Author: richardhandy

A Winter Trip to California

NGC 1499

NGC 1499, The California Nebula
By Rony De Laet 

Hello all,

Another challenging object suggested by Sue French is the California Nebula. The object has been imaged very often, mostly with an H-Alpha filter. I tried several times from within my backyard to locate NGC1499 visually with my four inch scope. With the H-Alpha images in mind, I expected to see an obvious streak of light in the eyepiece. Of course, my nelm 5.2 sky did not offer me such a view. At home, I suspected some nebulosity North of Xi Persei. I wondered what the Alpine sky would reveil of NGC 1499. My findings were at first dissapointing. I saw the same nebulosity as from my backyard, only did it show up more obvious. The way NGC 1499 appears to me visually would not inspire me to call it a California shape.  Nevertheless is NGC 1499 a very interesting object for the patient observer. I estimated the Nelm in Austria (Bisschofshofen) that night around mag 5.7. A better sky would offer a more detailed view for sure. Here is my impression.

Date : December 27, 2007
Time : around 17.30UT
Scope : Skywatcher 102/500
Eyepiece : Meade SP 26mm
Power : x20
FOV: 150′
Filter : Lumicon UHC
Seeing : 4/5
Transp. : 4/5
Nelm : 5.7
Elevation : 800m ASL
Sketch Orientation : N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with PhotoPaint, based on a raw pencil sketch.

Sunken Yet Uplifted

Lunar crater Posidonius

The lunar crater Posidonius
By Frank McCabe

Posidonius on the Eastern Shore of the Sea of Serenity
  
  On this cold morning in early December the most eye-catching crater resting on the
concave sloping rim of Mare Serenitatis was 96 kilometer diameter Posidonius. The
Posidonius cratering event likely occurred 150 thousand years or more after
Serenitatis formed a ring basin. The subsequent floor uplift and fracturing within
Posidonius created a large angular block and ridge margin that you can see arching
parallel along and just inside the outer eastern crater rim. At 17.5 days into the
lunation, the floor of Posidonius appeared much brighter than the dark margin lava
of Serenity. Eleven kilometer crater A near the center of Posidinius was clearly
visible in the poor seeing as were craters B, J, and M arching out from the rim to
the north. Beyond these craters encircled  by the Lake of Dreams is 25 by 30 km.
oval “island crater” Daniell, formed by a shallow angle impact before the greater
Posidonius event took place. South from Posidonius and again along the shore of
Serenity is the 63 km. flooded crater LeMonnier. Nearly all of the west rim of this
tilted crater and its floor are covered by the dark margin lava of the Sea of
Serenity.
  
  Sketching:
  
  2H graphite pencil on 5 x 8 inch index card
  Date: 12-8-2006 11:30 to 12:15 UT
  Temperature: -14 °C (6° F)
  clear, cold winds
  Pickering scale: 3/10
  10 inch f / 5.7 Dobsonian  161X
  Colongitude:127.5°
  Lunation: 17.6 days
  Illumination: 86.3 %         
  
  Frank McCabe

The Many Faces of Mars

Mars collage

Mars opposition 2007-2008
By Kris Smet

I started observing Mars early in July to make the most of the opposition in
December when the planet’s disk reached almost 16“. However the first few sketches
may not look like much, I believe making the sketches helped me gain more experience
over the months. Putting the colour of mars on paper was much harder than I thought
it would be, I’ve tried a few different colours but kept changing them because I
wasn’t completely happy with it. The last sketch in my opinion looks most as how
mars appears to my eye in the scope. (All sketches were done with my 8” f/5
reflector on equatorial mount btw, I didn’t took the tube from the dobson base until
October though.)

All sketches are made outside sitting at the scope, with plain A4 printer-paper on a
clipboard on my lap. After the scope is brought back inside I work the sketch out
with colours and scan them in on my computer. The only ‘processing’ I (sometimes) do
is adjusting the brightness and sharpness levels a bit to look a bit more
eyepiece-like.

If you look very closely you can see the small disappearing south polar cap on the
first 5 sketches, after that I couldn’t detect it anymore. During September and the first part of October the north polar hood appeared bluish to me, but it seemed to disappeared and on the 14 October sketch the hood doesn’t show any blue.

While Mars was showing me it’s so called ‘boring side’ during September and October
(accept 5/10 & 31/10) I had the impression that the area south of mare Sirenum,
Cimmerium and Mare Tyrrherium was brighter and more yellow than the desert plains
laying south of them.

In December I had some very good views of the Syrtis Major region in which I could
see some detail. I had to wait until early 2008 to get my first view of the Solis
Lacus region, because whenever this side was facing earth I was clouded out :p
 
I hope to get more viewing time during January, February and perhaps March to make
another ‘collage’ of Mars sketches.

Fire and Ice

Sun Ha

The Sun in Ha light on January 4th, 2008
By Erika Rix

2008 01 04
PCW Memorial Observatory, Zanesville, Ohio USA
Erika Rix
Solar

It was a beautiful sight today with the Sun gleaming off the snow. The snow was
melting fast as the temperature was slowly rising. Unfortunately, the snow didn’t
melt fast enough off the observatory roof, so I had to just drop down the upper part
of the southern wall and leave the roof completely on, otherwise, I would have had
to deal with water dripping on my gear in the observatory. As it turned out, it was
a good way to keep the winds at bay today, plus I’m sure kept me warmer in the more
enclosed space.

There were four very bright plage areas on the disk in h-alpha. One from NOAA 10981,
another large intricate plage structure for 10980, then a very thin bright one that
reached over to 10980 just inside the Eastern limb. The final was toward the West. I
could see a dark “spot” being cradled by the plage in 981, and by viewing in white
light, there was most definitely a small pore that appeared almost elongated. With
all the haze today plus winds during my white light filter session outside of the
observatory, it was difficult to tell if this elongation was another very tiny pore
just beside the larger one, or if it was just blurred from the conditions outside.
In any case, both to the NE and the SW of this dark dot were faint markings
resembling contrast of faculae. I couldn’t confirm what the markings were with this
observation.

 The Sun in white light

In white light, I could see no other evidence of active regions.

Getting back to h-alpha in the observatory, there were six areas of prominence
around the limb that I could see. With the haze and poor seeing conditions, I had to
wait for moments of clarity and steadiness to get good definition for closer looks.
Patience definitely proved to be valuable today.

The prominence to the SE just below the AR980 was very faint and fan-like. To the
very southern portion of it, it became brighter. I could almost make out all the
connections to each section of it.

Then at the western limb, slightly to the south was a very sharp brighter prominence
with several fingers reaching out like flames. I really enjoyed this one.

The show stopper of the session was most definitely the plage with a few dark thin
filaments looking as if they were separating the plage in AR980 and onward to the
eastern limb.

It’s said that a new solar cycle has begun, making it number 24. We’ll see, but it’s
looking promising.

Three’s Company

Triple Star

12 Lyncis – Triple Star
By Wade V. Corbei

This is an interesting triple star in the constellation Lynx, and required a good bit of magnification to resolve into 3 seperate stars. In the 27mm, it just looked like an elongated star, and in the 15mm, I could just discern that there was more than one star. When I barlowed the 15mm, I could easily see that this was a multiple star system, but I could not split the two eastern stars.

I plopped in my 6mm and barlowed that and there it was…a nice split of all 3 stars in the same FOV. Wonderful!

I don’t really know what the primary star would be with this trio as all 3 appear to be of the same (or close to the same) magnitude. It does appear as if the two stars on the eastern end are brighter and appear as white with just a hint of a blueish tint. The third star that is well seperated and to the west appeared as having an orange or burnt-brown coloration.

A nice triple star system that can be a challenge, but once found makes for an interesting and neat sight in the ol’ EP.

Tenuous Apparition

NGC 896

NGC 896
By Rony De Laet

Hello sketchers,

Last week, my family and I were on vacation in Bischofshofen, Austria. I managed to bring my little Skywatcher along. The weather was great. Three nights were clear! With multiple layers of clothing, I withstood the freezing cold for about 90 minutes each evening. Here is an observation of a portion of the large nebulosity cataloged as IC 1848 and IC 1805 : NGC 896. Sue French described this object as small and bright. I found NGC 896 rather faint in my scope. An UHC filter plus wiggling the scope helped to bring out some detail. Here is the sketch.

Date : December 29, 2007
Time : around 17.30UT
Scope : Skywatcher 102/500
Vixen LV Zoom at 14mm
Power : x36
FOV: 85′
Filter : Lumicon UHC
Seeing : 3/5
Nelm : 5.7
Temp : -6°C
Elevation : 800m ASL

Sketch Orientation : N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with PhotoPaint, based on a raw pencil sketch.

Shock Value

The Veil Nebula west

The Veil Nebula West
By Rob Esson 

10B graphite pencil with blending stump on white sketch paper. Digitally inverted.
8in LX200 f/6.3 with 31mm Nagler and UHC filter. Field of view 1.88deg, 41x
magnification. Drawn Sept 7, 2002 at the late lamented Great Plains Star Party under
excellent transparent skies and steady seeing.

The Veil Nebula West (NGC6960, Caldwell 34) is a supernova remnant which seems too
delicate to the eye to really be a shock wave from the blast crashing into the
interstellar medium!

One Wild and Distant Duck

Wild Duck Cluster

The Wild Duck Cluster, M11
By Jeremy Perez

M11 holds a special place for me. It was the first deep space object I viewed through the new telescope–besides M45 & M31 which I had seen before. It was very exciting to see something with my own eyes that prior to that night I never even knew existed. It was a symbol for me of what else lies in the sky that I don’t yet know about. Beautiful. A striking collection of stars. I revisited it this night under less than perfect conditions. It was diving into some of the worst light pollution from my home vantage point. Oh, and the moon was starting to rise. It demonstrated dense and mottled granularity, with numerous resolvable stars winking in and out across the surface. (Did I mention seeing was really bad too? 3/10. Right.) Anyway, one bright star dominates the center of the cluster, and 2 others close stars reside just outside to the SSE. (It should be noted that these bright stars are actually foreground stars, and aren’t part of the cluster.) The overall shape of the cluster is circular with a central cloud surrounded by a gap, and then a rough ring of stars. OK. I know I’ve said this before, but once more for emphasis: to me, the “Wild Duck” name doesn’t just look like a V-shaped ‘flock of ducks’, but actually looks like a duck raising it’s wings to take to flight, with the head at the SW side of the central concentration of stars, and the wings curling around on the NW and SE sides. The dimension of the main body of the cluster appeared to be 7′ across.

Factoids:
M11 is one of the richest and most compact of the open clusters. It is 6,000 light years away, and contains around 2,900 stars. If our planet were in the midst of this cluster, we would see several hundred brilliant first magnitude stars scattered across the night sky. Amateur astronomy would probably be pretty tough in a sky so brightly lit at all times. M11 was discovered in 1681 by Gottfried Kirch, first resolved into stars in 1733 by William Derham, and then included in Charles Messiers catalog in 1764. Its age is currently estimated to be 250 million years, and it is receding from us at 22 km/sec.