Observing SH2-091

[JayinUtah]

Posted this on Cloudy Nights and not much of a response. I hope to get some input here. On Tuesday I was out with a couple of friends observing and what should have been great conditions were hampered by the smoke that came north from Las Vegas. Zenith was good and as the night went on, it got better. I actually had a pretty good night hunting down a few galaxies in Hercules and some planetary nebula. One item I am trying to chase down this summer is SH2-091, the SNR about 2 degrees above Albireo. Anyway, I know I had the field correct, but felt I had hints of pseudo-nebulosity, which equally could have been averted imagination, so I can't count it as a hit.

I was using my 14" dob with Zambuto mirror, Protostar secondary. A 30mm ES 82 degree and a 27mm Panoptic as my finders. I also was using an OIII filter. The SQM was 21.55, as this site is not our main dark site (for conditions we didn't want to drive out that far, but it may take the mag. 7.0 skies at our dark site for this one). I believe that the conditions, transparency, due to the smoke from Las Vegas, just were not good enough to bring out the SNR.


So will this have to be something I wait until I get the 20" I am going to order this fall or can my 14 with the quality optics it has pull this in?

Thanks,

Jay

[Steve Gottlieb]

Here's a thread on DSF, with observations by Reiner Vogel and Matthias Kronberger that includes multiple sections of this supernova. Of course, with a 20-inch the filament near Phi Cyg will be easier, but in excellent conditions I viewed it in a friend's 14-inch Starmaster with CZ optics. So, I would definitely recommend giving it another try.

By the way, the filament near 9 Cygni on Reiner's charts is comparable in brightness to the one you looked for near Phi Cyg, although its not mentioned in my notes on Adventures in Deep Space. Here's how it looked in my current 24-inch ---

24" (9/13/12): at 125x and OIII filter, I was surprised to immediately see a huge filament stretching at least 30' east-west across much of the field in the 21mm Ethos. The filament tapered at the east end and fanned out on the west end. The surface brightness was a bit uneven; brighter along the boundary, particularly noticed on the southwest edge and weaker within the broader fan portion on the west end. Overall, the visibility was comparable to the filament about 15' S of Phi Cyg although the overall length was longer. Located ~1° SSW of Campbell's Hydrogen Star.

[JayinUtah]

Steve,

Thanks. Great info. I intend to give it a try in August if the monsoons and clouds give it a break.