[AZ-Observing] Some Notes From Cherry Road

With a large group of others staying up until the late a.m. hours, I set up
my 20-inch scope at Cherry Road, about halfway from Phoenix to Flagstaff.
I spent the first couple hours viewing objects in Coma Berenices, and the
last couple hours in Cepheus.  Some observations from Cepheus appear below.

A couple hardware notes: I'm finally content with the tracking.  I recently
switched to an early-model equatorial platform built by Tom Osypowski in
the 1980's.  For reasons of transport and interchangeability, I'm much
happier with hoisting the entire scope with baseboard onto the platform.
If you have a Dob, a tracking platform is the best accessory you could get.
 Also, I am going to finally succumb to those who tell me I need a fan on
at the primary at all times.  This is more my resistance to change than
anything, but the 5" stellar discs that turned up at high power yet again
were enough to convince me.

And an all-sky note: I don't think that gravity waves are a rare phenomena,
as we saw them again.  See Gordon Garradd's photos and a brief description
at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gjg/agw1.htm.  Around midnight, these
faint layered bands were visible to several others once I pointed them out.


At the western edge of Cepheus, NGC 7023 is a fine reflection nebula
surrounding an 8th-magnitude star.  The haze is about 5' across and filled
with clumpy detail.  In a way it resembles a spiral galaxy, with thin
strips of nebulosity oriented north-south on the eastern and western edges.
 The central star is slightly offset from the brightest nebulosity, which
is an oval, 1' long, and oriented north-south.  Just south of this section
is a faint clump.  Megastar erroneously plots NGC 7023 as a star cluster
just to the nebula's west, and labels the nebula as LBN 487.  The SIMBAD
astronomical database (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/Simbad
) says that NGC 7023 and LBN 487 are the same nebula.

One of the most northerly deep-sky objects, at declination +85 degrees, is
the open cluster NGC 188.  It is among the ten oldest open clusters, with
an age approaching that of the youngest globulars.  With brightest stars
only around magnitude 13, this one really shone in the large aperture.  The
cluster appeared well detached from a rich star field, about 9' across, and
tightly packed with about 60 stars.  At 250x, the cluster was fully
resolved, showing no sign of a background glow of unresolved stars.

I could have used better seeing conditions for IC 1454, a planetary nebula
near Gamma Cephei.  This one was pretty easily seen as a uniform, circular
disc about 30" across, showing a hazy edge.  At 250x with a nebula filter,
the planetary seemed to be showing a darker center, and a look at the
digitized Sky Survey bears this out.

NGC 7076 is a faint planetary nebula near Alpha Cephei.  I saw it as 30"
across, circular, and with a sharp edge.  What I noted as a possible bright
enhancement on the east edge shows up on the Sky Survey as a faint star.

Not far away is NGC 7139, another planetary.  This one is a bit easier, a
40" circular disc with a diffuse edge that appeared to show some central
mottling, but no central star.  The Sky Survey shows a brighter rim (so
much for my "diffuse edge") and a patchy internal structure.

NGC 7380, near Delta Cephei, is a nicely defined open cluster of 11th to
15th magnitude stars.  My notes say it had an equilateral triangle shape
about 7' on a side.  A clump of faint stars appears on the east edge.

Finally, Gyulbudhadhian's Nebula, one of my pet projects (see
http://www.psiaz.com/polakis/deepsky/gyul.html) made a faint appearance.
In repeated viewings it has either taken on a nearly circular shape or a
fan shape similar to Hubble's Variable Nebula.  My "guess" this time around
(did I mention it is faint?) was that the shape is almost circular, similar
to that in Vickers' CCD Atlas.  Fresh from a Southern viewing trip, I noted
that it lies next to an asterism that looks like Crux minus Epsilon Crucis.

In addition to the targets in Coma and Cepheus, I had great views through a
number of other telescopes.  So often the problem with well attended star
parties is the decision of whether to enjoy my own observing program or
tour the field and look through other scopes.  I know... a real problem to
have.

Tom

---

Tom Polakis
Tempe, AZ
Arizona Sky Pages
http://www.psiaz.com/polakis/
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