[AZ-Observing] Observing report....honest
- From: "Steve Coe" <stevecoe@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <amastro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 00:10:15 -0700
Hello all;
Well, Friday was not a great night, but it was good enough for three photon
starved observers.
Matt Luttinen, Andrew Goodwin and I set up at the Saguaro Astronomy Club's
close in site about 60 miles west of central Phoenix, Az. I had my Nexstar 11,
Andrew had his 10 inch f/4.7 Newtonian from Orion and Matt was trying out first
light for an 8 inch f/4 that he finished the work on at about 4:30 that
afternoon.
The cloud cover kind of came and went, overall I would rate the transparency at
4 out of 10, the Milky Way was visible, but not good.
We looked at old favorites for a while, once the clouds parted enough to allow
some viewing and the crescent Moon has set. You could tell that the sky was
mushy immediately from the lack of faint outer detail in the Lagoon Nebula.
So, we did some open clusters and just realized that the faintest members were
not going to show up in the eyepiece.
However, M 17 is high enough surface brightness that it was nice in Andrew's
scope, even without any filter.
I spent some time with Matt's 8 inch RFT, he had a Paracorr "permanently"
installed and it helped that f/4 light cone provide some very good images. My
favorite views where when we put my 22mm Panoptic into the scope, but I am
prejudiced. M 11 was fascinating, not only lots of stars, but the dark nebulae
that surround this cluster are very obvious even on a poor to mediocre night.
With a 2 degree field in the Panoptic there was lots to see. Big open
clusters.....M 7, IC 4756 in Serpens and M 39 all stood out well in the short
focus 8 incher. That wide of field of view is lots of fun.
I took notes on two clusters in Cygnus, using the Nexstar 11.
NGC 6866 at 115X was pretty bright, pretty large and considerably compressed.
I counted 29 stars of magnitudes 11 and fainter. There is a triple star at one
edge, it is just split at this power.
NGC 6819 was rich, compressed and it composed of a "V" shape of the brightest
stars in the cluster with a rich glow of faint members in the background.
Averted vision makes a really obvious difference with this cluster. Direct
vision shows the brighter stars and averted brings out the faint background
glow, an interesting effect. I counted 48 stars at 115X, they go from
magnitudes 11 and fainter.
After a while going after a variety of targets, we took a final look at the
Andromeda Galaxy and the Ring Nebula and called it a night.
Sometimes....ya just gotta go scopin'.....it was nice that the clouds did let
us observe at least for a while.
"Whur it worth the trouble?" and Jeremiah Johnson says "What trouble?"
Clear Skies to us all;
Steve Coe
Author "Deep Sky Observing--The Astronomical Tourist"
Published by Springer-Verlag
Saguaro Astronomy Club site: www.saguaroastro.org
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