Unexpected session

[assasincz]

Yesterday (22nd May), the weather all day was bleak and rainy, with occasional thunderstorms - this is not the weather you want, when a brand new Baader Hyperion Zoom eyepiece the previous day and you are eager, anxious even to try it out ASAP. However, when the day neared its end, the sky suddenly got blue - could this be? Hell yeah, although wather forecasts differed on predictions for the night, checking IR sattelite imagery over Czech Republic confirmed that the wall of rain, steam and fire was retreating and possibly revealing the sky for the night. So, preparations for a session were in order.

When I managed to pack all my stuff and 300P with it in a car, it was already after sunset, but no biggie. I had to drive to the nearest petrol station for some energy drinks for the night and a route there prepared the first surprise of the evening - an incredibly thin crescent Moon just above the horizon and Venus close to it guided my way to the petrol station.

Wit energy drink purchased, I rushed to my nearest favorite observing spot that is an emergency airfield. However, when I got there and started unloading and setting up, there were some thin clouds in the sky, but hey, I thought to myself that if nothing, I would at least try out the Hyperion Zoom for the first time (and a SkySufer III red-dot finder with it). Before it got somewhat darker, I pointed the scope to Mars and Saturn. Although the seeing was not excellent, I was able to make out some albedo features on Mars and even the Cassini division for few brief moments. (For the purpose of this report, I will not comment on how the Hyperion Zoom performed - I intend to write a full review later when I get fully acquainted with it.)

I then tweaked and played with the new accessory, and then I marvelled at the how busy the sky is after sutset - I don't think I will ever get bored by the sky traffic. I was just aimlessly fooling around for a while when I realized it got properly dark, so I though I'd break out the Stellarium and see what's what. I first glanced at some well known objects briefly, such as M57, M13 etc. (I will skip this part, as nothing of particular interest happened there) to see if I can just "point and shoot" with my new red-dot finder. As it turned out, the finder works a treat, making the whole searching malarky way easier - especially locating a dimmer reference stars was an issue for me, due to my RA optical finder. (Again, I intend to write a brief review of the SkySurfer III red-dot finder later.)

With the brief "good old" inspection over, I then decided to concetrate on the part of the sky with the least light pollution, which was the area around the constellation Draco - so, Stellarium, what's up? (no pun intended). Zooming in on the "neck" of the dragon (btw how the hell can you tell what's a neck on something that is basically a snake?), it turned out there are some faint galaxies that seemed to be within the reach of my 12" dob, so I gave them a try. But before that, a local airforce group decided to pay me a visit with Mil Mi-17 transport helicopter to practise, yet again, night landings with night vision goggles. So, the notes:

• NGC 6340 (11.0 m, galaxy) - Draco
  A small face-on spiral spiral galaxy of not very impressive surface brightness - apparently round featureless blob of "something" that was hard to miss, but then hard to observe in greater detail. A sketch I made correlated with images online. Furthermore, there were supposet to be IC 1251 and IC 1254 galaxies very close to it, but very dim as well (13.9 m and 14 m) - I tried my best and stared like a crazy person, but in the end, I was not sure if what I see is a really dim star, galaxy, a ghost or just my brain's trickery.
  
• NGC 6503 (10.2 m, galaxy) - Draco
  Now this was a treat of the night - I expect it to be as featurelerss as the previous galaxy (I didn't know anything about it in fact), but when I star hopped to its location and looked in the eyepiece, a WOW moment dawned on me - a nice, bright, edge-on spiral galaxy (apprently dwarf galaxy, 30.000 ly across)has presented itself in all its magnificence. This object, some 17 mil. ly away, captivated my imagination for a while, so I made a sketch, just to confirm that I was able to spot a star as dim as 13.6 m, which felt nice.
  
• NGC 6643 (11.1 m, galaxy) - Draco
  An oval shaped spiral galaxy some 78 mil. ly away was immediately apparent, although not as distinct in its shape as the previous gem of the night. Still a nice view - orientation of its disc in relation to background (or foreground in fact) stars was confirmed by comparing a sketch I made to reality in pictures.
  
• NGC 6654 (11.6 m, galaxy) - Draco
  Although this was supposed to be (when checked later) a barred spiral, nearly face-on galaxy, visually, the features were not apparent. In pictures, the bar around its core is very bright, but visually, this was just a featureless round shaped blob of light, hardly visible with direct vision. Still, a sketch based check later revealed that I have (surprisingly) chrated a star of 14.4 m while sketching it.
  
• NGC 6946 (8.9 m, galaxy) - Cepheus
  I took a shot at it because at the time, the sky around Cepheus was very dark and I was kind of hung up on the whole galaxy hunt thing, so I decided to try it. I could not see anything at first, which was odd, given its charted magnitude. However, looking in Stellarium, it turned out that this was supposed to be a face-on spiral galaxy of quite significant angular size - so ok, high magnitude and large size equals bearly visible fuzzy blob. With that in mind, I stared at the location for a while and actually, some indistinct nebulosity was becoming apparent, althoug very elusive. Something was there, but any further observations were pointless (note - darker skies needed).
  
• NGC 6804 (12.0 m, planetary nebula) - Aquila
  I concentrated on Aquila region is the part of the sky where it was was nicely dark and a first thing that cought my eye was the number of planetary nebulae - I first tried the NGC 6803 planetary nebula not far from 6804 but it was apparently so small and the seeing so bad that I was not able to distinguish it from all the other stars. NGC 6804 was a different story though - a nice small round blob of nebulosity with what was apparently a brighter core. As I said, seeing was not good, so I was not able to make out much more detail in higher magnifications, but still, yet another planetary nebula I have seen for the first time, and that feels good.
  
• NGC 6572 (9.0 m, planetary nebula) - Ophiuchus
  As I was trying to star hop to this nebula, I looked at the star patterns in Stellarium and though to myself: "Hang on, I've seen this before." Sure enough, it was a planetary nebula I observed last year with my 4.5" reflector, and I must say, it did not reveal much more detail in 12" that what I remember (tiny featureless oval with sharp edges), except its pale blue-green tint was more apparent.
  

I then noticed that it was past 2:30 AM and suprisingly, the dawn creeped in - the skies were more and more washed out by the minute, so I then quickly checked some other DSOs, like M11 and some nebulosities in Sagittarius, but not much success with those, as they were very washed out (the Swan in M17 was rather underwhelming, but still nicely visible). So, with the light creeping with this rate, I decided to pack my stuff and head home. I have to say, this suprising session was very pleasant - warm, calm (no mid-night teenage racers on the runway this time), a bit windy (but nothing dewed up), but well spent, I think.

[Bart]

A good night by the sound of it. I'm jealous. Nice one.

[Double Kick Drum]

A nice bunch of objects.

NGC 6503 was reasonably easy in a 5" scope. Just a smudge though.

The others I haven't seen yet. My first attempt to find the Ophiuchus planetary nebula ended in failure!

I was also eyeing up the possibility of viewing the Cepheus galaxy but it sounds quite difficult, especially if the core isn't particularly bright.

Thanks for sharing.

[rory]

sounds like a good session. this time of year doesnt leave alot of viewing time does it.

[Mike73]

One of the best reports I've read on here, lots of detail and has made me green with envy!

[assasincz]

this time of year doesnt leave alot of viewing time does it.

No it really doesn't, but at least you are not freezing makes the entire session very comfortable, albeit short

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Lovely session. Thanks for posting the magnitudes so I can see which ones are readily within reach of my 8" scope. Haven't studied many galaxies in Draco yet. The planetary in Ophiuchus sounds interesting too.