Hi folks,

Two nights ago I tried to observe one of the integrated flux nebulae described on Mel Bartels' website for the first time.

I'd been planning to do this for quite some time, but I wasn't sure if the sky is dark enough at my location.
During my most recent observing session the sky appeared to be really dark, as I was able to see 6.8 mag stars around the zenith with naked eyes.

With my 12-inch Dobsonian at 47x magnification (6.4 mm exit pupil diameter) I was looking for Mandel-Wilson 3 (a.k.a. Volcano Nebula), which is located roughly one degree north of Messier 82.
Between the 8.3 mag star TYC4386-00993-1 and the 8.7 mag star TYC4386-00428-1 I saw a very faint and diffuse patch that was slightly brighter than the surrounding sky.
I moved my telescope field of view back and forth a little to make sure it wasn't some kind of reflection in the eyepiece, but the slightly brighter patch remained stationary with respect to stars. I realized that the sky was slightly darker between the stars TYC4386-00428-1, TYC4386-00342-1 and TYC4386-00586-1, where there is no nebula.
The length of the structure that I saw was approximately 45 arc minutes and it was slightly curved. It appeared similar to a faint dwarf galaxy.

Mel did his observations with smaller aperture and larger field of view and he was able to see a larger part of this IFN. I don't know if he is active at this forum.
What I saw was probably the brightest part of it. Please find attached my sketch.

Has anyone of you observed this nebula?


Clear skies

Robin

VolcanoIFNRobin.jpg