[Chaos-l] 10/11/2012: NGC 7000 through 10x50 binoculars?

[Jon Stewart-Taylor]

Hi all.  I was out Sunday night from about 8 to 9 with 20x80 and 10x50  
binoculars.  I spent about the first 20 minutes re-acquainting myself  
with the Burgaw Middle School Orion 20x80s, which i last used a year  
ago October for IOMN, observing the moon.  They've got about a 2.5- 
degree field of view, and gave a very nice view of the Pleiades,  
showed the orange color of Delta Lyr intensely, and showed the Double  
Cluster in Perseus well.  They also are next to impossible to use at  
zenith, which is where my real target for the night was located.  So i  
switched to hand-held 10x50s.

Spreading a couple of beach towels over the dewy grass and tucking my  
eyepiece box under them for a head prop, i started hunting for NGC  
7000 (the North American Nebula).  Conditions were good, but not  
great.  The LM was 5.2 or a little above.  It was pretty humid, with  
occasional drifts of thin fog blowing through.  The Milky Way was  
clearly visible and even showed some detail around the edges.

Finding the location of the nebula wasn't at all difficult: it's just  
west of Deneb, and its exact spot is marked by two pairs of stars. A  
wide-ish north-south pair marks the west edge, the other  pair (east- 
west) points to the center from the east edge .

When i focused in on the location of the nebula, there was clearly a  
glow there.  I couldn't see the characteristic outline of the "eastern  
seaboard", nor the "Florida peninsula" with the "Gulf of Mexico" which  
i remembered from the photos.  It also seemed a bit too big. But,  
there was clearly a glow, which faded out to the north, west, and  
south about where it was supposed to: it just seemed to extend too far  
to the east.  Scanning around the location a couple of FOV in each  
direction showed patches of Milky Way brightening and fading, looking  
a great deal like what i saw at the target location.

I spent about 15-20 minutes going back and forth between focusing on  
the location with both direct and averted vision, and scanning the  
vicinity to compare against the local Milky Way.  When i reached the  
point of diminishing returns, i swept up M31.  Goodness, that's a big  
galaxy.  Took up over 1/2 the FOV in the binoculars.

At that point a cloud bank had risen to obscure most of the west, so i  
packed up and went in.

The question remains: Did i actually see the 7000, or just Milky Way  
background brightening?  Looking at postings on the 'net, most people  
would say that darker skies are required.  Looking at the location on  
Sky Atlas 2000 (chart 9, if you want to look yourself), the contours  
of the Milky Way don't seem to be responsible for brightening in that  
spot.  If it weren't for the extending too far to the east, i'd feel  
pretty sure i'd at least detected it.  I'm wondering if what i was  
seeing was 7000 and the Pelican (IC 5070) blurred together so that i  
couldn't see the dark nebula (LDN 935) which separates them, and  
therefore couldn't see the "coastline" to make a postitive ID.

At this point, i claim i "detected" 7000/IC 5070, but didn't _observe_  
them.  Another try under better conditions may be more revealing.

Hope this wasn't too boring.

J.
-- 
Jon Stewart-Taylor:  joncst at earthlink.net
Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos
Cape Fear Astronomy: http://www.capefearastro.org/