[AZ-Observing] Re: [The Spirit of 33] All Az Star Party, OSS254, H1844, and a failed 37 Peg attempt.....

Hey all,

Saturday, Oct 13th was the day I attended the All Arizona Star Party.  This
is a report of what I managed to accomplish there.
It happened to be first light for a new 8" f/4.4, so I spent the first part
of the evening cruising through the Milky Way at 18x.
It really provided an interesting perspective to some common objects.  The
wonderful clusters, light and dark nebulae, and star clouds of Sagittarius
were already fairly low, but still gave some wonder views.  No Charts or
destinations, just a wonderful time cruising the area trying to take it all
in.
The first object I deliberately went for was IC 4756 and NGC 6633 near
Aquila.  IC 4756 is very nice at lower powers, being a very loose, open
cluster, but with many brighter components.  NGC 6633 is much more compact
comparatively, with fainter stars than 4756.  In 10x50's both are visible at
the same time and are quite a treat.  Another object I went for at such a
low power was NGC 7789, the "white rose" cluster.  At 18x, it was a fairly
round, small sparkling of diamond dust.  Plenty of resolution, but none of
the dark lanes that make it the "white rose" were visible at this low power.
While not the normal perspective for this object, it is still quite
stunning, and worth trying from time to time.  The last one I went for with
this low power was a suggestion from Kansas City astronomer Richard Harshaw,
the double star OSS254.  Being a very easy 50" plus, it was easy to spot in
the large FOV provided with the 50mm ep.  This pair was a quite colorful
ruddy orange and definite blue.  My observing neighbor, Marshall Dailey
experienced a "More yellow than orange" sight.  Bumping up the power to
around 40x gave it a bit more "red", but never looked more than a deep
orange to myself, and a "mildly orange" to Marshall.  Senors Coe and Crayon
were not present to inquire as to their perception of the object.  Anyway,
it is a neat pair worth the easy starhop.  (rated a 1 on the Harshaw scale.)
I then switched to the 8" f/6 ( I know, not that much difference, but the
4.4 I made just for the lower powers)  and looked up h1844, another Harshaw
suggestion.  This is a faint, wide pair that "supposedly" occupies the Beta
Cygni position in a Cygnus-like asterism.  Sorry Richard, I have to say it's
a bit of a stretch.  With "averted imagination" and "perverted vision", I
could see the asterism, but it was a rough reach.  I have to rate this one a
lowly 4.  I then attempted the "challenge" object 37 Pegasi.  This
sub-arcsecond ( .6" I believe) pair was spied as a double by a trio of
observers in Sena de Luna, Spain with 4" refractors in seeing of 9~10.  I
keep hoping that either I get seeing that good, or that 8" of aperature will
make up for it.  No such luck this time, the seeing never really allowed me
to get above 125x for this point source object.  I still have a month or so
before I'm banished to next year's round of attempts.

After that, it was a kind of "walkabout" through the skies.  I happened upon
1528 in Perseus with the binos, and it was a definite triangular shape which
maintained in the 8" f/6 at 54x.  About 18 7~8 mags and another 24 or so
9~10 set upon a hazy background.  Nice little find for just wandering
around.  Marshall and I kept swapping back and forth for objects to look at
and were pleasantly surprised to find the Pleiades give up it's nebulosity.
In his ETX125, and my 8" f/6, we were pretty much seeing the same thing, and
swapped 'scopes to verify.  No doubt, there were faint glows visible around
the brigher stars with definite boundaries into darker regions.  Views of
Jupiter and Saturn never really were "picutre" great, with only split
seconds of good resolution.  Did not quite see the Encke division, unlike
last month's great seeing at Sentinel.  A trip to the Trapizium did reveal
the E and F components, through the F was a bit of a challenge.  The nebula
itself was very nice, with lots of wisps and curls being obvious, and quite
extended.  We did'nt really see too much more detail through one of the
large Dobs than we did in Marshall's 125mm, through the contrast was a
"slight" bit better in the big dob.

 In all, while all the different sights made it hard to definitively
pigeon-hole the conditions, I rated the evening a 6.5 in seeing, and a 7 in
transparency.

It was quite a treat to just meander around where ever the scope pointed
without a set perogative for the evening.

Luis, the coordinates for the site were32*27.687 N, and (-)111* 43.787 W


Thad

Thad Robosson
starstarcracker@xxxxxxxxx
SAC Member, ATM subgroup Chairman,
Double star enthusiast
Owner/Operator of the future "Twin Points Observatory"
Phoenix, Arizona, USA
112 08.03W, 33 32.67N

The use of your "delete" key is authorized.

---
This message is from the AZ-Observing mailing list.  If you wish to be
removed from this list, send E-mail to: AZ-Observing-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx,
with the subject: unsubscribe.

The list's archive is at:  http://www.freelists.org/archives/az-observing

This is a discussion list.  Please send personal inquiries directly to
the message author.  In other words, do not use "reply" for personal
messages.  Thanks.

Other related posts: