Re: elusive Merope Nebula

I saw nebulosity near Merope at Calstar this year, and I have seen it from
outside Puerto Vallarta and at Fremont Peak a few times. It helps to have
seen it once -- its not nearly as hard as say the Horsehead or various
Sharpless nebula. I had been trying for maybe five years before I saw it the
first time, though.

Andrew Pierce

-----Original Message-----
From: tac-bounces@No-Spam [mailto:tac-bounces@No-Spam]
On Behalf Of Paul Alsing
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 5:14 PM
To: 'TAC mailing list'
Subject: Re: [TAC] elusive Merope Nebula

Jamie Dillon wrote;

... at CalStar I was actually invited to see if I was able to discern any
nebulosity in M45 (visually), but I wasn't able to even imagine seeing the
Merope area (the observer who invited me couldn't see it either). Nothing,
nada, zero. As a visual newbie I was surprised, but perhaps the brighness of
the stars is to blame?

I've only seen that nebula maybe 3 times over 11 years, and I've looked at
the Pleiades a lot, with scope and binocs. Takes really excellent
transparency.
Found the note ... first and best time was Messier Night 2001, when Paul
Lefevre, Liam Dillon and I had Dinosaur Point to ourselves. It's wispy,
certainly.

***********

We need to be careful when referring to the Merope Nebula. In this
conversation we are talking about NGC 1435 (discovered by Temple), this is
the general nebulosity which permeates almost the entire Pleiades.

Barnard's Merope Nebula (IC 349) is an entirely different animal, and lives
about 33" from Merope itself. It was discovered visually with the 36" at
Lick by E. E. Barnard and reported in the Astronomische Nachrichten in 1891.
Barnard was also able to see it in the 12". It is seldom observed and often
misidentified, and was discussed at some length on Amastro almost 10 years
ago. Most successful observers there report that it is almost impossible to
see without using an occulting bar, but using one renders it quite do-able.

Barnard's Merope Nebula is about 2 magnitudes brighter in surface brightness
than the surrounding Merope Nebula. It's nearness to Merope is what makes
it a challenging target.

There are also several TAC observations of this guy, so search the archives
for them, they make a very interesting read. Ray Gralak provided this
"stretched" picture for me, which clearly shows IC 349;

http://www.gralak.com/Astro/M45-AP160-RGB-IC349.jpg

\Paul A

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