20 Mar - Big Dob bags 6 Supernovae and attempts Hickson 50 (Night Vision)

[alanjgreen]

Date: Friday 20^th March 2020. 2300-0305hrs.

Scope: 20” f3.6 Lukehurst Dob with Paracorr (fl = 2089mm & f4.1).

Night Vision: PVS-14 with Photonis 4g INTENS.

Eyepieces: Panoptic 27mm (f4 x77), DeLite 18.2mm (f5.8 x115).

 

Introduction.

Unbelievably, I just completed my third straight night outside observing Hickson Galaxy Groups and Supernovae. After months of thin gruel, I am beside myself although a little tired it must be said!

Conditions last night were the best so far and my results improved as a result...

 

Hicksons (3 new to me).

I spent yesterday making an updated Sky Safari observing list. My aim was to edit the “full Hickson observing list”, remove all those that I have observed to produce a “To Do Hickson” observing list. I will add the steps taken to do this at the bottom of this report in case anyone is wondering how this is done?

• Hickson 54 – Sky Safari lists this as having one member IC700. I centred the target in the 27mm Eyepiece (with Night Vision device attached) and immediately saw a long thin edge-on galaxy patch. This thin line is in-fact made of 4 galaxies but I was unable to split the line on this occasion.
• Hickson 50 – (“The faintest Hickson” according to what I have read while doing research the last couple of days). It is also not present in Sky Safari when you search for “Hickson”! I used galaxy “PGC 2485269” to locate the correct area of sky to search for Hickson 50. As I look into the eyepiece a tiny double patch caught my eye straight away! With time, I got glimpses of a third patch to the right of the first two. I knew that I was looking for a pentagon shape of galaxies and there seemed to be a general faint glow in the area where all these galaxies are hiding. I waited but none of the others came into view.😀
• Hickson 62 – Sky Safari has a major fail for several of the Hickson catalogue in that it shows them as having too many members (20+) in some cases. I nudged around the oversized Sky Safari search area and came upon a patch of three tiny galaxies, checking my Ipad Sky Safari showed NGC4761, NGC4759, NGC4764 and some research this morning confirms these findings.😀

I came upon a great website detailing the Hickson galaxy group members:

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.deepsky-visuell.de/Projekte/HCG34_66.htm&prev=search

This information is really useful and I thank the author for publishing this data for me to find!😀

 

Supernovae (6 from 7 attempted).

Okay, onto the main diet for the evening…

• IC738/SN2020vg - SUCCESS. Repeating my observation from the previous night, the galaxy was once again tough to find. Once you have it then the elongated core can be seen within with the 18.2mm eyepiece. Images don't show a split so I am marking this one as a success. 
• PGC 041887/SN2020cdm – SUCCESS. I located the galaxy successfully in the 35mm, 27mm and 18.2mm eyepieces. It is located to the right of a small, mid-brightness “Xmas tree” star formation. A small patch is easily seen. Then it’s a case of letting the patch drift across the fov many times and watch for activity within using averted vision. With the 18.2mm eyepiece I was able to get 3 of 4 glimpses of a dot within the galaxy patch.
• NGC5371/SN2020bio – FAIL. I spent a long time on this large side-on galaxy but there was no sign of the Supernova in any eyepiece. I even tried an Ethos 10mm (conventional eyeball viewing) for greater magnification but the SN was not seen. I now doubt my observation from 18 March too.
• UGC9945/SN2019zhs – SUCCESS. With the 27mm eyepiece I quickly found the galaxy and could see the core within. Using the 18.2mm eyepiece I got occasional glimpses of two dots within the galaxy disk.
• PGC056547/SN2020dxa – SUCCESS. This is an easy target and it was nice after the work I had to put in on some of the previous ones! With the 18.2mm two dots within a dust patch are easily seen.
• UGC10661/SN2020awa – SUCCESS. The galaxy sits within a small triangle of stars (one corner of the triangle has 2 stars). With the 18.2mm eyepiece I could make out a dot within.
• PGC062161/SN2020duu – SUCCESS. This is another fairly easy one. It took a bit of time to find the edge-on galaxy. But once you have it there is a clear dot on the leading edge as it drifts across the fov.

 

Conclusions.

After having two nights of not much sleep, I needed to pace myself last night. I delayed going out until 2300hrs so as to be able to stay out later without getting tired too soon. I am pleased to say that it was also warmer last night than the previous two nights (when I had to wipe of ice from the scope before packing away for the night).

Perseverance is key with supernovae, you need to try them a few times to get the “lay of the land”. It’s amazing how you become familiar with the star patterns in the fov of the supernova’s parent galaxy. It’s like visiting an old friend by the third night. But it takes patience and concentration to get the faintest targets to pop into view and I was pretty tired by the time I packed up just after 3am.

 

Clear Skies,

Alan

 

How to edit a Sky Safari observing list using Ipad & PC.

1. Search for “Hickson” in Sky Safari
2. Scroll to bottom of list and choose “create observing list”
3. Use search to open the new observing list and scroll down to the bottom and choose “email observing list”
4. On your PC, save the email attachment to desktop and add “.txt” to the end of the filename
5. Edit the file with Notepad.
6. Remove unwanted objects and save the file
7. Remove “.txt” from the filename and email the file back to your Ipad
8. On the Ipad, choose the email attachment and then choose “Sky Safari” when it asks what app you want to open the attachment with...

Edited March 21, 2020 by alanjgreen

[Martin Meredith]

Great report and congrats on making out Hickson 50 -- that is a seriously faint group. 

BTW have you checked out Reiner Vogel's Hickson guide? pdf here: http://www.reinervogel.net/index_e.html?/Hickson/hickson_e.html

Martin

[Mike JW]

Enjoyed your report. Mike