OR - effective wishing for Peak conditions

I make a point of not saying anything about the weather gods out
loud, much less online, figuring it's best to leave such things
alone. But on Saturday as the Astro Goddess brought the blessings of
her presence to Monterey County, she announced that she'd invoked a
night of excellent conditions.

Dang, sure enough we had 6.3 limiting magnitude, with excellent
seeing, 5/5 hands down. As noted earlier this week, Charlie Wicks had
the Blue Snowball at 1000x in his 20", showing all kinds of detail.

There was a cohort of Montebellistas at the pads. Ranger Row for some
reason was empty. But there was a bunch of telescopes on Coulter Row,
and in the SW lot we had an imager named Ajay, Alan Zaza, Steve and
Jean Sergeant, Charlie, Jane of the Valley herself, Jim
Whippersnapper Everitt, the BP, the Beastmaster, and Mars. Quite a
set of what the boys used to call talent.

I spent the night alternating between planetaries in Aquila and
galaxies in Pegasus. There's an interesting combo of a PN next to a
dark nebula, 6778 next to Barnard 139. The PN itself is blue and
stellar, took an OIII to blink and identify. But just to the West
there are strands of dark nebula running across the field.

This was all done with 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, with a Lumicon OIII. Sonotube, no trusses,
honest weight.

There were two galaxies in Pegasus I'd logged in SkyAtlas as still to
see. Turns out I'd worked on both before, but the comparisons were
interesting. 7553 was a no-show to me in Aug 2001. Now here's where
taking notes pays off. The conditions 3 years ago were 5.8 LM, seeing
4/5. So it wasn't just that I was a chump observer back then. Now it
looked like a wisp at 79x and 126x. At 210x a triangular shape came
out, with some concentration toward the center.

7457 is an interesting galaxy. This night is looked bilobar, like an
asymmetric peanut. Almost exactly 2 years ago it'd looked like a
pretty but well-behaved spiral, "with bright core, some swirls and
dark lanes." I will definitely go back to this one and get views on
various nights.

Category also turned out to be non-linear. Mark while looking at it
said, "Sure looks like a spiral." It kind of did to me, along with
the peanut shape. But SkyAtlas Companion labels it Ep, a peculiar
elliptical, as does Sky Catalogue 2000. Gottlieb's NGC+, in the
version I have, labels it E-SO, a lenticular elliptical.

OK, so as not to be helpless, I answered both my own questions.
Looked at the POSS image tonight, and there are two foreground stars,
each right in the middle of what I was seeing as a lobe. This must
have made for the impression of a pinched waist. Saturday night, I
looked the thing up in SkyAtlas Companion and it mentioned an
anonymous neighbor galaxy. So I got onto thinking these were two
close galaxies, with two tiny stellar cores, like a mini Whirlpool.
The neighbor is actually a ways off in the POSS image.

The POSS image shows 7457 to be a nice normal spiral, as did my
earlier observation. And NED, as well as UM2000, lists the type as SA
(rs) O-?. That is, nonbarred spiral, ringed and S-shaped both, maybe
lenticular. One more example of the complexity of life in the New
General Catalogue.

  - Side note to Colvin regarding galaxy details. 6503 isn't an
elliptical but a very fancy spiral, was my jump up and down object in
July '03. And 7479 certainly deserves a place on the Eye Candy List.
You should wash your mouth out with soap for suggesting otherwise;
it's a complex barred spiral with distinct arms. Raw sex.

And back to Saturday night, all praise to the Star Queen for bringing
such a great night.

More of this next Saturday!

DDK

-- 
Jamie Dillon <mavericks@No-Spam> <*>
"Brookshire had passed beyond the world of ledgers,
into a world of space and wind, of icy nights
and brilliant stars ..." from McMurtry's Streets of Laredo