Meade Lightbridge Observing report as of 12.11.2010

[Doc]

12.11.2010

Meade Lightbridge 16" F4.5 FL1829mm

Very low moon

Cold with medium wind.

Seeing Mag 4.1

First of all I went hunting for M77 in the constellation Cetus it is a beautiful spiral galaxy, and one of the largest galaxies in the Messier catalog. The brightest parts of this galaxy measure about 120,000 light-years in diameter, but its fainter extensions bring it out to a total of 170,000 light-years. This galaxy is believed to be located around 60 million light-years from Earth and is receding from us at a whopping 1100 km/sec. The galaxy is 6.9' x 7.3' in size and pretty bright at mag 8.8. The actual galaxy core resembles a planatary nebula to look at and looks almost stellar in origin but I placed my 16 uwan into the focuser and I could see a non steller core and very dim smudge around the core. With prolonged looking I caught a glimpse or hint of a spiral arm but this was only with averted vision.

I then star hopped down to Ngc1055, a edge on galaxy in Cetus that is very dim at mag 10.6 and 7.6'x7.6' in size. This one was incredibly hard and I only caught a very rare hint of it using my 12.5mm ortho. Maybe the lack of extra elements in these ortho's help with seeing these very dim galaxies. All I could see was a sliver of light, I could not really make out a shape or even see a core, but with extreme averted vision I did catch a very slight hint of this galaxy.

Staying in Cetus I star hopped over to a planetary nebula called Ngc246, this is also known as PK118-74.1, Cetus bubble and the Skull nebula and shines at a mag of 8.5 and has a size of 4.0'x3.5'. It was actually not that hard to find and resembles a circular ring. With the 16 uwan I could detect the actual shape and two embedded stars that are mag 11. Even with the 7 uwan inserted I still could not detect the mag 12 central star. A very nice nebula and one that looked better with the O111 filter inserted.

Next I observed IC348 a cluster and nebula surrounding the star Omicron Persei. It is 10' in diameter and mag 7.5 in brightness, through the 28 uwan I witnessed a fantastic sight of really dim stars intermingled with brighter ones, but I could see no nebulosity. There seemed to be quite a few double stars within this object.

Staying in Perseus I dropped down to the California nebula known as Ngc1499. This nebula is huge at 145'x160' and shines at mag 6. Once again a fantastic region with so many stars, but the nebulosity eluded me.

Cetus was a constellation I've always ignored for some reason but I'm glad I visited tonight and manged to tick a few more objects of my lists.

[bish]

Interesting report Mick. I expect the california nebula to be a tough one - have you ever seen it visually?

[Doc]

No I've never seen it visually. I know where it is and can see the stars embedded within it. I've tried a few filters in the pass and nothing came through.