With my work and Liam's schedule, once again we
had Saturday night for CalStar. Actually works
out fine, it's fun and stress-free. As noted, the
company was fantastic. Having listed the folks
who showed up by surprise, it'd be hard to list
the fun and great company with folks who were
expected. I had the great good luck to be
observing next to Nilesh Shah, Rashad Al-Mansour,
Jim Everitt, Mark Wagner and Jeff Blanchard.
Good shared eyepiece views and some gutsplitting
humor.
I had a 3-item observing list. First off as you'd
better remember was NGC 300, a close-by galaxy
down in Sculptor, the last item on the Edmund's
Mag 6 atlas north of -45°. There was a fair
amount of extinction in the south most of the
night, and that bugger was tough. Joe Bob sat by
and commiserated, then confirmed the view.
Sauntered off saying, "Don't wanna make you feel
bad, Jamie, but that's a binocular object from
Bolivia." From the south end of the Salinas
Valley it was broad and diffuse, no visible
nucleus, looked to be ca 24' by 16'.
These are the adventures of Felix, a Celestron
11" f/4.5 Dobs with optics made by Discovery
Telescopes. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig,
10mm and 6mm Radians.
Had started with with 6535, a globular I'd missed
just into Serpens from Ophiuchus, the one
Gottlieb had mentioned that the Herschels missed,
was discovered by John Hind in 1852. It popped
into the 16mm, best in the 10. Granular, almost
round, could see 6 brightest stars in the core. 3
foreground stars in a pretty row along the
western edge. Then I got feisty and went looking
for Palomar 11. The one Palomar globular I'd yet
found was Pal 8, easy from Bumpass summer '02.
Number 11 was not in Felix. Blanchard had some
time and was gracious about joining the hunt with
his 14.5. With some work, it showed in the
Starmaster as a broad diamond, visible dimly to
averted vision when jiggling the scope. I didn't
feel so bad.
On the way to 300, the Sculptor Dwarf was right
along the hop. I'd just read Warrior Planet, a
space opera Liam had said was a fun read. He was
right, and the malefactors in that book have come
into the main disk of the Milky Way from, you
guessed it, the Sculptor Dwarf. The angle and
dimensions were right, it looked long with some
skeins of structure. 280 kly away. That gives me
12 objects in the Local Group. More on that later.
By then I was done with dim stuff. 3rd item on
the wishlist was Struve 2816, the pretty triple
in Cepheus. Sure enough, Struve 2819, a bright
close double, is in the same apparent field.
Later spent time staring at M33, picking out the
brightest 3 HII regions. Further study pending.
Saturn took a while, gorgeous around 4 am,
steady, with 5 moons and every possible detail in
the disk and the rings. Blanchard and I at the
same time could clearly make out the sharp gap in
the outer ring, Encke or Keeler or what name you
like. Also sat and gazed at M42 for the first
time this year. I dunno about you, but my memory
will not capture that level of beauty. Stops me
flat cold every single time.
Joe Bob hissef understood the import of catching
NGC 300, bestowed on me a very space age HP key
fob with red LED. As TAC Awards Czar, I now give
myself credit for being the first known observer
to scour the Edmunds Mag 6 Dickinson-Costanzo
atlas. 233 DSO's past the NGC. NGC 300 is my
734th extended deepspace object. 77 globular
clusters, 3 of 'em in other galaxies. Not taking
credit for that amazing cluster Everitt ran down
in 6946.
Side note. Rashad Al-Mansour has hit the big
time. His light dumpster, Big Dog, with bino
viewers, is the berries. The Swan unfiltered was
3D, a knockout.
More of this.
DDK
-- Jamie Dillon <*> <mavericks@No-Spam> http://www.winepress.com/jd1.htm Live more and more in the Present which is ever beautiful and stretches away beyond the limits of the past and the future. - Meher Baba