Observing Report -- Fremont Peak -- 23 October 2005 (Sunday)
I went to the peak last night, SW lot. It looked really good heading
down -- I could see the peak clearly from much farther away than usual
-- often it is obscured from ground level view at a distance by low
haze even when conditions are good. But last night, it was crystal
clear from Morgan Hill.
Better still, there was a huge and very thick cloud bank to the West of
the peak. As long as it stayed low, it looked like a very good night
was ahead.
Turns out, it was quite good, even if short. The fog stayed down low,
and the sky was completely clear. No dew, and not even very cold!
Andrew Pierce and I had the SW lot to ourselves.
I busied my self with some Herschel-2 list objects in Cepheus and
Perseus while waiting for Mars to get high. At this point, I estimated
that the NELM was around 6.0 (in Pegasus), due no doubt to the thick
fog covering the lights below. A bit later on, I did another check,
this time in Perseus, and got only mid-5's. What's going on, I
wondered? The moon wasn't up yet. I hadn't noticed until then, but
now everything just seemed brighter. I turned West and saw city lights
-- an off-shore breeze had come up and blown the fog away! Maybe that
was a signal that it was time for Mars.
Seeing was again very good. Mars was very much the same as the night
before (see my OR for 10/22), except that I could make out a tiny bit
more detail -- the elongated (E/W) light area just South of Sinus
Sabaeus was more obvious than the previous night. The rest of the
features were pretty much unchanged. Again, I used the 12.5" f/5
Portaball at powers around 226 and 317 with various filters and none.
It was a very good night, all in all. I packed up and left around
12:30.
Other stuff viewed prior to Mars:
Col (Cr) 463 -- OC, Cas -- Very large OC near 50 Cas. About 1 dozen
stars in a broad arc, plus more not resolved (15X50 IS binocs).
Stopped here on the way to my first H-2 target.
NGC 1184 -- gal, Cep -- It is pretty hard for me to get oriented in
this position close to the pole. But I finally came up with a good hop
to it with the binocs, then repeated the hop pretty quickly with my
"finder" (a 55mm Plossl). The galaxy was apparent at medium power
(93x). At 176x, it was medium size, pretty dim, elongated 3:1 or so,
not quite N/S (maybe 30 degrees -- or is that 330?). Definitely
brighter center, and maybe a slight bulge.
M31, M32, M110 -- galaxies, And -- Took a break after the long process
of finding N1184 and checked out M31 and friends in the binocs. M31
filled the FOV. M110 was an easy elongated fuzz. M32 was also easy,
but nearly stellar. (15X50 IS binocs)
Col (Cr) 464 -- OC, Cam? -- Another large OC in the far north. This is
one of those non-obvious clusters, at least in binocs. Which are the
members? Drawn as a huge circle in the H-B atlas, even bigger than CR
463.
NGC 1169 -- gal, Per -- Shows weakly at 93x. At 176x, pretty small,
somewhat dim, brighter center. Not obviously elongated, but the shape
is uncertain; I can see the fuzzy extent only with averted vision; it
seems to collapse down to the brighter center with direct vision.
NGC 1023 -- gal, Per -- Took another break from the H-2 hunt because
this eye candy galaxy was nearby. Very nice! Large, bright, quite
elongated (3:1 at least) E/W. Much brighter center, almost stellar.
Definite central bulge. The Eastern part seems brighter (or at least
higher surface brightness) than the Western part. (176x)
NGC 1003 -- gal, Per -- Not far North of 1023. Shows weakly at 93x.
At 176x, pretty large, pretty dim, low surf. br. Not brighter center.
Elong E/W, but there is a distracting star just N of center (well, not
quite center) and an even brighter star SW off the West tip.
NGC 1175 -- gal, Per -- DNF. Perhaps I was just getting tired, but I
skipped this one for now after a short search.
NGC 1193 -- OC, Per -- At first, I didn't notice that this was an OC --
just assumed I was hunting for another galaxy, since that's what all
the others on the H-2 list in Perseus were. Here's what I wrote: Easy
location, near Kappa Per. Just a smudge, dim, low surf. br. Medium
size. Difficult to tell shape due to a couple of dim overlapping
foreground (I assume) stars. Not brighter center, unless one of those
foreground stars is really a stellar center, but I doubt it.
Now that I know it is an OC, I guess I'll have to go back and see if I
can resolve it any better with higher power. But this raises an
interesting (at least to me) question: should I really know what the
object type is before I look at it? Or does that introduce some bias?
The guys who first observed these objects had know idea what they were;
they just wrote down what they saw. That's what I did here, although
I was assuming I was looking at a dim galaxy. For one thing, that's
why I didn't note whether there was any resolution or at least
"granularity" (as I would if I thought it was a glob, for example); I
never bother to write down "no resolution detected" when I'm looking at
a galaxy, because it pretty much goes without saying and I'm lazy; but
should it (go without saying)?
-- end
Received on Mon Oct 24 23:26:24 2005