A galaxy and a couple of PNs (July 10/11, 2010)

Following my reasonable success with a few Palomars, our second night camping was also cloudy at dusk, but yielded even better transparency once the clouds did clear -- and they cleared before midnight this time.

July 10/11 NELM 7+, SQM 21.7 Foot of Boreas Pass, near Como, approx 10,100' elevation.

Once again I started with a Messier to warm up. (The secondary strategy here is that some day I might even have all the Messiers sketched.)

M101 23:00 MT; 250mm DK @ 100X
Bright extended core surrounded by uneven haze which fairly easily resolves into 3 arms, the middle (pointing roughly N) fatter and more indistinct, and less tightly wound. Handful of reasonably bright foreground stars superimposed. 2 knots, one near the end of the E arm [NGC5462] while the other appears uninvolved [NGC5447].

NGC5471 and 5451 also sketched, but misidentified as stars.



NGC6337 23:30 MT; 250mm DK @ 250X; UHC
Tiny at 100X, but easy direct vision. Low altitude seeing a mess, which makes focusing at 250X an issue. Appears a bit 'C' shaped with 3 knots or stars. Responds well to UHC, where full ring is seen, although the knots/stars are nearly lost (suggesting that they're stars, not knots).

NGC6302 23:50 MT; 250mm DK @ 250X
Very bright semi-stellar core with wispy edges and an E-W flare. Looks a lot like a very-poorly focused Saturn, although W side of "rings" longer and more pointy. UHC doesn't provide any more detail (in fact, it looks pretty much identical from 100X to 250X with and without filtration), but filtration does really help it pop out from the field.



Cheers,
-- Jeff.

Lovely sketched there Jeff, and at 10,100ft, quite impressive you'd never see the bug nebula like that from here

Keith..