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Mandm Direct Spreads Touring the moonlit Spring Skies... Observations from Saturday 11th May 2019 8.30pm - 2.15am Equipment used: TEC 140, tracking Nova Hitch Alt-Az with slow-mo controls and encoders on a Berlebach Planet, iPad Air2 running SkySafari Pro 5, Nexus WiFi, 10 and 21mm Ethos, Baader BBHS diagonal, Lumicon 2” UHC and OIII filters in a True-Tech manual filter wheel. Mixed forecasts, Clear Outside suggesting 27% cloud around midnight, Xasteria saying clear, Clear Outside loaded from within Xasteria offering something in-between (how do you get that, hey!?) and Meteoblue forecasting clear skies from 11 but with poor ‘Index 2’ and Jet Stream readings.... Having neglected visual astronomy for many months (having spent my time finally getting the imaging gear to play ball), I spent forty odd minutes re-learning how to set everything back up - in fact, it be on offer with the moon in attendance... took longer than it does to wheel out the imaging gear. Times have changed, my usual (100% visual) observing buddy was having a go at imaging (spectroscopy), so I was on my own for this evening. It meant I’d have to keep my own notes for a change, but also allow me to go at my own pace as I reacquainted myself with the night sky. By 8.30 I was ready to go, clear skies, still a shade of blue with a half moon hanging over in the south western sky. Temperature rapidly dropping. 21mm eyepiece in place easily held the entire moon. Fantastic details, sharp, contrasty, zero colour... spent an hour enjoying the terminator region and the occultation of the odd background star. Took a quick pic - iPhone6 hand held to the eyepiece. Then it was a chance to try and judge what deep sky targets might Takes but a few moments to sync the mount’s encoders to Solar observing, I find using ‘the other eye’ makes the red, much SkySafari, Polaris and then Arcturus. deeper and somehow ‘resets’ the normal eye as well - very odd! 11pm 11.30pm With the scope now showing in the digital planetarium, I Staying in Coma Berenices, notice two globs. firstly M5, M64, NGC 4826 - Black Eye NGC 5904 to the left of Galaxy. Couldn’t see the lane of Arcturus, over in Serpens. A dust giving this target its name. bit low in the murk, lacking Definitely oval in shape, brighter contrast, but showing a central region. concentrated core and peripheral halo of stars. Next M3, NGC 5273 in the constellation Canes Venatici (back to the right of Arcturus!), brighter than the previous. Nicely centred in the eyepiece, always good to check A short hop above M64 sits the pointing accuracy of something bright before trying for the magnitude of 9.2, barred spiral fainter stuff. galaxy NGC 4725 . Fainter than M64. First failure, Galaxy NGC 2903 in Leo, off the head of the inverted ‘?’. Too close to the moon for this Mag 8.9 target. Being a tad further away under the belly of Leo, M95, M96, M105 are all a bit of a push, averted vision helpful, but no detail revealed, just hints of A hop west takes me to ‘the different shapes to each. most prominent and famous edge-on spiral galaxies in the sky’, NGC 4565 - the Needle Galaxy. Elongated, not uniform with brighter regions. Continuing a small distance Back over to Arcturus, in fact West, NGC 4494 a 9th just underneath to the easily magnitude Elliptical Galaxy that’s seen open cluster Picot 1 54 million light years from our ‘Napoleon’s Hat’ solar system. Hanging below a Coma Berenices - Two Globs for the price of one! Messier 53, star. Small, compact like a mini globular cluster without the outer stars. Clouds building, Hercules rising with easy pickings, off to find M13 . Biggest and brightest globular so far this evening, despite its elevation. Doesn’t have the wow NGC 5024 and NGC 5053 . SkySafari notes M53 as an evenly factor of previous observations illuminated object with an oval-ish shape.... hhmm, perhaps. NGC as a bit too low in the East for 5053 is certainly fainter, sparse and spread out, but offers a nice now. counter subject as both easily fit within the same FOV. A tip I was given was to use my ‘non-observing’ eye as an observing aid - in A bigger challenge is it’s addition to averted vision. This really helped, not only giving a ‘partner’, Mag 11 Spiral Galaxy darker background sky (so increasing contrast), but also when NGC 6207 just a short hop East. returning to my normal viewing eye. This trick also works for Ha Very tricky this evening, seen much more readily in my 10” dob on previous occasions (and under better conditions, sans moon). On the limit of my averted Another PN, Mag 10.8 in the lower vision. A tad better in the other eye. Oval slash shape. west of Hercules (but you’d think it was in Serpens/Ophiuchus), is 12.00am IC4593 . Not so ‘blinky’ as With clouds now encroaching on Hercules, Vega beckoned to NGC6210. Just beneath it was what take a wander around Lyra. Starting with Vega herself, then the looked like a clean split double star; Double Double and then a drop down to open cluster Ste1 - HD 145730 and BD +12 2970s. Stephenson 1 at Mag 3. Dropping down further, past Sulafat and sitting 12.30am half way to Albireo is My eyes catch two more easy to reach globs in SkySafari, sitting in globular cluster M56 . Ophiuchus down towards the horizon, slightly to the East of my current position... Messier 12, NGC 6218 . Agree with SkySafari, that it’s a fairly loose glob. Looks suspiciously like a compacted open cluster! Pretty faint to boot. A pretty uniform ball of stars with a Also its sister, M10 , even further small periphery halo and slightly down in the murk. Fainter but I denser core. thought bigger than M12, but perhaps that is because it has a Staying with globs, I see-sawed denser core (according to SF..?) back up to Hercules (to view the usually forgotten M92 ). Dropping back down again into the lower portion of Hercules, between stars Sarin and Kornephoros, my first planetary nebula (PN) of the evening, 8.8 magnitude NGC 6210 . Striking ‘fuzzy’ If M92 in Hercules is ‘often overlooked’, then NGC 6229 above it (still in Hercules), must feel even more left out! A Mag 9 globular 99 thousand light years from our solar system. Tonight, not obscured by cloud... bright ‘star’ two tone grey (core/shell), ‘blinks’ as you’d expect. Over in the East I see the symbol for another PN residing in Draco, the famous Cat's Eye Nebula, NGC 6543 . My short notes from the observation; bigger and brighter than all previous (Mag 8.1) Big fuzzy outer shell. Really evident blinking and the effect takes a moment to recede. Hint of teal? OIII and UHC filters offer different views/contrasts but at my magnification no additional detail. To the northeast a galaxy symbol takes me to NGC 6503 . A 10th magnitude Spiral Galaxy some 20 million Ly from us. Through the eyepiece I noted IC 2574 ‘Coddington Nebula’ turned out to be one of the biggest that it appeared deceptively challenges of the evening. Despite its apparent size in SF (which large with a clear oval shape isn’t the same as brightness that I really should know by now), this and a subtly brighter core. took plenty of patience to tease out from the background sky. A 10th magnitude Spiral Galaxy, 13 million light years from our With cloud moving across, I spotted a good gap around around solar system. Wikipedia states ‘a dwarf spiral galaxy discovered by Ursa Major and quickly dropped onto... American astronomer Edwin Foster Coddington in 1898. Located in Ursa Major, a constellation in the northern sky, it is an outlying member of the M81 Group. It is believed that 90% of its mass is in the form of dark matter. My notes: V faint - just a lightening. Could make out that brighter region on upper left as a mottling and that star to its right - aligned with stars to the upper right. Also checked my positioning and re-synced on Dubhe to be on the safe side! Re-orientated back to M81/82 and went in search of NGC 2976 . The pairing of M81 and M82 . Both in the same FOV of the 10mm Ethos. Dark areas within centre of M82. Both quite bright and obvious for a change. 1.00am Usually after observing these After training my two I/we quickly move on to eyes and brain to another area, but seeing how pick out even fainter clearly these two showed objects with the last themselves I investigated target, this was still SkySafari to see what other another difficult target may be in reach this beast. evening. Again Mag 10, but First up, NGC 3077 , a 9th much smaller. Still a magnitude Spiral Galaxy just largish object above M81. It was faint, easier to see with the relatively brighter (especially compared to a PN), extended and faint. Little offered M81 pushed out of the FOV. Once located though, it was possible up, no brightening to the core. to view the two in the eyepiece together, but not all three in the 10mm. Needed to re-connect SkySafari to the ‘scope’ (lost connection possibly due to cold temperature - happened before, so need to Three FOVs north from this point in SF showed a galaxy outline possibly add a dew heater to the back of the iPad - keep the similar in size to M81.
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