Observing session at Killylane, 5/12/08

(Stevie Beasant)

Davey, Eamonn and Stevie went up to Killylane last night for what turned out to be a very good session. The Moon was fairly intrusive early on, but the sky was very clear and the Milky Way could be seen high overhead. The main car park was like a skating rink from the snow which had fallen a couple of days ago, so we used the small car park overlooking the reservoir. We had a range of different size Lightbridge's with us, an 8", 12" and 16".
Because of the moon, we started off observing to the south and south-east, Orion was already well up, and we picked off quite a few targets. M42 was spectacular in the 17mm Hyperion, as was Collinder 72. I moved on to M78, and found it quite quickly. The nebula itself was not very clearly seen, although the two bright stars which light up the nebula were very clear. The surrounding nebulosity was very prominent. At first, I thought the eyepiece had misted up, but moving the scope to one side revealed a dark sky background. The nebulosity was more prominent in a northerly direction, and we concluded that we were probably seeing part of Barnard's Loop.
I spent some time identifying the main stars of Pisces and Cetus, two constellations I don't know well, mainly because it is nearly impossible to see most of their stars from the city. There are no bright stars in either constellation, but I was soon able to see the basic shapes fairly easily. Mira, the famous variable, was quite prominent. I identified Eta Piscium, as my main target for the evening, M74, is nearby. M74 is reputedly the hardest of all the Messier objects to see, it is sometimes known as the Phantom Galaxy. It lies almost centrally between Eta P and a close pair of stars, 103 and 105 Piscium. These proved to be just outside the field of view of the 30mm eyepiece. I have to say that once I had identified this pair. and by using averted vision, the central area of M74 was surprisingly easy to spot, although it was by no means obvious, more of a milky haze. By continuing to use averted vision, and by using slight movement of the scope, it was possible to build up a picture of the galaxy, which is larger than I expected. The spiral arms were never directly visible, but the central area became more defined the longer I looked at it. Eamonn managed to find the galaxy in the 16" as well.
My next target was M77, and this proved to be even more difficult to see than M74. It took quite some time to find, as it was further away from the brightest nearby star, Delta Ceti, than I expected, judging from my star chart. I more or less stumbled over it in the end. The central area is smaller than M74, although a little brighter at first glance. I could not see any sign of spiral arms even with averted vision.
Since I had now exceeded my expectations for the evening, I decided to try and find M79 in Lepus, which was down in the glow of the horizon. The main stars of Lepus were clear enough, but just skirting the glow. I had a look first of all in binoculars, but could not spot it, but used two barely visible nearby stars to get the scope to the approximate area. The scope was almost horizontal, and I had to get down on my knees to see through the eyepiece. A quick search eventually revealed the globular cluster, although it did not look like much.was just very pleased to have found it. Unfortunately, when someone who shall remain nameless had a look, he lost it and I couldn't find it again.

(Eamonn Keyes)

Huh! That was because the scope needed a counterweight and kept falling.
Yes, it was icy indeed, very cold and with about 6-8 inches of crunchy snow afoot.
I'm not a big fan of this time of the year, as despite the visual display of Orion etc there are few of my beloved galaxies to be seen.
However, I'd a skirt at Gemini, and that betrayed that the seeing was none too good, as even with my 16" the Eskimo Nebula was featureless, and I've seen detail on previous occasions.
However, M35 was gorgeous, and Stevie noticed the presence of NGC 2158, which despite being a cluster, looked more like a gaseous nebula or irregular galaxy with little resolution of its compacted stars...it was once thought to be a globular because of that compacted nature.
Here's a pic of the two below.


I was mainly giving a workout to my last purchases, the Panoptic 35mm and Paracorr, just to see how effective they were.
The Panoptic is utterly wonderful with the 16". Magnification is x52, and it is superb with clusters, with a huge field of view.
The Paracorr was doing its job too, with little coma at the edges of the field, althouugh with just a slight flattening and reduction of the whole experience.

I moved on to other targets such as M36, M37 and M38 in Auriga, M1 in Taurus which was more visible than usual but disappointing as usual. I had a go at Sigma Orionis, and then tried for a few galaxies as Ursa Major was now pointing upwards. M108 and M109 confirmed that seeing wasn't that good, with a bit too much moisture in the air.
Indeed, for the first time ever I had my eyepieces dewing up as well as the Telrad, which started dewing up about 20 minutes into the session, and within an hour the scope had a coating of frost.
Once my secondary started to dew up, I decided I'd call it a night as it was becoming too much of a chore to see anything.
Stevie wanted to stay on, and the sky was just becoming interesting, but the state of the scope made this pointless.
I wish we'd only started at that time though, as the sky was gorgeous by then.

(Stevie Beasant)

I would have to agree with the last point, by the time we left, Leo was rising, although Saturn was not yet visible, and the sky was very clear. While Eamonn was observing M108 and M109, I found the Owl Nebula, M97, which was clearly seen in the 12". I could not quite distinguish between the "eyes", they were meshed together into one dark area. When Eamonn started putting away his scope, I had a quick look at the other owl, the Owl cluster in Cassiopeia. He was having a lie down.
All in all, it was a very worthwhile session. The 17mm Hyperion performed well with the 12" lightbridge and we got a little trip around the outer reaches of the Messier list.