pinnacles

Very late in the day yesterday I decided to head down to Pinnacles for some observing.  The marine layer has covered the sky each night for many nights, cutting off any chance to observe.  Also it's fire season, so future opportunities could be cut off from fire and smoke.  I decided to go at 4pm and headed out the door at 5pm, arriving at 7:30pm, to find three others acquaintances already there setting up.

It being summer, astronomical twilight dragged on and on.  I wanted to observe two supernovae in Virgo, which is setting fast.  Fortunately I was able to get these in first.  I used my 10-inch Springsonian:

Supernova SN 2021qvv in NGC 4442 galaxy: 10-inch at 84x:  The galaxy was faint, with a very small lozenge shaped core and very much fainter lenticular halo, 2:1 WSE-ENE.  The supernova is a type 1a and is a binary star system where a white dwarf pulls material away from its companion until it's mass reaches the point it collapses and explodes.  It was discovered on 22 June 2021 and is a week past maximum at 14.1 magnitude.  It appeared just west of the core, a little bright point consistently seen with direct vision next to this brightest portion of the galaxy -- the point itself was brighter than the core and the galaxy.  NGC 4442 is ~100 million light years away, so the explosion happened ~100 million years + a couple weeks to travel here.   Two other galaxies were seen in the same field, another small elongated NGC 4424, and a larger diffuse and oval NGC 4417 with a bright nucleus.

   

Supernova SN 2021pfs in NGC 5427 galaxy:  This one was much tougher since the galaxies are fainter.  The two galaxies are NGC 5427 which is a face-on spiral with a bright core, and NGC 5426, also a spiral but seen at a more inclined angle.  In Peter's 20-inch scope he was able to separate the two galaxies using his more light-gathering power and higher magnification, and to see spiral structure with averted vision.  He could easily detect the ~14th magnitude star in between the galaxies, which is a similar magnitude to the supernova.  In my scope the image scale is smaller and the halos of the galaxies appeared merged, with brightening in the grey halos to show the core.  With averted vision the specks of the star and the supernova appeared, but I could not hold them direct.  The galaxy / supernova are ~120 million light years distant.  It is also a 1a.

The rest of my time was spent sweeping and poking about rather aimlessly.  It's a very bad habit I've developed in the wake of not having large aperture to bring to dark sky sites.  Before I might observe everything on an atlas page; now I only observe what seems brightest or is maybe a challenge.  There were some nuggets found, and the time is worth it -- but I need to get back into some regular program to provide some structure to my observing.

Nearby to NGC 4442 I found NGC 4526, aka the "Lost" galaxy.  I've no idea why it has this nickname.  It is bright, elongated, fairly small in my small scale, with a stellar nucleus and a noticeably mottled halo.  It lies between two of three similar magnitude stars forming a nearly equatorial triangle.  In the same field was NGC 4535, which was a very large unevenly round glow, with small stars scattered through it.   It turns out this is a stunning bright barred spiral.  I wish I had the aperture!

I took a spin through the Virgo cluster, stopping especially at M86 and Markarian's chain.  The galaxies did not appear as bright as I recall.  My SQML read 21.3 max, while Peter's read 21.5.  Not quite as dark as the sky could get, likely due to some moisture in the air.  It was chilly, though I was warm enough with a fleece and a jacket.  The newly paved parking lot at Pinnacles held the daytime heat well into the night and kept my feet warm.  

I took in other highlight, especially Ptolomy's cluster, which is a favorite, and all the dark nebula and curtains and waves of stars forming the central part of the Milky Way.  M16, where I think I saw the "Lady of the Night" figure, or at least a darkening where the Pillars of Creation are.  Lagoon, Swan, Trifid nebulas.  Many random globular clusters.  Barnard's Galaxy, which appeared much weaker than what I saw at Willow Springs with Steve.  The North American nebula, and the Cocoon.  Gamma Cyngi area with a UHC, which showed the Crescent Nebula well.

The only other objects I took notes on was LBN 266, which was plotted in the atlas as a very weak, extended nebula in Cygnus not far from the Veil Nebula, and best viewed with an OIII filter.  I observed very weak small wisps of nebulosity, barely there in fact, spread over two eyepiece fields, with a comparatively brighter wise around one of the brighter stars.

The other was the Egg Nebula, CRL 2688, which is a bipolar protoplanetary nebula.  Its star is shining through a shell of dust and is polarized to create the strange shape.  I "think" I saw this, but am tentative.  I took several passes at star-hopping to the location just to make sure.  I attached a polarizing filter to my eyepiece then spun it around in the focuser while watching -- one patch of unevenly round small greyness consistently came into view then disappeared.  I've read this can be seen well in a 14-inch, but this seemed a very marginal observation.

At around 2am I found myself nodding off as I took breaks in my chair.  I had a look at Saturn and Jupiter (which were very far apart!  it was only a few months ago they were in conjunction), which looked nice in their respective star fields, but this is not the right telescope to make observations of them.  When the others decided to pack up I did the same.  I slept fitfully in my car until 5am when I drove off -- that helped as I beat some of the rush hour traffic back into the Bay Area.