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Obs report, 1 Sep 2003: A Labor Day quickie
Date: 1 September 2003 (UT)
Time: 10:00-11:15 UT (4-5:15am MDT) Location: near Gross Reservoir, west of Boulder, Colorado Elevation: 7500 feet Telescope: Criterion 6" f/8 Newtonian on a GEM Eyepieces: 20/15/9/6mm Orion Expanse (61/81/135/203x), 7mm Ortho (174x) Objects: IC 5217, NGC 7354, NGC 7635, Saturn I went hiking on Sunday, and happened to be awake Monday morning in time to do a quick run up to my nearest decent foothills site in between the start of legal access at 4am and "-15 degree twilight" at around 5:10am. (I generally use the time at which the Sun reaches -15 degrees elevation as my marker for twilight.) Labor Day has become the traditional end of "summer" here in the U.S., and it is nice to be getting into the time of year when this site is available for observing, although the more desirable evening sessions of this length are still a month away. I made the 25 minute drive and arrived at 3:58am (sorry). It was about 50 degrees and breezy, the latter is typical for this exposed site. I took a quick look at Mars, but it had already dropped below 20 degrees and the scope still needed a bit of cooling. Surprisingly, I was able to see a magnitude 6.2 star in the vicinity of M33, a few tenths better than usual. M33 was presumably *just* beyond my eyesight. That limiting magnitude only applies to the western half of the sky; it rapidly washes out to the east toward Boulder and Denver. Seeing is usually very poor here, but I managed to split a 1.6 arcsecond double. My plan was to observe a few nebulae and Saturn. I started with a real stinker, IC 5217. This is a very small planetary nebula (less than 10 arcseconds), and without detailed charts or an O III filter, I could not confirm the object although I thought one of the 11th magnitude stars in the vinicity looked a bit fuzzy. NGC 7354 is another planetary nebula, this time on the Herschel II list. This was very similar in size to Mars (25"), but rather faint. It seemed round with no detail, but I really couldn't be sure. The edges did not seem to be sharp, and there was a star just off the west edge. It was better at 174x then either 135x or 203x. I had time to try one last DSO, NGC 7635, the Bubble Nebula. The nebula surrounds an 8th magnitude star, with 7th mag star nearby. The sky may have been brightening ever-so-slightly in morning wilight. I could not confirm a diffuse object surrounding the star, or at least anything irregular that could be distinguished from the haze of scattered light around all stars that bright. There were hints of something, and I'll try this one again with darker skies. I would have taken a quick look at M52, just 40 arcminutes away, but I wanted to look at Saturn for a bit before leaving. It was about 35 degrees above the horizon by then, and since the seeing was a bit above average for this viewing site, I was able to see Cassini's Division in maybe 1/3rd of the ring system at high power. (Don't laugh; Cassini has been undetectable many times in below average seeing.) Brian Rachford |
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