It’s been a while since I’ve written up a report. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been observing! Lately when I’ve observed it was during a work night and decided to go to bed earlier rather than take the time to do a report. Since it’s Labor Day weekend and I don’t have to worry about work for a couple days…what the hay?
I knew tonight was going to be a good one. Usually after a coastal storm is when I get the most transparent nights of the year. Tonight was one of those scenarios. It’s been very windy all day but it slowed to a hault at sundown. Leaving no wind or dew for me tonight. All I had was a beautiful transparent night with so-so seeing. Today I created an observing list of some large nebulae of interest. I was able to see a few tonight. A couple were possible observations but need further confirmation before logging. I logged a little bit of everything. Diffuse nebulae, dark nabuel, planetary nebulae, galaxies, and open clusters. The highlight tonight was the PN Minkowski 3-34. Below are my logs from tonight with my 14.5″
MCG 1-46-3: Low ghostly surface but the galaxy is visible with direct vision. There’s a faint star involved that makes the galaxy look like it’s shooting off from it, which is pretty cool.
NGC 6962: Pretty small and bright. Surface brightness is par to it’s magnitude. Surface is oval and brighter in the center. Bright core.
NGC 6963: Tiny, very faint, requires averted vision to hold steady. Sits in the NGC6962 galaxy group
NGC 6964: Small, faint, elongated. Surface is brighter in the center. Sits about an arc minute away from NGC6862.
NGC 6967: Tiny, bright, slightly elongated. Surface brightness is high for it’s magnitude. Slightly brighter brighter in the center. Sits several arc seconds away from a 14th magnitude star.
M 3-34: Wow! This PN is great! It’s tiny but very bright with a slight blue/green hue. Visible as a smooth disk at 123x. Mild response to an Ultrablock filter but strong response to an OIII. At 330x it remained as a round smooth disk. 884x reveiled surface brightness irregularity and bi-polar-like characteristics. It’s not a perfect round disk. I swear I was seeing it’s central star too at this power but ST3 says it’s 16.3 magnitude. I don’t want to second guess myself, I was definitely seeing something.
PN G030.6+06.2: Very faint nebulous patch that sits just under center of 2 bright stars. Invisible unfiltered. An irregular diffused nebulous thumb print is visible with an OIII. Not certain how bright the central star is but unfiltered I can detect a couple fairly bright stars near center.
IC 4685: Huge patch of nebulosity divided by 2 sections. Detectable unfiltered, bright with. Responds both to an OIII and H-Beta. The nebulosity seems easier with the H-Beta but larger with the OIII. With the OIII I can see a dark nebula on the direct left hand side of the main 7th magnitude star. I can’t see this with the H-Beta. Neat and bright line of stars to the right of the 7th magnitude star.
Black Hole Nebula(B92?): Large, very dense and dark. Triangular shaped. I stumbled upon this looking for a Sharpless object. Fascinating dark nebula.
Collinder 469: Small faint patch of stars. Even though it’s small, over-looked, and faint, it’s quite rich with resolved faint stars. Sits in the same FOV as the Black Hole nebula.
-CJ
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