Astro Bliss

It had been a rather long stretch of mediocre-to-bad viewing conditions this season. Saturday was one of those nights that could have been easily missed: the days had been rife with variable thin clouds, the National Weather Services predicted "mostly clear" – which is usually a euphemism for "not too many clouds" – and changing West Coast conditions suggested windy conditions. What a mistake it would have been to stay home: the wind died down at sunset, the humidity was 5%, and coastal clouds dimmed the metropolitan lights. Until midnight, conditions were near-perfect. Indeed, at midnight seeing was superb and my Sky Quality Meter registered 21.66 mags/arc-sec2.

No matter how much I plan ahead, I find myself largely "winging it" in selecting what to look at. I started off the night with a comprehensive list of Messier objects. I could have picked through them in an orderly and efficient fashion, and my object count would have been high, but the moment pulled me elsewhere.

Saturn is always a crowd pleaser. This night I regretted not printing out a chart of satellite positions, because they seemed especially obvious.

I couldn't wait for the sliver of the Moon to set to take a look at M51. It really wasn't dark enough, but I came back to it later. The Owl Nebula was in fine form: both eyes could be seen. I really don't find that any filter really improved it. Indeed, I'm starting to take the position that filters should be a last ditch effort. I don't remember thinking this before, so perhaps this is because the Tele Vue Ethos eyepieces have such good contrast.

I couldn't wait to dip down into Centaurus, even though it hadn't culminated. NGC 5128 (Arp 153) was low, but large and bright and the dust lane was very apparent. Seeing to the south was so good that I couldn't resist pushing the scope several degrees lower to look at ω Centauri: this fills the field of my 13mm Ethos eyepiece. One can only imagine how spectacular this would be farther south. I only recently paid attention to the fact that globular clusters are incredibly old, even possibly older than the galaxy itself.

Since I had already strayed off the Messier path, I wanted to take a look at the Antennae, NGC 4038-9 (Arp 244). This is a good example of the benefit of studying the images beforehand. To the uninitiated, it will only look like a single object. Of course, I couldn't see the long tails, but otherwise they looked very much like some of the pre-Hubble pictures. Of course, the Hubble picture shows detail that has redefined our expectations.

Corvus is a small constellation with not a lot in it. It does, however, have an interesting planetary nebula, NGC 4361 that is easily overlooked A couple of degrees almost due east of the Antennae, this has the characteristic color of a planetary nebula and has a couple of extensions in each side.

It was shaping up to be more of an Arp Peculiar Galaxy night, rather than Messier. Of course, some of the best Messier Galaxies are in the Arp catalog. It was now a short hop to the Sombrero (M104), and its dust lane was sharp. I'm surprised that this isn't an Arp galaxy.

M51 (Arp 85) was now well positioned and it was dark with superb seeing. This is always worth spending extra time on, especially on a night like this, and the spiral arms showed a great deal of definition. This is the sort of object that lesser aperture fails.

M101 (Arp 26) is generally a challenge, even with aperture. It is very low surface brightness. This night was was dim – much dimmer than M51 – but the spiral arms were well defined with numerous knots, a number of which are separate NGC objects; had I been better prepared, I would have had a chart to sort these out.

M81, also knows as "Bode's Galaxy" is just a big bright fuzzball. We looked for its accompanying dwarf galaxy, Holmberg IX, but to no avail.  Much more interesting is it's nearby companion, M82, the "Cigar Galaxy" (Arp 337). [I can never keep the two straight. Paul Alsing offered a nice trick, apparently from Tony Hallas. Think "10-cent cigar," then note that 8+2=10. I'll never confuse these again!] The view of this "exploding" galaxy showed a great deal of action, a truly peculiar galaxy.

M64, the "Blackeye Galaxy," didn't make it into the Arp catalog, but it's dark dust patch is relatively unique, and was crisply defined.

Finally, the "Leo Trio" of M65 , M66, and NGC 3628 are all part of Arp 317 ("Leo Triplet). M65 seems to also have its own Arp designation of Arp 16 ("Spiral with detached segments"). I can just get the three into a single field with my 21mm Ethos. Of the three, 3628 is the most interesting: elongated, slightly mottled, and with a prominent dust lane.

Sadly, by midnight I was simply too tired to think straight. I heard that shortly after the excellent seeing we had that night suddenly went to mush! I would love a week of such nights. Maybe then I would stop jumping from showpiece to showpiece and start looking for some seriously faint stuff!