[Chaos-l] Observing Report - Medoc Mountain State Park 1/30/2009

[Robert Nielsen]

Sorry this is late ... but I've had to deal with some crises at work.  
Wish I was back in front of the telescope ...

Last Saturday, Allen Davis, his friend Don, Mark Lerch, Bruno Pancorbo 
and I met (literally almost all at the same time) at Medoc Mountain 
State Park for a night of observing.   The Clear Sky Clock was great as 
far as cloud cover and transparency were concerned, and good as far as 
seeing, so I was looking forward to a good night of galaxy hunting 
(based on the stuff that was rising when I left last weekend).

This wasn't a new moon weekend, and the "not quite first quarter" moon 
stayed in the western sky until it set below the treeline about 11 PM.   
Still, the moisture content of the sky must have been very low, because 
the moon didn't really affect other parts of the sky (as could be seen 
throughout the night, comparing views of object before and after the 
moon set, like M51).   I did my normal check of M42 and the Trapezium 
first, checking to see if I could see the fifth and sixth star ... only 
5, so the seeing wasn't perfect.   No problem ... and the results 
matched the prediction of the Clear Sky Clock ... so I needed to focus 
on the galaxies.

After waiting for the moon to set a bit by the fire, I started by 
looking at M1 with various eyepieces and filters, to see if one was 
better than the other.  M1 was very visible, but as is normally the 
case, there was little structure visible.  I tried high magnification 
(up to about 700X), low magnification (around 65X) and various filters 
(UHC and O-III) and found that the O-III filter did change things so I 
could see what looked like filaments ... but it had removed most of the 
rest of the visible nebula and so it didn't look right.  Best view?  
Probably about 200X ... with no filter.   Like I said, the skies at 
Medoc Mountain seem to take a little higher magnification for me than 
other places (such as MASP and definitely Jordan Lake) ... so that's 
about normal for all the things I was looking at that night.

About that time, Allen came back ... and the technical gremlins started 
cropping up on our scopes.   Allen suffered a problem that was 
eventually tracked down to some low batteries.   Later in the evening, I 
had trouble with my computer "freezing" (appropriate term ... I could 
keep the laptop running better if I put "hand warmers" under the disk 
drive).  And Mark suffered failure of his laptop as well.   The only one 
of us that had no problem was Bruno ... because he was using good 
old-fashioned telescope without power.   Eventually I had to do roughly 
the same.

But before that, I checked out M46 (the open cluster in Puppis that Mark 
South, Michael Hrivnak and I had looked at a couple of days before at 
Jordan Lake that has a planetary nebula superimposed on it).   Very 
nice.   There was definitely more detail visible in the darker skies, 
but Michael's Starmaster showed the entire cluster better than my Mewlon 
(due to the high focal ratio).   By the way, what's a Puppis anyway?   I 
don't remember learning that word in Latin class!   A ship's keel?

Ah ... but now I turned toward Coma Berenices and Virgo.   I started 
with M100 and M99, which are face-on galaxies.   Not very big (smaller 
than NGC2403 from last week) but you could see structure and arms, with 
M99 having more detail than M100.  Again, I tried different eyepieces 
and compared the two multiple times.   Probably best at about 165X (in 
the 22mm Nagler), but other galaxies did better at 225X.   For example, 
M64 (the Black Eye Galaxy) was better at the higher power, with the dust 
lane easily visible.  NGC4565, which Allen had shown me the week before, 
was great at the higher power ... extending across 2/3rds of the view.   
I actually studied the bulge at it's center for quite a while.   After 
those well-known galaxies, I started just "trolling" with the scope, 
seeing what combinations of galaxies I could find.   Two combinations 
were especially interesting.   First, I happened to find NGC 4298 and 
NGC4302, which are like Laurel and Hardy ... one thin and tall, one 
shorter and rounder galaxy side-by-side.   They were pretty faint, but 
visible.  Bruno corroborated they were there.   But next, I found a 
perfect triangle of galaxies, with one in the center, which was one of 
the gems of the night,  By checking back at the laptop, I found that I 
was looking at M84, M86, and NGC4388 (with NGC4387 in the center).   
Allen mentioned that the eyepiece (Nagler 22mm) nicely framed the view, 
which was true.   For those of you who have "The Night Sky Observer's 
Guide", check out the photo on the top of page 441 of volume 2.   What I 
was looking at was the triangle of galaxies on the left of that photo.  
I highly recommend it!   According to the book, this triangle is roughly 
at the gravitational center of the Coma/Virgo galaxy cluster.

For the next 45 minutes or so, I wandered through Virgo and Coma, just 
looking at galaxy after galaxy.  Most are elliptical, which are nice 
(but get a little boring) and it was nice to find the edge-on galaxies 
sprinkled in the mix.   Once I found a view where I could easily see six 
galaxies in the same view!   I finally ended up at the Sombrero Galaxy 
(M104), which was very nice.   Again ... nicely framed filling up about 
2/3rds of the view.   And everything was visible with direct vision ... 
not averted!

After another break at the fire, I checked out some Messier objects that 
were up, including M51 and M3 ... both very, very nice.  M51 showed the 
spiral arms in the larger galaxy easily, and I could even see some 
structure in the smaller galaxy.  M3 was glorious, but then again, it's 
a great object ... one of my favorites.   As I was spending longer times 
observing these sights, my computer was suspended for longer times, and 
eventually the cold got to the hard drive ... it wouldn't resume.   So I 
was on my own to star hop and move the scope manually.   It was fun!   
Admittedly, I didn't try to find anything really hard, but I found M51 
again and M3 ... to see what they looked like higher in the sky,   
Hercules had risen in the sky, so I also checked out M13 and M92.   I 
had some difficulty finding M104 "by hand" ... but I did.   And by the 
end of the evening, Lyra had started rising in the east!  So I looked at 
M57 (Ring Nebula).   It was pretty low in the sky, but looked very 
nice.  As I walked back to the fire to meet Mark (who had given up 
taking long exposures by hand) believe it or not, I saw the top of 
Scorpius rising in the south!

It was definitely the first time I had seen Lyra and Scorpius in 
January.   Amazing.

The moon is going to get in the way for a while, and I think my wife has 
scheduled a skiing trip for the end of the month, so this might be the 
last observing report I write for a while.  If you can make it out, to 
Medoc Mountain or Jordan Lake or your backyard, do it!   The skies (when 
they are clear) are transparent, and there's lot to see up there ... 
including a new comet!   Have fun and clear skies!

Robert