Observing reports from TSP 2014 with my 18"
Hi folks
Here are some of my more interesting (to me, of course) observing reports from TSP with my 18". Many of these observations were checked / confirmed by Santhosh Surendra, who recently joined the forum.
Night 2 of TSP:
I have a bad habit of not writing down the seeing / observing conditions, mostly because I can't really tell transparency and seeing quality easily. But the skies on this night were distinctly poorer than usual. I remember walking up to Jim Chandler and Terry Philips after the observation of Hoag's object and they were not very impressed with the skies either.
Leo II:
18" + 20mm Pentax XW] -- I detected Leo II at the edge of visibility, but it needs reconfirmation. It looked like a star that had a very dim halo. Santhosh concurred, and his observation was verified by the following -- I asked him to center the star that had the maximum halo for its brightness, and he centered the correct star.
Hoag's object:
18" + 7mm Nagler -- was at the edge of visiblity in the 18". Observed this for a very long time. 10 ~ 15% holding in 18". Structure was not seen. 4.5mm (460x) indicated non-stellarness.
Tulip nebula (Sh2-101):
18" + 20mm Pentax + UHC -- The "Tulip" nebula looked very different from H-alpha images, but more similar to DSS blue plate. (Was on TSP2014 advanced list.)
Night 3 of TSP:
Here's a very wonky observation, that made no sense -- maybe I was at the wrong place or something? If any of you have experience with this object, do let me know what your explanation is.
Vela ring??:
18" + 4.5mm Delos -- Very low in the horizon. Saw a very faint fuzzy "star" in the location of the galaxy. However, could not see the other galaxy at all!!?? No ring structure seen. (TSP2000 Adv. list)
Here is the DSS image: http://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss...e&fov=NONE&v3=
I was able to see only two things -- a star and a fuzzy object. The fuzzy object was in the rough direction of the ring galaxy. It was as if the other galaxy just did not exist. Any idea why? Was I on the wrong field?
VII Zw 466:
18" -- the nearby NGC galaxy was easily detected, and was used to find the object. The bright stellar galaxy CGCG 315-44 was mistaken for a star (until Jimicorrected me later). VII Zw 466 was occasionally held for short amounts of time. There was one instant where I detected that it was large in size. Edge on CGCG 315-43 was super-faint, very occasionally seen. (TSP2000 Adv. list)
(Here's a labeled image from one of Alvin's reports for reference: http://www.faintfuzzies.com/OR-May20...20Zw%20466.jpg)
Rho Ophiuchus nebulosity:
18", 6" (maybe even 9x50 finder scope???). The sharpest transition observed was near M80. Entire region was filled with nebulosity. Easy in the 18", somewhat hard in the 6". Panning the telescope showed a lot of variation in background brightness. Sensed in 9x50 finder including dark regions??? (TSP2014 Adv. list)
NGC 6337 (The "Cheerio"):
18" + 7 Nagler + OIII -- Beautiful planetary! Perfect circular ring (see 48" report for the opposite!). Brighter parts noted in the rim.
MCG 2-50-3:
18" + ? + OIII -- This is the planetary nebula (Marked as H III in Chart 158 in Hodge's atlas of the local group) in Barnard's galaxy (NGC 6822), that is seen readily in photographs of the object. A bright stellar HII region (marked H V in Chart 160 of Hodge's atlas of the local group) was also observed, which was used as reference when the filter was inserted. The PN was almost only visible with the OIII filter; barely detected otherwise. Did not try for central hole, likely not possible. Removing and re-inserting the OIII helped detect the object. (TSP2000 Adv. list)
TSP Night 4:
Serpens object:
18" -- At the edge of visibility. Another RN was seen around a nearby star. (TSP2014 Adv. list)
Parsamyan 21:
18" -- Beautiful, quite bright. Elongation easily detected. (TSP2014 Adv. list)
Draco dwarf:
6" + 20mm Pentax -- Detected as a glow around the stars in the field.
TSP Night 5:
Palomar 14:
18" + 20mm Pentax / 10mm Delos -- looked like a halo around a faint star. 20mm Pentax was useful to detect the object by condensing the core. 10mm was thereafter useful. Not terribly difficult.
Palomar 15:
18" + 20mm Pentax -- confirmed by not knowing the exact location. Faint, very LSB, but large glow. Could not see in 12" / 6", just maybe barely detectable in 12". In the 18", it was observed as a circular increase in background brightness.
(Night 6 was spent at Jimi Lowrey's observatory)
TSP Night 7:
Santhosh and I spent considerable amount of time observing the Corona Borealis cluster (ACO 2065):
Corona Borealis cluster:
18" -- Having seen this object in the 48", we decided to follow it up in the 18" with the intention of resolving and counting the galaxies we could definitely observe.
In the 26mm Ortho, it looked like a faint glow, just like a Palomar globular cluster, to one side of a star. Confirmed by Santhosh.
We started slowly increasing the magnification. At 20mm, it started to resolve into "filaments", i.e. show some mottling in the glow. At 10mm, some galaxies could be intermittently held with averted vision.
We used a 7mm Nagler for most of the observations. I observed 5 galaxies, and Santhosh observed 6. We used Steve Gottlieb's report and
a DSS image as reference
(http://www.astronomy-mall.com/Advent...ce/agc2065.htm)
The first galaxy I saw was Goodwin #6, then managed to see Goodwin #3 and #2 -- although they were hard to resolve, one could sense that
there were two centers of light at times. Goodwin #1 came next. One of the brighter members below the top left star in Steve's
reference image was visible thereafter. This galaxy is not in Steve's report, unless I missed it. Then, I detected Goodwin #4 with very low holding. Santhosh reports that I saw one other galaxy as well, but I did not remember it enough to log it. I did not see the other galaxy that Steve records in his report, the PGC galaxy that is the brightest in the cluster, possibly due to the proximity of the star (or maybe I didn't try hard enough.)
We spent nearly 2 hours on this object put together, and by the end of these hours, it was around 30° above the western horizon. We should
have started earlier on this object, but owing to various constraints, we started observing late.
HCG 88:
18" -- for some "bright object" respite, we observed HCG 88 in Aquarius. All 4 members were seen. The 3 in a row were easy. The faint edge-on was rather difficult, but detectable. After Corona Borealis cluster, even this Hickson group seemed like a very bright object and relieved our eyes from the efforts required in seeing the Corona cluster.
Clear Skies
Regards
Akarsh
