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Observing 3 amateur discoveries from Lake Sonoma (2/03/05)



 
 
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Old February 5th 05, 06:05 PM
Steve Gottlieb
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Default Observing 3 amateur discoveries from Lake Sonoma (2/03/05)

Taking advantage of the brief break in the cloudy weather, I ran up to
Lake Sonoma after work on Thursday night (February 3) and arrived about
6:00 to find Bob Douglas already set up with his new 18-inch Starmaster.
Bob has been waiting patiently the past couple of months for a chance to
get under dark skies, but has been making up for lost time * he also
observed at Long Rock Flat just two nights earlier. It was a good
decision to head up mid-week as both transparency (~6.5) and especially
seeing were very good.

While I started to set up my own 18-inch Starmaster, I commented to Bob
that I forgot to bring along a finder chart for Comet Machholz (C/2004
Q2), though hopefully it would still be easy to spot naked-eye. After
peaking last month around mag 3.5 (even visible through thin clouds from
my badly light polluted skies in the east bay), it's down about a
magnitude now, but still easily visible naked-eye about 9 degrees NNE of
the double cluster and now circumpolar. This comet was the 10th found
by amateur Don Machholz last August 27th with a 37-year old 6-inch f/8
Criterion Dynascope from his home in Colfax.

Lower's nebula (Sharpless 2-261) was discovered on photographs taken in
1939 by Harold Lower and his son Charles (amateur telescope makers from
San Diego) using a homemade 8-inch f/1 Schmidt Camera (that's right,
f/1). With my 18-inch, Lower's nebula was not initially noticed in a
rich star field using the 31 Nagler (63x). Adding an OIII filter, much
of the field took on an irregular patchy appearance (partly due to the
unresolved background milky way glow), but in addition a 10'x8' oval
glow (only part of the entire complex which shows up strikingly on
images) was locally brighter surrounding a group of stars south of the
geometric center of the nebula. The highest surface brightness region
(still faint) was an extended patch situated south of mag 8.4 HD 41997
by a few arc minutes.

Lower's discovery was likely the last amateur discovery of a nebula for
65 years. But on January 23, 2004, amateur Jay McNeil (well-known for
his encyclopedic knowledge of planetary nebulae) took a wide field CCD
image of the M78 region using his 3-inch Takahashi FTGC-76 and ST-10XME
CCD from his suburban site in Kentucky. Carefully examining the image
he noticed a new reflection nebula near M78, apparently illuminated by a
young eruptive variable star. After viewing M78 and several other faint
reflection nebula in the vicinity, I moved to the vicinity of Jay's
discovery using 225x and noticed an extremely faint glow, ~30" diameter,
about 1' W of a faint double star. Initially I glimpsed the nebula
without reference to the discovery photo, but once the object was
confirmed it could almost be held continuously with averted vision
although no structural details were visible. I'm guessing a 10-inch
scope or so may be necessary to glimpse this object, though first check
if you can spot nearby NGC 2064 and 2067 which are easier targets. This
faint object is located ~12' SW of M78 in a region of numerous
reflection nebulae and young Herbig-Haro objects. For a labeled image
see http://www.seds.org/messier/Pics/Jpg/m78mcn1l.jpg or the SEDS page
at http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m078_mcneil.html

Last year, David Kingsley posted an observation of an extremely distant
quasar in Lynx, APM08279+5255, so this object immediately went to the
top of my observing list. At a redshift of 3.9 (and one of the
intrinsically brightest known objects in the universe!), this object
makes QSR 3C 273 in Virgo (z = 0.16) appear to be in our neighborhood by
comparison. This object was discovered accidently just a few years back
in 1998 during a survey of distant carbon stars in the galactic halo.
See http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~pkondrat...per/frame2.htm for
the technical details. It was also featured on APOD (see
http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980818.htm)

I had previously observed another very distant quasar, HS 1946+7658, in
Draco at z = 3.05), but it's still mind boggling to contemplate that the
tired light from APM08279+5255 left roughly 11 billion years ago! To be
visible at this distance (and relatively bright) it may benefit from
significant gravitation lensing, although a lensing galaxy or cluster is
not evident on the images I've seen. In any case, this will likely be
the most distant object I'll ever see visually. Using a photographic
finder chart (the 15th-16th magnitude QSR is not plotted on the GSC, so
it may not show up on amateur sky-plotting software). At first, I
picked up a 15th magnitude star near the position, but carefully I
realized the QSR was situated about 1' NE of the star I had identified.
With averted vision, the target popped into view. I would have
estimated the magnitude as ~16 (the R-band is given as 15.2), after
finishing up I realized that clouds had drifted into that portion of the
sky and probably detracted from the view. Although I only viewed for a
few hours, it was great getting out under dark skies again and seeing
several unusual objects.

Steve Gottlieb
 




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