April 29, 2012: Brief session before clouds rushed in

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Last Sunday the sky cleared unexpectedly, and despite half a moon, and the occasional cloud passing, I set up the scope. While the tube was cooling I hooked out the 15x70 binoculars to have a quick look at the moon, which showed lovely detail along the terminator, and even at this late stage still showed clear earth shine. Venus showed its phase even at 15x. These bins are really crisper than my old pair.

After 11:15 the sky was finally dark enough and I set to work in Coma and Virgo, hoping to catch a few more galaxies.

NGC 4216 was first up. South and west of M99, it is a very clear edge-on spiral. A nice object despite moonlight. I had seen this last year, and wanted to find nearby NGC 4206. There were some tantalizing hints, but no definite observation, even after several attempts.

I then turned to UMa, to capture my 3rd quasar, while some clouds started obscuring the Virgo region. Mrk 421 was easily spotted, close to a pair of stars of mag 6.0 and 7.6. The 12T4 showed it most easily. I estimated it at 12.8-13.0, so much easier than OJ 287 (at 13.8-14.0 at the moment). I had expected the nearby bright stars to cause problems, but this was not the case. As it is almost overhead, it is the easiest of the "Fistful of Quasars" I have observed (three down one more to go).

Back in Coma I managed to find NGC 4262 as a compact fuzzy blob some way eastwards of M99. The 12T4 showed the non-stellar nature of the object best. Its appearance matches that of an elliptical best.

I tried NGC 4298 and NGC 4302 in Coma as well, but despite subtle hints of some fuzziness, I could not make a definite observation with this amount of moonlight. Encroaching clouds made matters worse.

I turned to Saturn, and even at 120x in the 17T4 it looked great, but as I was about to up the magnification, clouds rolled in, and I decided to pack the gear up.

Not the best of sessions, but what a relief to add even just one galaxy and one quasar to the list of observed objects, after such a stretch of atrocious weather.

[Double Kick Drum]

Congratulations on even making it out with the scope and sharing.

The weather has been horrendous here for a while now and I have forgotten what end of the scope to look through.

[m_j_lyons]

Hey congrats on Mrk 421...good to hear that it's well positioned and relatively bright (relative to OJ 287 that is). Encouraging that despite the moon being up you still had success...I imagine with the "supermoon" coming the night sky will be fully washed out soon.

Happy hunting.

[m_j_lyons]

I you've already seen this...but Mrk 501 looks to be a challenging find just for lack of really good guide stars. Should be fun.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I you've already seen this...but Mrk 501 looks to be a challenging find just for lack of really good guide stars. Should be fun.

I do not think it is too bad. In the 70mm finder, sigma, rho, eta, and pi Herculi should provide easy guidance to the right spot. There are a couple of fairly bright stars in the 30' map as well. I will draw up some charts in Stellarium as well. Quasi stellar objects are not affected by moonlight very much, show I should be in there with a fighting chance.

[faulksy]

nice report mate glad you got out, how lucky are you

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

nice report mate glad you got out, how lucky are you

Two sessions with the scope (one short) in a month is not that good, but I am grateful for small mercies.

[Mike73]

You know its bad weather when the reports threads goes from a raging torrent to a trickling steam so its good to hear your getting some at least Michael!

You have no idea how much I'm hoping for clear skies next week!