While at our Leakey, Tx dark site (we were there for a weeks observing culminating with the Apr 8th Eclipse) we had some very good nights observing. For the most part good seeing and transparency but with mediocre darkness (SQML 21.2 to 21.5), I few tenths brighter then what we normally get. Anyways, Larry Mitchell came to me with a detailed chart showing the star clusters and nebulous regions that pepper the dwarf galaxy NGC 4449. His challenge, though, was to try and see a 17th mag globular cluster that calls N4449 home. We gave it a good go one night one with my 25" (3.7mm 858x) but couldn't quite see deep enough to bag the globular. Some of the brighter stars we were going to use to star hop were also invisible. Not good.
On night two we "borrowed" a friends 30" f/3 scope and gave the globular another try. Better night, better sky, bigger scope. Being familiar with the field I immediately saw our star hop stars and low and behold there was the globular. Pretty faint and small. Pretty much stellar in the 30". We had a group of us take a look (including Larry) and I think we all saw the cluster. Larry and I for sure.
Here is a picture that does a good job of showing what we saw. Note that the globular is labeled CL77. It should be CL79.
n4449kc.jpg
When I got home and dissected our observation I found a paper that had this chart:
NGC 4449 globular labled resized.jpg
And lo and behold two of the "stars" we used to hop are globulars! Labeled CL52 and CL58. We also suspected we saw CL77 but were not quite sure. So if these ID's are correct we managed to bag three (maybe four) NGC 4449 globulars.
Right after this observation Larry and I went back to my 25" and could duplicate everything we saw in the 30".
We had a lot of fun with this!
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