A wonderful winter Herschel haul - 27/28th Nov-24

[josefk]

Those of a none OCD disposition may look away now. Its taken me a while this evening to catch up my log for last nights damp then icy "seeing challenged" DSO marathon chasing late autumn/early winter William Herschel discovered DSO and for the most part Herschel-400 galaxy targets. This is the not quite finished log. Blue boxes are my key for a Herschel first observation.

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It was a super rewarding session and i think i just may have observed the most Herschel targets in a single sitting of mine ever. I count 23 H400 targets, 17 of them new to me. Of the 35 things observed in 7-hours, 27 of them owe their discovery to William Herschel. its quite impossible to overstate the stature of the man. BTW 35 sounds like i was racing about but actually there are quite a few "two-or-three-in-the-view" type FOVs or galaxies sitting next to notable doubles stars so the count mounts as it were even at a steady pace.

As mentioned in other posts seeing was horrible - i used two scopes and both behaved as if the focus knobs were simply spinning  ineffectively around. I had to touch focus several times in nearly every observation. Stars were fat and at times the whole FOV swam for a few milliseconds or a single star just jumped out of focus in the strangest way. Horrible. Transparency must have been good though because i observed several things i've failed to previously in recent weeks. NGC 891 being one of those things posted up elsewhere on SGL today.

First scope on the mount was my 185mm Cassegrain and my starter EP in that was a 17mm Delos for x141 and a 1.32 exit pupil. This combo most notably brought me NGC 891, a new and mildly pursued observation over recent weeks. It's weird how it was observable last night when it has been undetectable previously. The sky wasn't darker than previous attempts at 20.05 MPSAS in this part of the evening and seeing certainly wasn't contributing to clarity. Still i'll take it.

After NGC 891 i had the impression i was losing my scope to dew and swapped my Cassegrain over for a 130mm refractor. I can't really protect my CC from dew but i use heaters on the refractor. With the TOA i was using a 10mm Pentax for x100 and 1.3mm exit pupil or 12mm Delos for x83 and a 1.56 exit pupil. While waiting for the TOA to settle down a bit i moved over to NGC 1342 and 1245 - two open clusters in Perseus and new H400 for me. I'm surprised NGC 1342 isn't a showcase Messier - it is very rich in population and varied in star magnitude in the vane of the M3x clusters in Auriga. NGC 1245 on the other hand is like a miniaturised double clusters contained within a pentagon like asterism of brighter stars. Nice. Next were NGC 1501 (a PNe in Cam and also new to me) and NGC 1502.

I got a little bit stuck on NGC 1502. It is lovely and i've observed it before but last night i was really struck by the "angel" or "dragon" asterism at it' heart spreading "its wings" across the cluster. There is ladder of double stars that comprise "the dragons" central body. and there are two Struve pairs in here but TBH they are some of the orange boxes in the log above 9orange is my key for "to-do"), they still need unpicking from my sketch to determine exactly what i did and didn't see. One of the STF systems is an ABCDEFG... type system so needs a clear brain and the help of Stella Doppie tomorrow to see how many i got in a fairly careful plot sketch i tried to make. These star clusters were the "warm-up" (or cool down if you prefer) and from here it was onto a long list of galaxies in UMa.

With NGC 891 above and all of the following in Uma i observed 21 Galaxies in total and missed 7 - i'm sure this is a personal single session record. The descriptions are a little bit in the style of "small and dim", "elongated and dim", etc. and i freely admit with the 130mm scope and in my 20.3MPSAS skies (by this point in the evening) i am mostly "surveying" these type of objects rather than observing them per se - but still, i do try and checklist through the characteristics, brightness variation, central condensation, position angle and size, etc. Sketching really helps and here's an example of how rough they are but even at this level its helpful as an aid to concentration at minus 2C at 2am:

A pretty marginal NGC 3631. This has a SB of 22.21 MPSAS (its Mag 10.39 and a 5' x 3.7' Spiral)

a "two-in-the -view" NGC 4041 and NGC 4036. Scruffy stuff.

The rest are from the session are very similar 🙂 

The full list is: NGC 891, NGC 1023, M81, M82, NGC 3077 (these three were just for "benchmarking" how well i was seeing as they are familiar to me. M81/82 were not seen better tonight than previous nights but NGC 3077 did strike me as unusually obvious), NGC 2768, NGC 2950, NGC 3079, NGC 3310, M108, NGC 3610, NGC 3690 (not sure if a or b - i need to look into this one a bit more), NGC 3613, NGC 3631, NGC 3729, NGC 3898, NGC 3998, NGC 945, NGC 4036 and NGC 4041. Phew. The planet killer 130mm refractor does galaxies too. 

All but the Messier list galaxies in this list are discovered by William Herschel and on the H400 list. Some of them have consecutive VI-xx or I-xx Herschel designations so i strongly suspect Herschel saw these consecutively on a given night or back to back on nights in series. Fascinating. That is also easy to understand because i don't think i moved my scope more than a few degrees to sweep all of these and a number of these are visually at least in little groups. 

A final thought - i'm quite switched on to surface brightness at the moment and using a calculated MPSAS figure of the galaxies i observed the brightest SB was 21.06, the average 21.88 and the dimmest 22.96. Of the 7 galaxies i tried too see but couldn't the SB spread was brightest 21.43, average 22.47 and the dimmest 23.34. Interesting stuff even if of debatable value for actual planning...

Thanks for reading if you made out this far 😂

Enjoy the dark of the moon over the next days and keep warm.

 

 

 

[ST_Steve]

That’s a great report @josefk and I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Out of interest, have you tried a dew shield on the Cass? I use one mainly as a defence from the local LP and have not suffered any dew issues to date (admittedly my recent sessions are not as prolonged as yours).

[josefk]

Thanks @ST_Steve - i was in the habit of using a DIY camping mat dew shield on the Cass and it was quite effective but it was a bit flimsy because the Losmandy plate on the CC runs all the way to the front aperture (and needs a counter weight on that near the end) and on the opposite side there is a vixen bar and i have a full length handle mounted on that - it means the camping mat is quite chopped into to wrap around the scope and clear the obstacles and is a bit weak (floppy) then. I gave up and recycled it to another scope...

I'm not too sorry - the CC normally lasts several hours and in this particular session i think i was a bit hasty demounting it - i'm not sure it was really dewed. 

[Trillion]

A really good report! Thank you for sharing.

Quite inspires me to go back to "galaxy hunting", always previously one one of my favourite activities. Your sketches , here and elsewhere, are really impressive. 

  For dew I've found a cordless hair dryer (as well as a dew shield) to be pretty effective, and avoids the need for extra power supplies or trailing cables.

[josefk]

Thanks for the kind words @Trillion there are quite a few well placed galaxies in the sky at this moment. Typically i do better in the spring than the autumn but you won't be short of candidates right now 👍

[Saganite]

Superb report Joe, and a fine haul of targets.  You have inspired me to get a move on with the Herschel 400...

 

[Saganite]

On 29/11/2024 at 12:08, Trillion said:

 

  For dew I've found a cordless hair dryer (as well as a dew shield) to be pretty effective, and avoids the need for extra power supplies or trailing cables.

In the early hours of  Thursday morning I noticed the image getting a bit foggy even though I had a heated dewshield on the 6" all evening, and of course upon  investigation , I found the lead from the battery to the dew controller had been caught and dislodged. Soon remedied but annoying all the same.....

[josefk]

thanks @Saganite Steve. There are a lot of galaxies in the list last month and this so the dark nights are valuable. I’m doing it very very slowly (I’m easily distracted by other sights) but I’m finding it quite fascinating. Enjoyable at the scope and fascinating in the reading up and historicity of it after the fact - what a pioneer. (if historicity is a real word). 

[josefk]

26 minutes ago, Saganite said:

I found the lead from the battery to the dew controller had been caught and dislodged.

I have a habit of commandeering the kitchen table through the Xmas break to make up an airfix model or two. 

This year my project is likely to be this “remote power source to end all power sources”. I think it will do three long nights “off grid”.  I’m getting all the bits together before I start:

 

to your pulled cable predicament -  I’m informally pull testing 20A “hella” sockets vs. regular 10A cigar sockets to see which one grips best.  The jury is currently out but I’ll let you know  😂

[Saganite]

Thanks Joe.

With me it is lack of attention to detail. The dew controller plugs into an 8 amp hr Lithium battery attached to my pier, which in turn can plug into my mains box box at the foot of the pier. Having mains electricity into my dome is great and I am sure I could make more of it re connections...😅