Flying Bat nebula,E Lyae IFN

[jetstream]

Its been a while since I could do some observing unfortunately and when darkness fell I jumped at the chance tonight.  The SQM read 21.6 and I feel the transparency was avg- the Milky way was sharply defined but not that sharp.

The scope used tonight was the 200mm f3.8 dob and with the 20mm Lunt HDC/Lumicon OIII.

I've been trying to hunt IFN and this proves difficult but tonight I can say that I got the Epsilon Lyrae IFN (or parts of it) for sure. I have to say it is huge, a faint grey cloud- part of the "texture" of the night sky that I have reported before. I'm coming to understand this "texture" is made up of different things, including IFN. No filter can be used for these type of faint objects, at least not for me anyway.Another good catch was confirming the Flying Bat nebula, a large faint object up near Cepheus. I used the Lumicon OIII and confirmed the location using VDB 140, a nice reflection nebula.

All in all a good night and I must say this scope performs superbly on large dark nebulae such as B142/143 as well.

Well I'm off to figure out what else I saw tonight

 

[Littleguy80]

Great report, Gerry. What does IFN stand for?

[Stargazer McCabe]

13 hours ago, Littleguy80 said:

Great report, Gerry. What does IFN stand for?

From a quick Google search; Integrated Flux Nebula I believe...

Although you could just as well apply Incredibly Faint Nebula too !! ?

[Littleguy80]

24 minutes ago, Stargazer McCabe said:

From a quick Google search; Integrated Flux Nebula I believe...

Thank you! My Googling skills obviously weren't up to much this morning. 

Lol incredibly faint nebula!

[scarp15]

Post work I have got round to digesting what you have been observing Gerry. Beginning with the IFN, Mel Bartels describes the Epsilon Lyrae IFN region as; 'arc extending from Vega to Epsilon Lyrae with a large blob S of the double double; bright star field'. Was there an area that was more prominent when observing this quite immense feature? Sh2-129, Flying Bat Nebula, looked this up in my deep sky atlas, located drifting downwards from Alderamin, Cepheus. Gosh that looks faint, the 200mm f3.8 dob is delivering some really good results, fantastic look forward to, if you are able to decipher, other things you hinted at you might have seen.  Thanks also for the reminder about the dark nebulae B142 and B143, Aquila, Milky Way star field - in the vicinity of Altair (then hop to Tarazed).  I had compiled a dark neb listing for the summer Milky Way not sure where it is though, really hoping for a chance to get out next week. 

Interesting to about vdb140 the reflection nebula near sh2-129, will note that. 

[Piero]

Amazing work, Gerry!   I'd be curious to know whether someone has spotted these targets here in the UK. I suspect low humidity is also necessary but who knows.. 

Is the 200mm f3.8 newton fitting the new mirror by T. Ostahowski?

[jetstream]

Thanks Piero, this is the stock mirror yet and it has issues around stars like Vega. The new one should be here soon.

[mapstar]

Unusual objects those IFN's and not something I've looked for.

Really low power wide views at about 38x?  Making things easier to spot and interesting to see you using the Lunt eyepiece. Would like to see the dob mentioned Gerry.

I'll have a look for the flying bat nebula but always find it difficult tearing myself away from galaxy hunting. 

 

 

[jetstream]

9 hours ago, mapstar said:

Unusual objects those IFN's and not something I've looked for.

Really low power wide views at about 38x?  Making things easier to spot and interesting to see you using the Lunt eyepiece. Would like to see the dob mentioned Gerry.

I'll have a look for the flying bat nebula but always find it difficult tearing myself away from galaxy hunting. 

 

 

The Lunt is lighter than the 21E/30ES which really helps out on this little scope and gives a 2.8 deg TFOV.More would be better...

I was out again last night with the MW nice but not sharply defined and I had zero chance on these objects, the 15" gave relatively soft views of the Veil etc and I didn't observe long to be honest.

The SW120ED does pretty well on some of the faint stuff, the 90mm f7 Raptor triplet not so much. These little (highly obstructed) newts do really well on the targeted objects Damian and I'm not done pursuing future scopes for them,most likely around f3.