Observing Notes

Tuckahoe, 11 November 2001...Doug Norton
      Four people showed up at the field this evening. Tim Milligan was already there when I arrived. Chris Mazzola showed up right before dark and Bob Bunge showed up about an hour after we all started observing. Tim had his 17.5-inch Discovery, Chris had his 18-inch Obsession, Bob had his 20-inch home made scope and I had my 4-inch Celestron C-102 refractor. I knew it would be a great night but I really wanted to bring the refractor again because the images are just amazing through that thing. Compared to the previous nights of observing it was incredibly steady air. Even through the small aperture of a 4-inch
refractor, Jupiter, Saturn and double stars were swimming but tonight was extremely steady. It stayed clear and very cold all night long Luckily there was no wind and no dew. Only at the very end of the evening was there any moisture on the scope but it was frost. Even with a gloved had, my eyepieces were painful to handle.
  I had no agenda for seeking objects this evening once again, I just wanted to enjoy some of the brighter and popular objects. Don and I had tried to find Comet Linear on Saturday night but we didn't have any charts and he only knew it was in Perseus near Algol. So tonight I was determined to find it since the sky was so much more transparent. But I had forgotten to make any charts for it before I left so I used the standard comet hunting technique of sweeping the sky and managed to find it.
Chris Mazzola had his computer hooked up to his scope, found it in the eyepiece and did an Identify Object mode to make sure we weren't looking at a galaxy. Then we looked in Uranometria and there was nothing even close by. After only an hour it moved considerably against the background stars. And by the time I left the field it was so much farther from the first time I saw it, it was just amazing. It had a very large halo and a dense almost stellar core in my scope. The halo seemed to lean one way but there was no tail. In the big scopes it was much brighter and showed a very strong stellar core and much larger halo.
This was a very cool sight.
 Chris was looking at the Veil Nebula with his O-III filter and it was just amazing. The filaments looked like twisted rope. What a great image it had. He also got the Dumbbell Nebula and used the O-III on it and it showed its ears very well. Then Tim and Chris were looking for the Crescent Nebula and found it was a very easy object and showed great detail. The Andromeda Galaxy and the Pinwheel Galaxy both showed stunning detail in Chris' scope. The dust lanes were so easy to detect
in the Andromeda Galaxy and the satellite galaxies were so detailed.There were lots of star and nebula clouds in M33. Then we had a little fun using my 40mm Wide Field eyepiece in his scope to look at large objects like the Pleiades and the Double Cluster. Both Bob and Tim were busy observing their own list of objects.
 I managed to find a few tough new double stars. 6 Tri in Triangulum was a nice split. Both components had equal colors of yellow and slightly different magnitudes that were a nice sight at 76x. A super challenge and a testament to how steady the night was, Epsilon Ari in Aries was a 1.4 arc second split. I couldn't get any black space between the components but it was very obvious they were two stars. I mostly looked at doubles and multiples I have already seen before but are some of my favorites. Beta Mon in Monoceros is an astounding triple star.  They are close components but I think I could actually detect slight
color differences in them this time. Sigma Ori in Orion is a quadruple system that is a very pretty sight at any magnification. And of course the Trapezium in the Orion Nebula was so sharp through the refractor. I caught hints of the fifth star as well. I spent a long time watching
Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter had a lot of activity with its moons and I could clearly see a sharp shadow transit across its disk. As far as deep sky objects it was mostly open clusters and a few bright nebulas like the Crab Nebula and the Dumbbell. I stuck to mostly objects I had already seen once again, I was just enjoying the great weather. I took frequent breaks looking for meteors and there was no shortage of them.
   But the highlight of the whole evening was finding Comet Linear.  Get out there and find it because it is a truly unique sight. It was easy in my 4-inch refractor so it should be easy in just about any optical aid. Chris was the first to leave, then Tim.  Bob left around 1:30. I stayed until a little after 2:30. I wanted to stay later but it was cold! The frost also took its toll on my equipment. I hope to see you in the field soon and will be there for the meteor shower on November 17th. If the weather is cold don't bother showing up until late because Leo doesn't come up until very late. You will get cold very quickly and will not enjoy staying out in the cold for an extended period of time. Let's hope for clear weather.
Douglas A. Norton strix@mindspring.com