Some August Viewing Planetary Nebulae, Galaxies, A Quasar

[Bill S]

Just a bit of a ramble about a bit of a ramble around the skies in August.

All snapshots are with a 200 mm Newtonian, Lodestar X2 with 0.5x reducer using Starlight Live and Jocular.

Not in chronological or any other logical order.

Planetary nebulae. The old favourite The Dumbbell. Good to see even a one 15 second sub showed it well. Still worth stacking a few though.

Here’s something a bit fainter. Abell 70. I had a bit of a problem getting to this. When I put Abell 70 into Cartes du Ciel (searching using internet catalogues) it wanted to send me to the wrong part of the sky. I managed to find it using another designation, PK 038-25.1. (PK from a catalogue put together by the Czech astronomers Perek and Kohoutek. The PK catalogue is built into CdC.) Beware there is an Abell catalogue of planetary nebulae and another of galaxy clusters and so you need to know which Abell you are looking for.

This one is a bit ghostly (Jones 1).

 

See for example: http://helixgate.net/jones1.html

How about some galaxies? The Webb Deep Sky Society Galaxy of the Month is NGC 7042. NGC 7043 is easily spotted too. https://www.webbdeepsky.com/galaxies/2019/

https://www.webbdeepsky.com/images/galaxies/ngc7042/ngc7042_finder.pdf

 

 

Talking of faint fuzzies. I’ve often looked at Alvin Huey’s site before. Plenty of good and interesting information.

http://faintfuzzies.com/

But there is another. One from Robert Zebahl.

http://www.faint-fuzzies.de/en/home.html

This is also a good resource for looking for objects of interest by type and then narrowing down by constellation. (See under Observations.)

So, I had a look at some galaxies in Delphinus.

Every season is galaxy season. You just have to look in the right direction.

NGC6928 at the centre and NGC6930 to its right..

 

I had a look at a few others too.

 

What else? How about a quasar?

Andromeda’s Parachute – a quadruply lensed image. 11 billion light years or so.

I’m going to need more magnification and very good viewing conditions to see the parachute shape. One night, perhaps!

See for example http://www.faintfuzzies.com/Files/J014709+463037%20Andromeda%20Parachute.pdf

And linked files at the end about the discovery two years ago. This was one that the late Nytecam (Maurice Gavin) and others posted EEVA pictures of.

Finally something a bit nearer home – M15.

 

Clear skies!

Bill

[Mike JW]

Hi Bill, Excellent work. Always nice to visit old favourites, M27 and M15, both visually and via EAA. Andromeda's Parachute  - it is on my list for this season, having seen it visually in a mates 24" Dob. NGC 6928 - always a favourite in my big Dob of the past but never saw it in the detail you have captured. Getting Jones 1 - brilliant. Mike

[Cosmic Geoff]

Impressive work, and with relatively short exposures.