[Chaos-l] Observing Report - Medoc Mountain, April 17, 2009

[Robert Nielsen]

On Friday evening, I headed over to Medoc Mountain ... excited by the 
predictions of the Clear Sky Clock - absolutely no clouds in sight, 
extremely good transparency and good seeing.  Allen Davis was already 
setup when I arrived, as were a few of the astrophotography crowd from 
RAC (Ron, Robert, Michael, and Peter ... if I remember correctly).   And 
Don Hale was present as well.   I was there primarily to observe a set 
of galaxies in Ursa Major, one of which I heard about on the 
astronomy.com podcast, and others of which were mentioned in an article 
in Astronomy Magazine.

The first part of the night was more focused on outreach and showing the 
wonders of the sky to the public than serious galaxy hunting ... but 
that was fine with me (and Allen); we both like to share our scopes with 
the public.  The first group to visit was a father and his two sons from 
Raleigh who were camping in the park.   Allen and I took turns finding 
some of the night's "tourist traps"; I started with Saturn, and Allen 
started with M3 ... both of which were high in the night sky.   We 
continued with M51 and M81 and M82, and also jumped over to see the 
Eskimo Nebula in Gemini.   At some point during the observing, the dad 
went back to the campsite and returned with the mom (Miriam) who was 
just awestruck with the images she was seeing.   We later found out it 
was her birthday, and one of the things she wanted to see on her 
birthday was a shooting star.  Well, almost perfectly on cue, one 
streaked across the eastern sky and she saw it!  She saw a couple of 
more before the night was over.

[Note: When I got home, I tried to figure out why we saw meteors Friday 
night.   I'm still not really sure (because of the direction of one of 
the meteors I remember) but they could have been the Lyrids, visible 
from 4/16 until 4/25, or possibly a Tau Draconid (a much fainter shower) 
visible from 3/13 until 4/17.   From the direction of the meteor ... I 
would think it was a stray Draconid.   But likely it was a Lyrid.]

At this point (which was actually later than I had realized ... around 
11 PM) I took a break, headed back to the fire and setup the coffee 
machine.  Most everyone collected around the fire about that time, 
drinking coffee and talking about the "civilized amenities" of Medoc 
Mountain State Park.   I headed back to the scope after about a half 
hour ... wanting to get to work on the galaxy hunt.   I started out on 
NGC2685.   This was the galaxy mentioned in the astronomy.com podcast 
for the week of 4/3 - 4/10 that has a "circumpolar" ring of stars 
orthogonal to the normal plane of the galaxy.   The Night Sky Observer's 
Guide (Vol 2 pg 390) shows it as a 3-star object, so I thought there 
might be a chance of seeing the circumpolar ring in the dark, clear 
skies of Medoc ... perhaps by "borrowing" Allen's 20-inch Obsession for 
a view.   Well, I could never see it.  In fact, NGC2685 is a pretty 
faint galaxy, and it was difficult (although possible) to see any 
structure outside of the bright core.  I'm not sure what it would take, 
other than a monstrous scope or a camera, to tease out this pretty 
remarkable looking loop on the galaxy.   

Something interesting happened after I was done looking at NGC2685.   I 
was looking through the scope, sitting looking toward the road, and in 
the distance I saw a faint flashlight and whispering coming from that 
direction.   I thought it might be some teenagers (perhaps scouts) back 
through the woods at the campsite, but at some point I got worried 
something bad was happening and they were breaking into the line of cars 
at the side of the road.  So I walked over, and was surprised to see 
about 7 teenagers just sitting on the fence.  When I said hello, one of 
them asked "uh ... what are you guys doing?"  I said that we were either 
taking pictures of stuff up in space, or looking at stars and planets 
and galaxies through our telescopes.  They all said together "we really 
like astronomy", so I invited them over to take a look at things through 
my telescope.  

They were all from around the general area - Halifax and Nash counties - 
and were there camping with their parents.   So I slewed the scope to 
Saturn and told them to take a look.   I guess they were teenagers ... 
too cool to exclaim "wow!" ... but I did hear one of them say "I'm 
learning more about space now than I ever did in Mr. <whatever>'s 
class".   I showed them a few of the more spectacular sights, like M13 
(which had risen nicely by now) and M51, which looked really good as it 
always does at Medoc, but I don't think they realized how to view the 
spiral arms.  About that time Allen came back from the fire, and I think 
was surprised to see an even larger crowd around my scope than earlier 
in the night.   He took over at that point and showed them a few more 
things, including M81 and M82 in the same eyepiece view.   They stayed 
around until after 12:30 ... and actually asked very intelligent 
questions.    I was very happy they came along, except for the time the 
girl's dad came out of the campground with headlights "blaring" to find 
where the group had gone.   She sheepishly went over and explained they 
were looking at the stars through telescopes, and he returned 
satisfied.   I hope his headlights didn't ruin too many of the images 
that the RAC astrophotographers were taking.

After the teenagers left, it was time to continue with the galaxy tour.  
Next up, based on pictures in Astronomy magazine, was NGC2841.  It was a 
fairly bright NGC galaxy ... and at 162X, you could see mottling in the 
halo of the galaxy, with a small bright core.   There are a couple of 
bright foreground stars that fall right at the edge of the arms, so it 
is easy to tell how far the galaxy extends.   All told, it was a good 
smaller galaxy to look at, in Allen's Obsession you could see a little 
more detail, and a couple of more foreground stars.

Next was NGC2787, which was smaller and fainter, but different.  The 
magazine said that it was listed in the NGC catalog with an "r" suffix, 
which means "resolved".   Well, it did look different ... the smoky glow 
or arms weren't there.   Instead, there are lots of point-like areas ... 
that look like stars but which are actually parts of the galaxy.  
Definitely one to go back and look at.

Next up were M81 and M82.  In my f/11.9 scope, I can't easily get both 
of them in the same field of view ... so I just spent time looking at 
each individually.  To me, M82 is definitely the more interesting one 
visually ... its irregular shape and dark lanes make it different from 
most other galaxies.  Friday night, at 275X, the dark lanes were very 
visible, with more tendrils than I've normally seen.  Even better, M81 
showed me some facets I hadn't seen before.  Usually to me, M81 is just 
an oval glow, perhaps with a fainter glow around the edge.   Well, on 
Friday night, I saw what I thought were dust lanes ... or at least the 
darkness of space peeking through some of the glow.   Sure enough, 
looking at pictures of M81, there are areas right around the rather 
large nucleus of the galaxy, where you can see darker streaks, and that 
was what I saw.   It really was a pretty good night ... very transparent 
skies.

Which brings me to an observation that Allen and I made while we were 
there.  The skies at Medoc definitely get darker ... nicely dark ... 
around midnight.  It must be because some lights are turned off 
somewhere in the area, but the skies earlier in the evening are not as 
dark as they are in the middle of the night.   Actually, now that I 
think about it, the same effect could be seen at Pettigrew ... so 
perhaps it has an astronomical cause.   In any case, the transparency 
and contrast of Medoc Mountain kicked in around midnight ... and the 
observing was wonderful.   Allen and I used M13 (which was visible naked 
eye in the eastern sky) and the faint stars around Canes Ventatici to 
put the limiting magnitude at pretty close to 6, perhaps even a little 
better.

Back to the galaxies.   Next on my list was NGC3077 ... an irregular 
galaxy near M81 and M82.   It didn't show as much structure as M82 ... 
although it was fairly bright.   The magazine article said that a "ray" 
or extension was supposed to be visible extending off to the northeast 
from the main portion of the galaxy.  I'm not sure I ever saw it.   I 
then moved to M108 (NGC3556) to see an edge-on galaxy in Ursa Major.   
It was moderately bright, with a bright nucleus and a single foreground 
star ... but no structure in the arms at all ... no dust lane.   It is 
located near the Owl Nebula (M97 or NGC3587) so I moved over to look at 
it.   The Owl Nebula is a planetary nebula with a couple of dark areas 
in the middle that look like owl's eyes.  But it is a whispy, smoky 
nebula, especially at the 200X I was look at it.  It was framed nicely 
in my 13mm eyepiece.

At this point, I was running out of time before the moon rose around 3 
AM, so I chose to view what I thought were the more interesting galaxies 
(or groups) in the list.   NGC3991, NGC3994, and NGC3995 form a triplet 
of galaxies in a very high-power eyepiece view ... so I tried those.   
They were extremely faint, with only the barest smudges visible.  But 
you could, as described online and in the magazine article, detect that 
the position angle (the long axis of the galaxy) all were in the same 
direction ... straight up and down for me.   Slightly moving the mount 
made the galaxies a little more visible ... but this object was a little 
bit of a disapointment for me.  So I moved on to brighter objects.

M109 (NGC3992) was a nice galaxy ... smaller and not as bright as 
NGC2841 (mentioned earlier) but resembling it in appearance, with 
foreground stars tracing the edges of the arms.   It seems strange to me 
that an "M" object (Messier list) was fainter than an NGC object ... but 
I guess that happens, especially with the higher numbered items in the 
Messier list.   After M109, I looked at NGC3184, which had a wonderful 
picture in Astronomy magazine.  In  the eyepiece, it was certainly nice 
... and reminded me a lot of M101 (the Pinwheel Galaxy, also in Ursa 
Major) but much, much smaller.   The arms definitely were apparent, but 
for me there was not much structure.  A couple of foreground stars added 
to the similarity to M101 ... although I think they really were 
foreground stars, and not H II regions.

Of course, I had to take a look at M101 ... which was overhead by that 
time.   It was probably about the best I have ever seen it.  Usually, it 
is a faint object, and you can barely see the arms of the galaxy against 
the background.   But the transparency of the night, in combination with 
its position and the contrast of my long focal-length scope, brought out 
some nice detail.   When perfectly focused, the stars and H II regions 
of the galaxy popped out ... and because it is a fairly large object, it 
filled most of the eyepiece.   At one point in time, Ron from RAC showed 
us an image he had taken (I think that night) and we could see the arm 
that extends farther on one side just as it appeared in the eyepiece.   
Well ... OK ... there was obviously more detail in the image, but both 
Allen and I ... as well as some of the RAC folks ... were amazed what 
you could see just looking through an eyepiece.    As I've mentioned 
before ... going to Medoc helps me see things as they are represented in 
the books I use for observing!

Before I packed up (as the moon was rising) I looked at M3, M13, M57 
(trying to see the central star ... I *might* have seen it pop out a 
couple of times in Allen's scope ... I'm still not sure), all of which 
were amazing ... as usual.   I was actually sad to see the Moon come up, 
I was having so much fun ... and the night FLEW by with all the visitors 
and all the stuff I wanted to see.  But I packed up (which takes over a 
half hour) and left with Allen ... leaving the astrophotographers asleep 
(I think) in front of their laptop screens.  I got back at 5:30 AM.   It 
was a great night, and I'm looking forward to more in the future.   Next 
weekend will be spent down at Camp Durant in Moore County ... but I'll 
be back to Medoc soon.

Robert