Those targets you just happen to stumble across

[IB20]

Had a brilliant session tonight, mainly focused on the gas giants; absolutely loving this planetary season. Occasionally I would scan around to find some other targets and stumbled across two accidental objects that have left a real impression on me. 

First one was Wz Cass, a tremendously rich orangey golden star - the most amazing colour, alongside a white/blue neighbour. It’s an ageing carbon variable star according to wiki, so one I’ll be keeping tabs on.

The second object was 96 Aquarii which I found whilst star hopping to Neptune. At first it just looks like a white star, but on closer inspection it has the faintest secondary companion which I could just detect in the 8” dob. It’s a real mismatch of magnitudes but it’s stuck in my mind’s eye. I know it’ll be one of those targets that I add to my list of favourites.

Isn’t it great there just so much out there to observe!

[Pixies]

Thanks. I'll check them out next clear night. 

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

Great. Those, "What's that about..?" catches definitely add interest. The same happened to me on Sunday night. Planetary observing and noticing the Saturn nebula was a quick hop but low, "What's that then..?". Ooohhh I can see it in the 4" frac despite the 99% moon and the low declination. 👍

 

[Nyctimene]

Happened to me twice the last nights, when observing the moon. First one was a lunar "snake", the Mare Anguis ("anguis" the Latin word for snake). One of the small lunar maria, located close to the NE border of Mare Crisium. With the 12", a really prominent dark (lava) area with an unmistakeable serpent shape. Needed a higher mag, and seemed to be prone to bad seeing.

The second one, this morning, was the straight, black shadow (darker than lava albedo) of Valley Taurus-Littrow, directed roughly SSW-NNE. Landing place of the last Apollo (17) mission. (Will be close to the terminator this evening). Always something unexpected on the moon!

Added a picture of Mare Anguis:

Stephan

[John]

I love those "accidental findings" as well

Another reason why I don't use a GOTO system. Maybe there is one now that has a "stop at interesting places on the way" option ?

[IB20]

6 minutes ago, John said:

I love those "accidental findings" as well

Another reason why I don't use a GOTO system. Maybe there is one now that has a "stop at interesting places on the way" option ?

I wouldn’t mind some sort GOTO system that told me what it is that I’ve stumbled upon. Sometimes I can spend more time trying to find out what I’ve found than actual observing!

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

59 minutes ago, John said:

I love those "accidental findings" as well

Another reason why I don't use a GOTO system. Maybe there is one now that has a "stop at interesting places on the way" option ?

I was using goto and Sky Safari at the time John. Observing Jupiter, looked at Sky Safari, saw the Saturn nebula was close by, hit goto and straight to a new object to me. 😀

[Stu]

57 minutes ago, IB20 said:

I wouldn’t mind some sort GOTO system that told me what it is that I’ve stumbled upon. Sometimes I can spend more time trying to find out what I’ve found than actual observing!

A push to system is great for this. You can find things yourself, or use the system to help you get there. When linked to SkySafari it can very effectively be used as an electronic finder. A while back I had a 16” dob with push to and used it to explore Markarian’s chain and the Virgo cluster. I just panned around finding galaxies and then looked at the screen to see which they were. Excellent system.

[John]

23 minutes ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

I was using goto and Sky Safari at the time John. Observing Jupiter, looked at Sky Safari, saw the Saturn nebula was close by, hit goto and straight to a new object to me. 😀

I was thinking more of the things you come across while star hopping. Things that you didn't realise were there until you stumble upon them

 

[scarp15]

This is how I first encountered NGC  7635; Bubble Nebula in Cassiopeia. I just completely stumbled upon it and didn't know what I was looking at, at first having been searching for a planetary and so had an O-III filter installed fortunately. Goto would had spoilt the surprise.

[IB20]

Tonight I went in search of Tx Piscium which is a variable carbon star using the Morpheus 17.5mm. Locating it just to the SW of Iota Piscium showed a fabulously deep orange star, such beautiful colouration. Not much else around that was visible so it might prove difficult to measure its variability.

Afterwards I decided to make my way up to Andromeda. Starting with Almach which displayed a beautiful yellow and blue pair of stars, turns out it’s a very well known double! 
Then panning eastwards to Mirach showed a very bright golden star - something wasn’t right though. I could make out what looked like a green coloured pea on Mirach’s left shoulder. Checking on SkySafari showed that there’s a mag 10 elliptical galaxy called Mirach’s ghost. I’m fairly sure that’s what I could see!

After gazing at Mirach and its strange companion for sometime I headed northwards Andromeda which showed as its usual faint fuzzy self, only this time I could make out M32 for the first time too. It really shows how bad the light pollution is even at Bortle 6 as it appeared quite separately from M31. There was no sign of M110 and with work calling tomorrow I called it a night.