Quick go with the wee newt – 21st February report

[Andrew*]

8” newt

Clouds scudding across a nice dark sky.

Poor seeing

9pm – 10pm

Started off with old familiar M42. Never get tired of this one. Much better view with UHC filter. Pushed to 143x (7mm TS Planetary and UHC) and there was fantastic detail available at this high mag.

Despite several attempts last year to catch NGC 2903 in Leo, I never managed it. Tonight was to be the night. Found it quite quickly. At 83x, an elongated smudge oriented roughly N-S was visible. Linear core inside a faint halo. No fine detail observed.

Saturn, comet Lulin, and galaxies galore were still obscured by the wall at this point unfortunately, so I went for two more new targets – M97 and M108, high overhead in UMa. Found these guys with a little search. I didn’t get the same “cosy pair” feeling you get with some targets, e.g. M81/2, although they did fit into the field of my 20mm Nagler (50x). M97, a large round planetary nebula dubbed the Owl Nebula, was found first and it took some searching and help from “Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders” to locate his fuzzy faint friend the galaxy M108.

Try as I might, I could not make out the “eyes” in M97. Given more time, I would have experimented with an OIII filter and higher power, but interfering clouds would not permit such a study. However, this is not a disappointment – the authors of IGAW could not see eyes under a dark sky with a 10” scope. That's not to say I will give up - I had the feeling it would be possible in better conditions (seeing made the image wobbly, I was observing on tip-toes, cloud kept interrupting me...).

M108 was nothing to write home about (even if I am writing to you about it) – a long thin faint smudge with no further details observed.

Cloud now obscured the sky in a patchy maze that made any ideas of further targets too daunting to continue. Nevertheless it was a relief to get some observing time in after a long drought of clear skies, and three new targets added to the satisfaction.

Goodnight

Andrew

[Doc]

Nice report Andrew.

Have yet to see NGC 2903 so that will be on my list.

Glad you got a rare glimpse of clear sky not had any for a while now.