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.
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.
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!
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.
Galaxy NGC 2903
By Wade V. Corbei
Finally after what seemed like forever and a day, I started to digitize some sketches from earlier this month.
NGC 2903 is a nice looking Spiral Galaxy found in the constellation Leo…a constellation that holds many great galaxies; and NGC 2903 is no exception. This is a fairly large, bright galaxy that shows some structure of the arms and a bright core.
Unlike many fainter galaxies, NGC 2903 is easily spotted and observed without averted vision…but averted vision will allow for some finer details to emerge. Surrounded by a fairly rich starfield, NGC 2903 is a must-see for those looking for galaxies that present themselves as more than a faint fuzzy in the EP.
The Montes Apenninus
By Eric Graff
Lunar Mountain Range
Parks Astrolight EQ6 * 6″ f/6 Newtonian Reflector
6mm Parks Kellner + 4x Barlow * 600x, ~4′ Field of View
19 October 2007 * 01:35-03:50 UT
The largest lunar mountain range; the majestic Montes Apenninus extend 600
kilometers around the south preceding (sp) rim of Mare Imbrium. The highest peaks
exceed 5000 meters. The Apollo 15 mission landed at the foot of this range.
This observation shows the north-preceding (np) end of this range extending from the
lunar terminator at the first quarter phase (7-day-old moon). The prominent crater
near the center of the field of view is 22 kilometer-wide Conon, noted for its sharp
rim. Prominent peaks of the range shown here include Mons Ampère (near the sf edge
of the field of view), Mons Huygens (5600 m), Mons Bradley (5000 m, very prominent,
following Conon), an apparently nameless peak north of Conon, and finally Mons
Hadley Delta and Mons Hadley (4500 m) at the np end of the range, which terminates
in Promontorium Fresnel.
An extensive range of foothills precedes the Apennines, while the following side
drops precipitously toward the floor of Mare Imbrium. A series of six small,
elongated hills runs parallel to the following side of the range. Many of the
foothills on the gently-sloping preceding side are arranged in gently curving
parallel chains sweeping southward from the higher slopes, particularly in the area
south of Conon. This “curious” uniformity of orientation is likely the result of
shock fractures induced by the Imbrium asteroid impact.
Deep in shadow, at the nf edge of the field of view are the walls of Archimedes;
Autolycus rests on the northern edge of the field, also heavily shadowed.
The Sombrero Galaxy
By Michael Vlasov
Messier 104, The Sombrero Galaxy
The Sombrero Galaxy is 50,000 light years across and 28 million light years away is about 50,000 Light years in diameter. A large and dusty spiral, it lies on the southern boundries of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. Deep imaging of M104 shows it to be surrounded by a halo of dust and gas extending up to 7-10 galactic diameters from the galaxy’s center.
Comet 17/P Holmes sketch 2
By Leonor Ana Hernandez
Hello friends!
This is my vision of this wonderfull comet, I have spent several nights
watching it an thinking: ” Oh! how beautifu!”
I take my graphite pencil and draw it in white paper two times with
different optics.
Comet 17/P Holmes sketch 2
By Leonor Ana Hernandez
The big one was with a TMB Refractor 20cm and 2010 F. and the smaller one
with a binocular 12 x 80. The night was esplendid, the place was located in
La Hita Observatory in Toledo (http://www.lahita.arrakis.es/). With
binocular I could see an halo around the comet, very very pale but visible.
With the telescope was possible to see stars through the comet.
I hope you enjoy them.
Leonor
