This is another fragment of the observing report for the evening of
March 19-20, which fortunately was clear here in Cincinnati. The sky was
about Mag 5.5 at zenith I would g uess, at Stonelick State Park, about
30 miles east of Cincinnati, where my club, FOTO, has its observing
sessions. There were a dozen or more scopes there, including my 11 inch
Dob, a 10 inch Dob, a 5 inch LOMO MakCass, at least one Nextstar 8,
Wally's 25 Obsession, and the new club scope, a 16 Dob made from a kit
and using a Meade 16 inch mirror.
I wasn't particularly interested in marathoning, since it was
getting cold and windy, and my main interest was in the Virgo cluster of
galaxies, which I hadn't seen in about 5 years owing to the pressure of
work, and bad weather conflicting with new moon nights. I remembered
seeing several galaxies in the same field (multiple objects in the same
field is one of my interests) with my venerable Telescopics 6 inch f.5
and I wanted to see what my new 11 inch Dob would do.
I feel familiar with most of the sky with the exception of the
Coma-Virgo cluster and I wondered how to explore it. There are all kinds
of guides to exploring it, in Burnham, S&T (I recently learned of a fine
1994 article by Alan MacRobert, whom I respect both as an observer and
as an inspiring writer, but I didn't have a chance to dig out the
article.
About a year ago I posted here a review of a charming article In
Amateur Astronomy by a British amateur who used Denebola as a starting
point, waited something like 23 minutes, and found the scope was in the
heart of the cluster. I didn't want to spend the time and I was unsure
of the right amount of minutes to wait.
I noticed that a majority of the articles say, start with fifth
magnitude 6 Comae, which is in between Vindemiatrix and Denebola. I
have always experienced this star as very hard to find, and indeed it
was not visible early this night as Virgo rose from the horizon. Only
Vindemiatrix and Porrima were visible in virgo. Guessing he halfway
point between Denebola and Vindemiatrix has never worked for me either,
perhaps because the skies were too hazy and I was trying to far into
the summer.
I had just read Sue French's fine article on Markarian's Chain, in
the May issue of Sky & Telescope, and I had heard a lot about it and had
seem pictures of it, so I wanted to start there. Fortunately I had Sky
Commander (one of the wisest purchase I ever made, since i am an urban
observer) on the 11 inch Dob so I aligned it on Polaris and Aldebaran
and zeroed in on M84. It and M86 were soon in the eyepiece, bright as
could be. But I couldn't find the rest of the Chain. Referring to SA2000
which I had with me, it looked like I should look east of the M84-M86
pair, but that didn't work.
I am a great believer in asking for help if you can't figure
something out for yourself with respect to finding an object. (I make
up for this b y showing others the sky, which I did later in this
evening, and by being able to easily teach anyone anything I understand
myself). So, I moseyed over to Wally and the 25 inch Dob and asked him
if he could show me how to find it. He could, and perched high in the
sky on the ladder, I saw the Face of five galaxies, the Eyes--too more
galaxies --and two additional galaxies beyond the Eyes, and then two
additional galaxies in a line beyond that. I had followed Markarian's
Chain. Several other observers came over to look at it --bright and
impressive in the 25 -- so a whole group of us became familiar with it,
thanks to Wally, I tend to remember exactly who showed me how to find
certain objects I couldn't at first find myself, including M27, M5, the
Bug Nebula, and the Helix for example (the last two are owing to Scott
Naylor, known as "go-to" in our observing group), so Wally's name will
go on the list.
Back at my own scope I realized what my difficulty had been: In SA
2000, M84 and 86 are side by side laterally, but since Virgo was just
rising at Stonelick, 84 was above 86, so I had to move the scope south,
rather than eastward as the Atlas would suggest. I was able to trace
out the Chain in my own scope and show it to others, which I found
gratifying.
Wally had an 80 mm Shorttube mounted as a finder on the 25. Since I
had been thinking of getting a 25, I asked him what he thought of it. He
said, it's a great finder but I wouldn't want to use it as a telescope.
I did learn from him and from Scott Naylor how they find Markarian's
Chain. They start with 6 Comae all right, but how do they find 6 Comae?
They look for a T shaped asterism in the finder. At the west end of the
crossbar of the T is 6 Comae. Very near 6 Comae is M99. At the other
end of the crossbar of the T is another star (there is one in the
middle too) and near that is M100. If one follows the shaft of the T
southward, it curves West, and M98 is right there. But if you follow
the curve down but when it curves west, you curve east, you get to M84
and then M86. I had never heard of this procedure before and for
starhopping it seems an ideal way to begin exploring the Virgo-Coma
cluster.
From that spot I was able to starhop to M88 and M85, a bright spiral
and a bright elliptical. I have starhopped for so many years I break
into it involuntarily, even though I now have Sky Commander, which I
used to find M64 and M104.
I found also what was probably M49 but I wasn't sure. What I should
have done was set Sky Commander to the "search and identify" mode and it
could have told me what I was looking at, but I didn't know how to use
it that evening. Another possibility would have been to enter M49 into
the display and see if the digital readouts were zeroed out. But I
didn't think of that either. The adage I heard recently is that it takes
6 months to get used to using a new scope and I have found this to be
true.
I also looked at M63, 94 and 51 and was impressed by how much more
detail in galaxies was visible at 115 x (12 Nagler) than at 70x (20 mm
Nagler). People were amazed by the detail in the M51 and NGC 5198 duo,
with spiral arms and the link between the two being obvious. M63 was
very clearly a spiral, in a different orientation.
I was delighted with the high contrast images of the 11 inch scope.
I also took the opportunity to look at galaxies with the club's 16 inch
Dob, and I can tell you for sure that a 16 inch mirror of decent quality
will greatly outperform a superb 11 inch mirror on galaxies, as you
might expect. But I have no chance of ever being able to lift,
transport, or set up, a 16 inch Dob.
A lot of people have posted here that the DeLuxe Laminated edtion of
SA2000 Revised is too big and awakward to use at the scope, it is better
used at home. I also own the DeLuxe unlaminated editon (I am a star
atlas junkie), well worn with use, so I brought that instead. Mistake.
The strong winds blew the pages abo ut and blew the inserts across the
observing field, where they had to be retrieved. The much heavier pages
of the laminated edition would have served much better, and that is
what I shall bring next time.
It got colder and colder, and windier and windier, so the last few
holdouts, I among them, packed up at 2:30. A most enjoyable session.
Ciao,
Bill Meyers