Late night observing 28/2/11

[Hypernova]

Last night was mainly cloudy up until late so I had resigned myself to staying inside for the duration. It however cleared up before midnight as I was ready for bed and I realised I couldn't pass up the chance of a clear night, it didn't matter if I had work in the morning!!!

I looked out at 23:40 saw it was clear and got dressed again and promptly went downstairs and set up the 'scope on the patio. Seeing was rather stable and the sky was quite transparent with occasional clumps of cloud drifting by, temperature was rather chilly so I remebered to dress up warm for comfort, hat and gloves required.

Whilst the main 'scope colled down for a few minutes, I made a few sweepeing observations with the binoculars. i took in a few widefield views of UMa, Cancer and Gemini. The Bode's galaxies were easily visible and the Pleaides and Beehive were good sights, despite the first's low altitude.

I then switched to the main 'scope and revisted a few of the jewels of UMa: M51, M101, 109, M97 and 108. All five were easily visible at the eyepiece with little use of averted vision. The 32mm plossl was doing it's job well as a wide-angle finder eyepiece, a 1.4* TFOV and a resonably flat field provided good views.

I went off in hunt of the "Intergalactic Wanderer" in Lynx, a small, fainyt and very distant glob jst over the border from Gemini. It was tricky to pin down initially, I kept following the wrong guide stars while starhopping but I eventually pinned it down in the eyepiece. I found it to very faint, quite diffuse with slight condensation towards the centre. I could not manage to resolve any stars but I wasn't expecting to.

I next went onto NGC 2841 in the front leg of UMa. I read report from someone else on here who recommended it is a target for being nice and bright. It was easy to find around 2* from Theta UMa.

The galaxy presented a nice and bright elongated smudge of nebulosity which was condensed slightly towards the centre, it is orientated roughly N to S in respect to RA and DEC. I noted a mag 11 star embedded within the northern part of the galaxy which gave the appearance of a bright SN.

I also had a quick look at the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini, using a 6mm SPL at 200x with a UHC filter to bring up the contrast. A little bit of detail visible with the brighter central region surrounded by the fuzzy outer halo.

There was time towards the end to look at Saturn which had risen a few degrees above the neighbour's rooftop. Despite the obvious heat effects that would degrade the view, the sight of planet was rather pleasant. I first used the low power 32mm to observe the planet, four of it's moons were visible at low power clustered together to the SE of the planet's disk. Three of them in a line and all of 11th magnitude and 8th mag Titan a little further out on the same side. I upped the mag a bit to 133x where i felt I got the best view of the night, the planet was sharp with hints of detail on the verge of being resolved on the disk. There was clear separation between the disk and the rings but no sign of the Cassini Division.

I did use 200x for a short while but the seeing conditions did not support it as it made the image degrade slightly so I backed off to my next highest which was 133x.

It was while viewing Saturn with the 32mm that I observed a strange sight in the same FOV. A few arcims to the NE I saw a bright orange flash that lasted no more than a second. It didn't move at all and was in the region of 6-7th magnitude.

I thought it might have been an internal reflection at first but I am not sure because it was a point source like a star and did not flare about on the glass surfaces and also because of it's brightness. If anyone saw what I saw at around 12:00 please say so.

I finished up observing at around 1:00 as the cold was getting to me and I needed to get some sleep before getting up for work. I went to bed though knowing that I made the best I could of the skies and I was satisfied with the observing, here's hoping that we get more clear nights in the near future

[m_j_lyons]

Nice report - hope to put in about an hour myself tonight - looks like my conditions in California are a little better than yours are...sorry.

On the flash - are there reports made of supernova activity...especially if one were to flair to 6th mag?

[Hypernova]

I wouldn't imagine it was a SN, they take many weeks to rise to full brightness and this was over in seconds.

[oldfruit]

Nice report and looks like you bagged a few fuzzies. Saturn will be up at a more reasonable hour in the next few weeks so hopefully you will be able to get better views then. I think it is a great sight through almost any scope.

Thanks for sharing.