Hi all
Some of the darkest skies in California lie in the north-eastern part of the state in the Warner Mountain range. At the foothills of the Warners is a small town called Likely, CA. Last summer, Jimi and I took my telescope up to the Warner Mountains at about 9000' elevation and witnessed some really amazing skies and had my 18" go really deep. However, that area is rather remote without cell service or amenities or the like and the cold at 9000' would be hard to prepare for during the fall season (We had freezing conditions in peak summer up there!). As a compromise, I decided to stay in and around Likely. Likely has Bortle 2 skies according to the 2016 Light Pollution atlas.
About a mile off the town is an RV resort called Likely Place. They have concrete pads specifically for astronomy, with power outlets. However, lights from RV campers was very bothersome to me. On the second day, I met up with Rick Linden, taking necessary COVID-19 precautions. Rick had found a cool spot in the Modoc National Forest which was at slightly higher elevation, and had no local lights! For nights 2 and 3, I relocated to this place. Unfortunately, because of COVID-19, Rick and I did not share any views. We just exchanged banter, and Rick left early on the third day.
The seeing was okay on all 3 nights, but not exceptional. The skies were consistently somewhere between Bortle 1 and Bortle 2. There were hints of Zodiacal Band stretching from Hyades, through the Gegenschein near Mars, almost to the circlet of Pisces. The Zodiacal Light was extremely bright and extended a solid 45 degrees or so. The winter milky way showed plenty of structure. There was some high-altitude haze in the sky on the first two nights, possibly also on the third night. The sky darkness seemed better on the third night despite heavy clouding during the day.
On night 2, the sling that holds the mirror in my telescope developed problems. Thanks to Rick's idea of attaching duct tape to it, I was easily able to get the sling back in position to hold the mirror. However, I seemingly made it too tight! So I had an astigmatic mirror through all of night 2 and at least part of night 3, after which I corrected it somewhat. This, plus seeing, did not let me see very tiny detail. The darkness however was pretty good, and I was able to hit a few LSB targets.
Here is my full list of observations. I logged a bit over 50 objects through the two and a half nights.
1. M57 Central Star [450x]
Multiple pops unfiltered, despite tube currents and poor seeing.
2. M57 Outer Halo
See the other thread I opened on this subject
3. IC 1396A
Long dark nebula in UHC. Lots of structure and cross-rifts.
4. PN Abell 74
Extremely faint glow, very roughly 20' in diameter. Compared to a reference image, the glow on the OIII filter seemed lopsided NE, asymmetric from the central star. Only a meager glow may have been detected on the other side (SW) perhaps because it was harder to distinguish starfield glow from the PN. One of the faintest things I've ever seen.
5. WLM
WLM was very straightforward compared to [Abell 74]. Quite easily detected in 26mm orthoscopic, but not so easy at 14mm (Pentax XL).
6. WLM globular cluster
This was very tough. Best views @ 200x, 290x. Stellar, yet fuzzy patch that only pops occasionally. <~ 10% holding.
7. HCG 7
All 4 members are not bad. The brightest two come into view immediately. HCG 7(a) looks elongated, whereas HCG 7(b) is barely so. The face on HCG 7(c) is the third brightest at this power and sports a stellarish core. HCG 7(d) is faint and stellar, only marginally harder than HCG 7(c). (a), (b), (c) can be held steadily averted. (d) ~ 70% holding.
8. HCG 6
At first glance at 205x, feels like a clump of galaxies with averted vision, that resolves into an asterism of stellar points at moments. Upon adding more power, 3 galaxies can be resolved. Best view at 340x. The 16th mag star south of the main clump may have been weakly detected. All cores can be held maybe ~50% or so.
9. Arp 127 = NGC 191
Randomly stumbled on this pair in the field. Nice pair. The face-on has a brighter core and almost uniform faint halo. Reminiscent of M51 through a finder scope.
10. NGC 772
Fuzzy, sizable core. Averted vision shows the dominant arm with some effort.
11. Shk 317
Truly amazing! Counted ~6 galaxies in 6mm Delos (~340x) without detailed image. They are roughly collinear. I've annotated below an SDSS image (north is marked by the arrow) with letters (not official!) to identify the galaxies I saw (except the controversial 'X') and to map them to the descriptions below.
Brightness order (excludes `a`, which I missed for some reason!?): (f) > (j) > (g) > (b) > (d). The rest are too intermittent (excluding `a`) to be ordered.
(i) appears stellar. (h) and (i) were very hard and difficult to compare in brightness because they appeared intermittently. My logs say 'X' looks like a star -- I must have missed the galaxy flanking it because my POSSI reference image was too poor to resolve the star flanking the galaxy. (e) was stellar and extremely, extremely faint, with only 3--4 pops in the entire duration. (c) was very stellar and also eeF, with 6--7 pops.
Both (c) and (e) have a magnitude of 16, whereas (i) is 15.8 mag, according to Sloan photometry, approximated as (g + r)/2.0
12. M 31
In addition to the two prominent dark lanes, dark structures were sensed on the opposite side ("M32 side") even! Crazy contrast!
13. Cas 1
An *extremely* weak glow of considerable size. Harder than (PN) Abell 74, way harder than WLM. Worth reobserving in darker skies. Weak observation.
XX. WeBo 1
Negative. See other thread.
14. ACO 539
Beautiful cluster in Orion. Best view in a 4.5mm Delos (~450x).
The galaxies flanking the stars are harder to observe. The clump marked I in the sketch is the easiest to see, and resolution is sensed at ~342x. The group of galaxies marked as II is second easiest. 8 galaxies are observed. The clump marked I has a single UGC designation, UGC 3274. In fact, I had looked at this earlier with Jimi's 48" along with Steve Gottlieb and Howard Banich in 2014. In Jimi's scope, 4 galaxies were resolved as part of the chain, whereas in my scope, only 3 can be distinctly resolved. My sketch indicates a protrusion under (W) of the brightest member, that I cannot easily corroborate against an image.
15. NGC 1999
(Attempt for HH1, bailed out due to poor seeing; no logs or sketch, but the dark notch was definitely observed)
16. HCG 30
HCG 30(a): The bright face on is easiest. Did not look for any details.
HCG 30(b): Second brightest, easy
HCG 30(c): Hard, very LSB
HCG 30(d): Very hard, very LSB, but I'm positive I detected it because I pinpointed the position.
17. Brightest part of Simeis 147 "Spider" segment
(Observed with lots of Zodiacal Light in the sky, but not in the specific region)
The brightest part of the nebulosity is a small condensed patch seen at 05:42:45 +28:22:00, just south of a bright-ish star.
18. M 42 with "flashlight" method
The potentially risky "flashlight method" of seeing color in nebulae involves shining a white flashlight on the eye for about 2 seconds, thereby forcing a partial dark adaptation where the signal from the cones is not overwhelmed by the signal from the rods. This results in being able to see color in nebulosity. Try at your own risk.
The orion nebula appeared with a deep green color and with deep orange borders, especially around the trapezium region! Really colorful and saturated!
19. Witch head nebula
Amazing view. Armed with POSSI reference images, I was able to trace out and see 3 protrusions of the nebula.
20. IC 1454
Beautiful ring-like PN with a distinct hole. Pretty faint, but conspicuous unfiltered. UHC responds, but not as strongly. OIII has strong response.
21. Shk 30 ~ HCG 97
I did not in fact detect all 5 galaxies of HCG 97; I didn't look for the faintest member because it was likely beyond the conditions. In hindsight, I should've tried. But I found two other galaxies in the general area. Please refer to the annotated image below for the numbering used in my report.
Ease of detection ordering of HCG 97 galaxies: 1 > 2 > 3 > 4
(1) can be held continuously with averted vision, and almost 80% of the time with direct vision.
(2) can be held continuously with averted vision. It's elongation was apparent.
(3) flanks a star, which makes it harder to detect.
(4) is extremely faint, and elongated, and is held only 30% of the time.
Other galaxies: (a) is high surface brightness, (b) is very low surface brightness; extremely, extremely faint, with about 10% holding.
22. IC 63
Beautiful cometary nebulosity. Best view was 10mm Delos, unfiltered. No strong UHC response.
[When I observed this object, I did not know that this is a combination emission + reflection nebulosity, and I also did not know about the nearby IC 59 whereby I missed it. Had I known that, I would have tried to see if I could discern the narrow-band region apart from the reflection region.]
23. NGC 514, SN 2020uxz
Steve Gottlieb posted about this galaxy and the supernova it hosted on our local astronomy mailing list, so I put it on my list for the October new moon. Here are my logs:
NGC 514 ( failed to log the power; most likely 342x): Largely unremarkable galaxy with slightly brighter core and very vague hints of spiral structure.
SN2020uxz: SN similar in brightness to the 13.3mag star, being only slightly fainter than it. Somewhat brighter than the 14.4 mag star, and much fainter than the 9.5 mag star. There is a star to the 5 o' clock of the supernova, which is much fainter than the SN (seen to the 1 o'clock in the image Steve shared). The Supernova outshines the core visually (i.e. not necessarily measuring integrated magnitude, but visual perception).
24. ACO 194
Bright galaxy cluster. Observed 12 marked galaxies using a 10mm Delos eyepiece (205x). I didn't take very detailed logs, but I wrote that 'f' was eF, 'j' was pF and 'k' was cF. The rest were, presumably, bright enough to warrant no special description.
25. HCG 12
Observed at ~340x (6mm Delos)
HCG 12(a) can be held steadily averted and appears rounding
HCG 12(b) is very faint, and held about 20%. It shows a slight elongation pointing at a 2:30 position angle (measured from north through west).
(c), (d), (e) were not attempted
26. HCG 13
Observed at ~340x (6mm Delos)
Lies in a field of fairly bright stars.
HCG 13(a) is the brightest of the group, yet very faint, with about 50% holding; a slight elongation is observed that matches the image.
HCG 13(b) is the second brightest, vF, with once again about 50% holding
HCG 13(c) is eeF, was only held about 10% of the time. It took lots of pateience to get a few pops.
27. NGC 1097
This beautiful galaxy only rises about 19° above the horizon at Likely. Nevertheless, it showed so much structure! Below is my rough sketch:
28. HCG 24
The skies at this point were becoming engulfed in clouds, and only Eridanus was clear. So I hurriedly pointed my scope to log one more object, but in my hurry I forgot to write down the designation of what I observed. But looking back at my observing list for objects in Eridanus and comparing with the pictures, I'm pretty confident what I logged was HCG 24
HCG 24(a): The brightest member
HCG 24(b): Lies just by a fairly bright star. Second brightest.
HCG 24(c): eeF. I got 3 strong pops and 1 weak pop, that's about it.
29. [Negative] Dwingeloo 1
It turns out that the clouds were probably the wet side of a dry line. In about half an hour, the entire sky cleared up to some very transparent, dark skies. So I started attempting fainter LSB objects.
Despite the excellent conditions, there was insufficient contrast. The glow around the faint star did seem thicker, but not strongly enough to consider it observed.
30. HCG 27
Best view in the 10mm Delos.
This is a real faint group! The three members within the reach of an 18" are eeF with <~ 10% holding, and it is impossible to detect the relative holding between the three. However, I spotted HCG 27(c) first, followed by HCG 27(b) and then by HCG 27(a).
31. Arp 259 (NGC 1741)
3 galaxies are observed.
32. HCG 32
HCG 32(a) is the brightest, and can be held steadily with averted vision.
HCG 32(b) is second brightest, about 40% holding. Feels elongated ~60 degrees west of north.
HCG 32(d) is the third brightest, about 30% holding. Feels elongated ~150 degrees west of north. (Note: This elongation does not match the imagery, and this is probably an artifact of having the star nearby in that direction, that threw off my perception.)
HCG 32(c) is the faintest. eeF, very LSB, <~ 10% holding (6--7 pops).
33. IC 418
Unfiltered, I sensed a bluish tint on the inner halo, and a violetish outer halo with a reddish edge. A central star is seen.
I tried the aforementioned "white flashlight technique", and it did not help bring out any color.
34. IC 443
With a 31mm Nagler eyepiece and UHC filter, I was able to see a distinct curved glow in the shape of a circular arc.
35. Sh2-301
With a 20mm Pentax + UHC filter, more or less uniform, but oddly shaped glow which is not too faint. My sketch shows a darker region in the NW that is flanked on either side by nebulosity.
36. NGC 2207 and IC 2163
Very nice. I was able to clearly see the prominent arm of IC 2163 as well as a fairly uniform core. NGC 2207 on the other hand has a stellar nucleus surrounded by a huge fuzziness. My sketch seems to indicate a stellar condensation about midway in-between the nucleus of NGC 2207 and the nucleus of IC 2163 and a less evident spiral arm of NGC 2207 pointing to the NW.
37. NGC 7023 (Iris Nebula)
Here's all that I managed to tease out of this beautiful reflection nebula with my poor sketching skills (14mm Pentax XL ~146x):
38. Arp 93
This one was really down in the dirt! With a 10mm Delos, nothing much could be discerned other than 2 cores surrounded with haze, the barred spiral (as inferred from pictures and not from observation) being slightly fainter. My log reads, this object could have used more power but the sky did not allow for it. In reality, it was my sling (see next)
39. NGC 7026 [Cheeseburger Planetary Nebula]
At 450x, this tiny PN shows a "cut" in the middle. The two "lobes" on either side of the cut seem to be D-shaped, with the curved sides facing each other.
I noticed that the seeing was good, but the stars at this power were not focusing down. Suspecting sling problems (I had re-adjusted my sling the previous night), I readjusted the sling tightness (I believe it was too tight and causing the mirror to develop astigmatism). Re-adjusting the sling made a surprisingly dramatic difference in the quality of the image, but the stars still weren't perfect (not sure why, maybe it was the seeing at this point or the mirror needed more time to recover, or maybe it is the inherent astigmatism in an old-fashioned sling). After readjusting the sling, the rift was quite immediately evident.
Later, looking at other observing reports on the forum, I find the brighter parts of Howard Banich's sketch to match closely, both my memory, and my sketch and description of the object.
I have looked at this object a couple times through Jimi's 48". Here is a log from October 4, 2016:
48" 610x: Nice dark rift, reminiscent of a compressed version of NGC 3628, hard to believe that it is a planetary nebula. Somewhat rectangular bright region with dark rift extending beyond the "central" rectangle.
40. NGC 7393
At 342x, I occasionally get hints of
1) a stellar core
2) the "hole" (by which I mean the gap between the two arm segments on the eastern side)
3) A prong-like shape flanking the above "hole" (by which I mean the two eastern arm segments)
Need to repeat with better seeing and mirror figure.
41. HCG 93
All five galaxies are easy. Observed with a 6mm Delos (342x).
HCG 93(a): Brightest member, condensed core and a fuzzy halo with a elongation about 30 degrees west of north (not corroborated against image).
HCG 93(c): Second brightest member. Fuzzy galaxy with an elongation about 30 degrees east of north (again not corroborated against image).
HCG 93(b): Third brightest member, relatively lower surface brightness. Shows hints of the bar and "spikey" spiral structure -- but nothing distinct can be discerned. Knowing exactly what to look for, though, I was able to get occasional pops of the southern arm. A bright star is seen to the west, and a ~15th mag star is seen to the north of this galaxy. This 15th mag star llooked fuzzy in my scope.
HCG 93(d): Fourth brightest member. Condensed patch of light.
HCG 93(e): Faintest member. Low Surface Brightness.
42. Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635)
As described in the sketch, in OIII, the edge of the bubble seemed thicker and longer.
43. Cas A Supernova Remnant
This supernova remnant was "not too hard", much to my surprise. I'm apparently not alone in this reaction, given that Howard wrote the same about it in his OOTW. It is visible unfiltered, but OIII confirms that it isn't simply starglow from the asterism that's behind it. Using a 10mm Delos (205x) with an OIII filter, I observed a smooth, elongated glow, kind of looking like an edge-on galaxy, with a lopsided bright edge. Upon swapping in a UHC filter instead, it looks substantially more "spikey" than it does in OIII (did not sketch).
OIII sketch below:
44. Arp 284
I did not get to observe as much detail as I would have liked. The bright star detracts. Best view was at ~300x power.
NGC 7715: Appears like a faint cometary streak, with the "tail" of the comet pointing away from NGC 7714
NGC 7714: Has a stellar nucleus and an asymmetric, C-shaped halo with the curved part on the western side of the stellar nucleus. There is only a vestige of a thin, faint halo seen on the eastern side. The edges of the C seemed pointy rather than rounded and are more condensed. The nucleus seems off-center in the north-south direction as well, slightly off to the south from the vertical center of the "C".
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