A few more items off my list, and more bonus galaxies!

[Andrew*]

Another clear night! To be honest in the past 10 days there have been too many clear nights to handle, and some nights I just had to leave it as I needed to catch up on sleep! It seems to be all or nothing with astronomy!

Tonight I elected to stay at home, and see how my home skies compared with the skies 15 minutes/30 minutes away. Again, I recorded my observations using a voice recorder. It's very enjoyable to do it like this, and would recommend it over writing in a notebook, as you can mutter away while viewing through the eyepiece, recording those fleeting glimpses, then piece the observation together with the references at a later point.

The crescent moon was just setting in the west and the sky was just reaching astronomical darkness, so I chose an open cluster from my observing list. This was the “m&m Double Cluster”, Hidden treasure 25 (NGC 1528) in Perseus. I found this a pleasant cluster to observe: quite loose, moderately right, lots of bright members but without many faint members, except a little knot of around 4 stars, a cluster within the cluster, towards the north of the cluster. No noticeable concentration within the middle, a few nice curved lines of stars curving outwards from the centre, which made me think of a pom-pom.

Next, the other component of the “m&m Double Cluster”, Hidden Treasure 26, (NGC 1545) which I didn’t find anywhere near as satisfying as Hidden Treasure 25. At first I even wondered if I was looking at the right thing, as this area of the sky is anyway very rich, and it seemed the only thing of note was three bright stars. But I did start to appreciate it the more I looked at it, particularly a lovely S-bend of stars that stream right through the cluster, then loops back on itself. I also liked two similar pairs of stars, a creamy coloured one and a cool star. I wasn’t able to fit both clusters within the field of view so didn’t appreciate it as a “double Cluster.

Some of the items on my list were "additional objects" in O'Meara's books, and this was Hidden Treasure Additional Object (HTAO) 4. NGC 1491 – this I found to be a rather dim and featureless emission nebula around 10’ diameter in Perseus. I could only locate it using a UHC filter (Orion Ultrablock). Faint star embedded close to the visible edge of the nebula.

Messier 40 – I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen this famously boring Messier object before, and I had to observe it even just to check it off the list. And I was glad I did, for some nearby galaxies caught my eye while looking in this region of the sky. Though a bit further away from M40, I first spotted mag 12.5 galaxy NGC 4335 and a little later mag 12.7 radio galaxy NGC 4290 got my notice, the latter which I saw was slightly elongated NE-SW.

M109 – at first I thought this galaxy had two cores, but looking closer I saw that the second core is a faint star embedded within the glow of the galaxy. Bright and elongated and hints of some structure with averted vision but difficult to confirm the nature.

Return to Caldwell 35, a distant cluster of galaxies in Coma Berenices, as I wanted to confirm my previous two observations. Galaxy clusters have a tendency to overwhelm me, and rather than slow down and navigate my way around I just say “wow, that’s a lot of galaxies!”. In the cluster I identified NGC 4889, NGC 4874, NGC 4860 and NGC 4895.

Returned to NGC 4565 to hone my observation from the other night. This time, using 150x I first saw a harder edge along the length of the galaxy to the NE edge of the core, and the core split by this hard edge. It was pleasing to see the dark lane caused by the arms obscuring the core. A very special galaxy.

Another repeat observation next – the second Leo triplet, or should I say quintuplet, as this time I caught not one, but two fainter neighbouring galaxies by M105. First I re-confirmed NGC 3384, and then found the fainter NGC 3389, and found under 150x that both were elongated towards M105 and with indistinct nuclei. M105 on the other hand was round, and had a very small bright core. While in the area I also came upon NGC 3412.

Until this point I had been playing it safe with my target choices – aiming for objects that are at a sensible altitude, but if I am to complete my list I will have to brave the murky horizon. The problem is not so much being able to see the objects themselves, but to find them in the first place, as very few stars were visible naked eye below 15° altitude, possibly due to some low lying haze near the horizon. I went for Caldwell 60/61 – the Antennae galaxies (NGC 4058/9) in Corvus, which were at 12° altitude at this point. “Little more than a puff” was a fairly complete summary of my observation of this. I didn’t detect the “dark wedge” noted by O’Meara. I must return to this one and find it earlier in the night at its peak altitude of 14°, and perhaps at a darker site.

Hidden Treasure 61, NGC 4361, also in Corvus at 12° altitude, hint of the central star. Fairly large in the field of view at 150x magnification.

I packed up at 1.30am tonight, pleased to have got a few steps closer to completing my Spring observing list, with 33 out of 56 objects found. Of the ones not yet observed, they are really mainly winter objects, which are getting swallowed by the evening light now, or are too low down, so they will have to wait till next season. Caldwell 66, NGC 5694, for example, is a dim globular cluster at -26° Dec that culminates at 2.30am at merely 6.5° altitude... Not sure that's going to happen! Maybe at the end of the month, just before astro darkness leaves Scotland for the summer, I'll catch it closer to midnight, along with a handful of other deep south objects

Just these 4 sessions I have seen 20 Caldwell objects and 9 Hidden Treasures, and also enjoyed going off on tangents and making some pleasant chance discoveries, adding many further objects to the list. Building up a repertoire of objects like this gives a good opportunity for more detailed longer studies in the future.

To be honest I was pleasantly surprised how well my home skies compared to the skies I've been travelling to visit. For example on M35 I saw most of the same galaxies as I had seen from the more remote skies, and with the bonus that anything forgotten is just a one-minute blinding trip indoors! However, I found I prepared in a different way when I travel to somewhere, and therefore tend to get more out of the observing session as I am more focused and organised.

Thanks for reading

[John]

Great report Andrew

I've been trying to convince myself to give observing a rest tonight but reports like yours do not help my resolve

 

[Andrew*]

Thanks John

I know, I have also been enjoying your supernova hunting and feel compelled to find those - I find these transient events very compelling to observe!!

 

I also wanted to say that in the past two sessions I have rediscovered the 9x50 finder!!

For too long I've been using a "dead reckoning" style method of finding: - using a telrad to hop from that star to that star, then nudge a little up and left, 2/3rds the way towards that star kind of idea. I would then peer into the eyepiece at low power, and circle around hopefully. If that fails, return to the telrad and try again. This is quick when it works, and fine for bright or familiar objects, but as you will have read from my reports, not always successful. I end up spending far longer describing the star field and then checking it in the reference book/sky atlas after the session to confirm I was in the right area. 

I found that when I changed tack, by using the magnified finder to be able to spot mag 8/9 stars and compare to a decent reference like Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders, or Pocket Sky atlas, would far more reliably get me accurately to within half a degree of the object. Having the confidence that I had "arrived" and hopefully spotted a faint fuzzy in the eyepiece, made a huge impact on my observing, and now could spend more time on the object itself rather than checking whether I had got off at the right stop!

I just have a standard straight through finder and of course it's not that comfortable to look through. I used to like the straight through finder using the "both eyes open" method, where you can merge the image from both eyes to superimpose the crosshairs on the sky, but actually this doesn't really work well under dark skies as the cross hair doesn't show up against the sky! Also a bit of mental effort is needed to reverse the image to match the sky atlas. Hence I might invest in a RACI finder to improve my finding experience using the magnified finder.