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Southern Sentinel Observing Report |
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Friday, 10 September, 2010
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| Date: | Friday, 10 September, 2010 (Local +12 UT) |
| Time: | 7:50 p.m. - 1:00 a.m. |
| Location: | Waharau Regional Park |
| 60 Minutes from Home |
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| Weather: | Cold and Clear. No cloud till after 1am |
| Conditions | Limiting Magnitude: 5.5, Transparency: Clear, Seeing: III. Somewhat stable |
| Sunset / Twilight | Sunset at 6:03 p.m., Astronomically Dark from 7:30 p.m. |
| Moon: | New, 8.4% Illuminated |
| Equipment: | 13.1" f5 Dobsonian |
| TeleVue Paracorr, Argo Navis |
| The Spring Waharau has rolled around again and
despite the dodgy weather plaguing us over the recent month, Friday
night looked promising. I arrived at just after 4PM and the others started arriving soon after. Skies were clear and winds were light. Setup up the telescope in the light and waited for the sky to darken. |
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| Observations as follows; | ||
| Object | Type | Magnification | Notes | |
| M57 Ring Nebula |
Planetary Nebula |
113X |
The Ring Nebula. Not logged for 4 years, just have not been out at this time of the year, with a clear view of the North. | |
| NGC6781 Pacman Nebula |
Planetary Nebula |
113X |
Bright and easy. Large diffuse
planetary. |
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| Cr399 Brocchi's Cluster |
Open Cluster |
113X |
Observed through Kevin Barker's 110mm Binoculars. | |
| M71 | Globular Cluster |
113X |
Loose Milky Way globular. | |
| M27 Dumbell Nebula |
Planetary Nebula |
113X |
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| IC5148 Spare Tyre Nebula |
Planetary Nebula |
113X |
The Grus Planetary. Enhanced with UHC filter. | |
| NGC6101 | Globular Cluster |
113X |
Diffuse globular cluster in fine field. Not resolved. | |
| NGC7009 Saturn Nebula |
Planetary Nebula |
113X |
Saturn Nebula. Easy. Round and bright with Ansae visible. | |
| NGC7006 | Globular Cluster |
113X |
Remote globular cluster | |
| M72 | Globular Cluster |
113X |
Small compact Messier galaxy in Aquarius. | |
| M2 | Globular Cluster |
113X |
Bright Messier Globular. Not logged for over 4 years. | |
| Jupiter | Planet |
274X |
Nice views of Jupiter with the Red
Spot prominent due to a lack in the southern belt. No festoons. There
appears to be many small dark ovals following the Red Spot which are
visible clearly when the seeing improves. |
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| NGC7293 Helix Nebula |
Planetary Nebula |
87X |
Quick look at the Helix Nebula with and without filters. | |
| NGC253 Silver Coin Galaxy |
Galaxy |
87X |
Sculptor galaxy. Fills the FOV, heavily mottled. | |
| NGC7599 Grus Quartet |
Galaxy |
113X |
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| NGC7590 Grus Quartet |
Galaxy |
113X |
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| NGC7582 Grus Quartet |
Galaxy |
113X |
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| NGC7552 Grus Quartet |
Galaxy |
113X |
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| Jn1 Jones 1 |
Planetary Nebula |
113X |
Large and faint and very difficult even when using an OIII filter. | |
| K3 Kron 3, Brock's Glob (L8) |
Globular Cluster |
113X |
Kron 3. This object is very small unresolved globular cluster, in the SMC. Not far from 47 Tucanae. | |
| NGC602 | Open Cluster |
113X |
Interesting emission nebula | |
| NGC247 Claw Galaxy |
Galaxy |
87X |
Fairly faint but large oval galaxy. No real detail noted. | |
| Triton | Planetary Moon |
274X |
Using Skytools 3, which accurately plots Triton in it's orbit around
Neptune, we found had good field stars to help identify the moon's
position relative to Neptune. We waited for Neptune to be on the
meridian for this exercise (around midnight). We had about 6
people in total having a look...but do not know how many actually knew
what to look for.
Using both Dave Brock's 20 inch Dobsonian and my 13 inch
Dobsonian, we found the moon easily. Triton
was directly visible regularly in the 20 inch and occasionally directly
visible in the 13 inch. Averted vision made identification
even easier.
At mag 13.5, you would expect Triton to be easy...as the two
field stars were mag 13.5 and easily visible. The reason for the
difficulty is that Neptune is bright and Triton was only about 8 arc
seconds from the limb of Neptune. Given another 5 days and Triton would have been further
from Neptune, making identification easier.
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| A good night of observing with a leisurely pace.
Enjoyed the east and the difficult tonight pushing the observing skills
with Jones 1 and Triton. Staring at Jupiter for awhile was good for a
change as well. As with these events there is people wanting to look through the telescope so there was a certain amount of bright object observing as well and it did seem that we saw Jupiter's Red spot cross the disc of the planet. I forget how fast Jupiter rotates. The telescope performed well and there were no problems...just I need to get a more pernenant Altitude encoder arm, four years I have been using the tempory one!! |
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| Paul Kemp |
| 13.1" f5 Reflector with Argo Navis |
| Auckland, New Zealand |
| 36° 55' 09 " South, 174° 43' 30" East |
| -- The Southern Sentinel -- |