OR Eridanus

The Saturday after CalStar 6, that being 8
October, moonset was right around 10, weather
looked good, so off to the Peak it was. Up in the
SW lot, Joe Bob was already set up with his
PortaBall. There were two guys from Orion
Telescope, Ariel and Steve, and Ron of FPOA with
his C14. Over across the way, Gleason was holding
down Ranger Row, Hawley was in front of the
Observatory, and Marko S. and Ron Dammann were
running the 30". Zaza and the Chaser had posted
OR's but were no show; still tacitly figuring
they're OK.

It was decent till midnight, then got real good.
Seeing was good, 4/5, not breathtaking, but the
limiting magnitude improved to 6.1. I hadn't
looked in Eridanus with a telescope since
February, 2003. Some winter we had last year.
There it was, The River looping from west of
Orion, down into the South. Tons of galaxies
there, many of them in close groups.

I stayed in one area and scooped up a set of new
ones. Prettiest was ngc 1700, round with swirls
and a bright core. Commented in my log, "more
like it," after several dimmer ones like IC 382.
Had a discovery as well. 1587 and 1589 are close
in the first place, fitting in a 0.4° field in
the 10mm. A star just east of 1587 wouldn't come
to focus; sure enough it was in Uranometria as
1588. This kind of surprise I never get over.

This was all 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.

32 Eri is a lovely double, pale yellow and blue, fairly close.
And yes I took time to stare at 40 Eri. Also
charted as omicron 2, it has a proper name, Keid.
We had some excitement over this triple a couple
of years ago.
http://observers.org/reports/2003.02.22.4.html
http://observers.org/reports/2003.02.23.html

It's a killer - a regular main sequence star with
a white dwarf and a red dwarf orbiting it. One
old cinder of a star all degenerate matter, and
one star that'll never change in human time. Just
fascinating that we have no idea of what becomes
of a red dwarf, because the universe isn't old
enough for one to have run out of fuel. Very
patient stars.

The white dwarf here is the only one we can
plausibly get with our scopes, at least until
Sirius A and B widen. And the only other red
dwarf I've seen is Barnard's Star. I've seen it
alleged that the secondary star in eta Cas is a
red dwarf, but it's not. It's red to us, but a K
star.

Joe Bob and I both swapped a bunch of views of
Mars. Fine opposition we're having. After 2, I
ended up with the place to myself, polishing off
that one set of galaxies. Lovely place, the Peak.

But let it be said, my days of rolling into the
sack at dawn are ending. I was sandwich spread on
Sunday. Gonna take lessons from Joe Bob and
others on packing up before getting a third wind.

New Moon's not far away! Mariposa, that being the
locus of Plettstone and Meherana!
DDK

-- 
Jamie Dillon <mavericks@No-Spam> <*>
TAC, astro anarchy at work  http://observers.org)
"We now know that nobody lives on Mars,
   at least not year round."  Dave Barry