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

[Robert Nielsen]

Jon,

Well ...

I can at least state that I could see the North American Nebula very clearly with my naked eye on Saturday night ... from Medoc.  I remember trying to use Michael C's binoculars to get a better view, and didn't immediately, so I went off to see other things.   Perhaps the problem was the "softness" of the sky that night.   At times, the seeing was horrible in certain directions ... but then if you went back to the same target the seeing was great (Jupiter followed this pattern).   Or perhaps there was more moisture in the atmosphere and that caused things to be bright (again something we noticed at Medoc).

Combine upper level moisture dissipating light and bad seeing, and perhaps the Milky Way was mushier and brighter than expected.   I do think the bad seeing would have made it difficult to see the outlines of some of the parts of NGC7000.

Robert

On Nov 12, 2012, at 11:23 PM, Jon Stewart-Taylor <joncst at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 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/
> 
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