.   

Over the course of the evening, between observations I enjoyed the usual good 
conversation with many folks (you know who you are:)). I also let Steve Coe 
try out my new eyepiece and we compared them against the Orion ED series that 
Steve has. We both agreed they give a nice dark contrasty view with a flat 
field. They also have excellent eye relief. The wide field (66deg apparent FOV) 
takes in quite a bit of sky as well. My wife was please to know I enjoyed using 
them. The range in focal lengths (20mm, 15mm, 9mm& 6mm) offers a good variety 
of powers as well.

I finally called it a night about 0330, got a good 4 hours rest and enjoyed a 
breakfast with Steve P at the Space Age Inn. After all the lousy observing 
weather we've had, It was sure nice to get in a solid night.

Clear Skies
Rick Tejera
Editor SACnews
Saguaro Astronomy Club
Phoenix, Arizona
SaguaroAstro@xxxxxxx
www.saguaroastro.org


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