lake sonoma, 30 July

I drove up to Lake Sonoma the night of 30 July to get out from under the Soberanes Fire smoke haze blanketing the south bay. The drive took about three hours from Fremont, with some unusually heavy traffic on 880 to Oakland and 101 by Petaluma. But any frustration was softened by the sky, which became bluer and bluer the further north I travelled.

Dennis Beckley was setting up when I arrived, and we were joined a short time later by Renato del Rosario and Caroline Scolari. Mark Toney and his party of four and more arrived at nightfall. Seeing improved as the night went on, and transparency variable from good to average; SQM was in the 21.4 range. Our equipment started dewing up at nightfall and I’m glad I wired up my telescope for it.

While setting up I noticed a small white thing in the sky to the north-north east; I assumed it was a balloon that broke free from a car dealership’s parking lot display. Several minutes later I noticed it again, and thought it was weird it was the same size as before and near the same place, drifted just a little east. About 20 minutes later Caroline called out that she had it in her 4-inch refractor: it was a Google Project Loon balloon. She said she saw one from Chabot a few days ago and others had identified it there. We were looking at it from below, so it was white, round, and you could see the webs in the balloon radiating from its center. It looked like a strange round jellyfish. The payload, where the WiFi and LTE electronics are carried, was not visible other than a whitish gap in the ribs of the balloon bottom.

I took a rest in my van while waiting for it to get dark, and emerged just in time to see the end of the unusually bright ISS pass to the north. I tried to observe the Io shadow transit of Jupiter which was in progress that hour, but the seeing was too soupy low down and I only glimpsed a dark smudge.

Here are my astronomical observations with my 20-inch reflector:

NGC 1184, galaxy in Cepheus: Very pretty, small edge on. Stellar nucleus with a fairly bright bulging core; halo is tapered to the tips and has a diffuse edge. 4:1 NNE-SSW.

I tried to find Comet 9P/Tempel which was about 3° ENE of Spica. Since early June it travelled from behind Leo straight through the Virgo cluster and provided ample opportunity for views paired with galaxies – but I missed all of that. In early July it was still bright enough to be seen in an 8-inch telescope. Tonight it was to be close by to M-2-35-11, a 1.5’ x 1.5’ 13.1 V magnitude spot between 76 and 82 Virginis. After scanning about at 100x, with and without a Comet filter, I could find neither the galaxy nor the comet. I’ll blame the bad seeing present near the horizon, as even Dennis could not find it despite his computer driven 18-inch scope.

I re-observed M 1-64, “The Other Ring Nebula” in Lyra. I had about as much trouble star hopping to it last month, which was a lot given the density of the field, but was obvious once picked up. It was not as strikingly comet or triangle shaped as last time, and I recall the star its rim touches being brighter. I picked it up at 205x, then went to 333x, and finally 667x. This time I could distinguish the round shape of the nebula and not merge it to the star as a triangle shape. It is small, round and grey, with a fat ring shape and slightly darker middle. Its edges are defined but soft. OIII hurt the view but UHC was the best.

NGC 6826, PN in Cygnus, “Blinking Planetary”: At 333x, the bright central star is obvious, a nice button of a star. The shell at first appeared of even surface brightness with a bluish tinge. It doesn’t really blink but stays steady – I can force it to blink with averted vision but it’s not necessary to blink to see the PN well. While blinking with AV, I see the edges are diffuse and some annularity W-E. With UHC, there is no central star but there are swirls in the blue disk, and I detected what appeared to be a very diffuse detached outer shell.

Nearby to the Blinking Planetary is double star 16 Cygni (aka ΣI 46), a sixth magnitude pair 39” separated. The A has a “C” companion red dwarf with a separation of 73 AU. Both the A and the B are sun like yellow dwarfs, and in 1996 an extrasolar planet was discovered around the B star. But that’s not what brought me. 5.5” to the north are two galaxies. UGC 11465 is 326.6 mly distant, B magnitude 14.4, at 333x was the brighter and larger of the pair, being an oval halo of uneven brightness, with a quasi-stellar nucleus and a brighter core with averted vision. 2.3” to the south (toward 61 Cygni) was a second galaxy, MCG+08-36-003, visual magnitude 14.0 but smaller (0.85’x 0.72’) 349.2 mly distant. In between the two I noticed another very small, extremely faint patch, which when I match my sketch to Aladin appears to be 2MASX J19414452+5-37151; but it is hard to believe I saw this…likely it was a very faint star at my visual threshold.

NGC 6833, PN in Cygnus, at 333x was a very small, fairly faint not stellar point which blinked strongly with OIII.

NGC 6884, PN in Cygnus, at 333x was a small bright disk with diffuse soft edges. Blue-green color, no central star. Seen well without filter; it blinks with UHC.

Open Cluster AI J2005.2+4732 is plotted on the chart nearby so I stopped for a look. It appeared in the 80mm finder as a small faint knot of stars. I still had 333x loaded in the scope; the cluster had about 15 stars of similar brightness in loose concentration. The main group formed a rectangle with an “L” shaped stream of stars near the middle; 6 other stars trailed off to the west. I don’t get any hits on this on the internet. I’d hazard a guess of Trumpler II1p

UGC 11500, galaxy in Cygnus, at 333x was a small elliptical with a brighter core in a very dense field. [B mag 14.4 0.89’x0.748, 335.4mly]. Best to keep bright star 26 Cygni out of field of view. It strikes me that it took modern photographic surveys to reveal many of the galaxies seen through the Milky Way stream, even though some of them are bright enough to be NGCs. I suspect earlier visual observers could not sort out all the surrounding stars.

IC 1301, Galaxy in Cygnus: Small, faint, 2:1 elongation with diffuse edges and a brighter core, stellar nucleus. AV needed to see it well. 5” to west of relatively bright [10.6 mag] star. I’m surprised to see today on Aladin it is a spiral galaxy; 1.4’x0.99’ – I seem to have only detected the core region.

NGC 6764, Galaxy on the Cygnus – Draco border: Very interesting! Not small but not very large, and rather diffuse, orientated ENE-WSW, 4:1. It has four stars intersecting the slightly brighter core perpendicularly, three in a line and one to the east [turns out the northernmost star is the stellar nucleus]. There seems to be an arm reaching out from the ENE tip back around to the north. [The galaxy is a barred spiral, and there is an arm here along with its opposite member to the SW which I did not notice]. 2.5” to the SW is a small, diffuse round patch seen with averted vision [this is PGC 214715, 0.473 x 0.388].

NGC 6742, PN in Draco, at 333x medium size, bright, round with sharp edges. No central star; blinks with OIII.

NGC 7076 (aka Abell 75) PN in Cepheus: At 205x, a bit small, very diffuse, irregularly round with a kind of tail coming out of the southern end and swooping east. Barely there unfiltered; UHC required for contrast. Brighter in the middle of the glow, and a couple of stars in the north and east ends but not centered.

NGC 7139, PN in Cepheus: At 205x unfiltered it is an irregular round glow, medium size. Disappears with OIII but UHC makes it bright. Soft irregular edge and an unevenly bright middle. No central star.

Minkowsky M2-51, PN in Cepheus: “Little Ring Nebula”: Detected at 205x and seen well at 333x. Picked up as a diffuse small round patch unfiltered, on the edge of a keystone asterism. Not visible with OIII but UHC it was cleanly seen. Central star seen with averted vision, and it pops out a fat ring, grey color, with soft edges.

Minkowsky M2-52, PN in Cepheus: Very faint irregularly round small glow, diffuse edges. UHC best contrast; in a dense field. No central star seen.

Around 1:00 am dew formed on my 80mm finder scope’s objective. Luckily I had a chemical hand warmer packet in my gear box and I rubber banded it to the outside of the tube near the objective. I did some low power Milky Way scanning for a few minutes while the warmer cleared the dew, and then I was back in business.

After so much faint stuff, and before trying more of it, I stopped by NGC 7789, Open Cluster in Cassiopeia, Caroline’s Cluster. A distinct patch in the finder, the scope at 86x, 1° field revealed myriad stars, with whorls of dark lanes running through it. It was spectacular.

Abell 82, PN in Cas: At 205x, the central star seen right off, with two other stars involved in the shell, which was a moderately large diffuse round glow best seen with UHC. Lies in the western corner of a triangle of stars.

Vy 1-1, PN in Cas: Small bright slightly bloated star unfiltered. Blinks best with UHC as a small grey disk with well defined edges, no central star.

NGC 7419, small open cluster in Cas: 30 faint stars fanning out from a brighter star in two directions forming an overall triangular shape.

NGC 7635, “Bubble Nebula” in Cas: At 86x, and a UHC filter, it appears as a pretty large irregular grey mass with 4 stars crossing it in a string. Streamers of nebulosity arcing around and away from it, primarily in a NW to SW direction.

NGC 6217 = Arp 185: Barred spiral in Ursa Minor: Viewed at 205x and 333x. Stellar nucleus with a 2:1 NE-SE pretty large halo, brighter core along the major axis. There is an arm from the northern end going east then south, very faint. Brightening on the SE part of the halo [which turns out to be the root of a second arm, oddly emerging from the same side as the first].

While I was studying this last object the others noticed fog welling up from the valleys surrounding the site. It was 2:30am and we were forced to stop. I made a quick sketch before packing in and heading home.