hi all,
this is my first attempt at an observation report, so go easy on the ‘constructive criticism’. I wrote it because last night was my first time observing galaxies, so I thought it would be the perfect excuse to try writing one up. I don’t mention anything like seeing or transparency, because I really don’t yet understand how to accurately judge such things. This is more about the things I saw and the nights events. Enjoy.
2nd October, 2007.
After reading an article by Les Dalrymple in the Nov/Dec 2003 edition of SKY & SPACE magazine, I decided to take advantage of last nights clear skies by trying to find my first galaxy. I’ve never tried to find galaxies (the LMC and SMC don't count!), I always thought it would be too difficult with only a 5" telescope and moderate light pollution. but the article said that a few galaxies in Dorado are visible in scopes as small as 100mm, so I thought id give it a go.
I sat my scope outside at about 6:30pm, and I left it to cool until first going outside at about 7:30pm.
My scope was not well collimated, but I wanted to see Centaurus A (NGC 5128) before it got too low in the sky, so I skipped collimation. Sitting my red torch on my star atlas as a paperweight (last night was very windy!) I starhopped around to where Centaurus A should have been sitting, but it was so low in the sky that terrestrial objects like telephone poles made the hunt too difficult. Oh well, looks like Centaurus A was not destined to be my first galaxy. I moved up to Omega Centauri (but too low in the sky, so just a haze), so then over too 47 Tucanae. 47 Tucanae always looks nice. with averted vision I could see that it was a cloud of stars, but directly it was still an impressive blob.
As Dorado appeared in the east, I moved my telescope over to Alpha Doradus. Alpha Doradus, being the closest bright star to a small group of galaxies, would be my ‘base camp’ for most of the night. I scanned the area within a few degrees of the star, just to see if any galaxies jumped out at me. Ofcaurse they didn’t. I moved back to Alpha Doradus to collimate my telescope. Just as I started collimating, I was blinded when Dad switched on our outside lights. He had come out to work on the spa’s wooden decking. he apologised for turning the light on. Once I was happy that the collimation was good enough, I went inside and waited for Dorado to move higher in the sky, and the lights to be turned off.
Once the sound of sawing and hammering outside to stopped, I went back outside to find Dorado high in the sky. By now it was about 9:30pm. Using the star map I carefully guided my telescope around the area where the galaxies should be. as I moved my telescope a saw a blur race across through the field of view, I moved back to find a small smudge! I stood back and took a few deep breaths. My first galaxy. I looked at it for a few minutes. I was very proud of my self. My next challenge was to identify it. I looked over too the star chart, and then looked at an image of NGC1566. I thought that this galaxy may be NGC1566, but I noted that no bright stars sat near my galaxy, so it could not be 1566.
As I examined the chart, the whole page lit up blue. For a second I thought there was a helicopter shining a spotlight down on me, then I had a strange vision of a man on a tall ladder shining a torch at me. But when I turned around and looked up, I saw a magnificent meteor moving across the sky!!! It fizzled out and left a glowing aqua tail in its wake. All over. I went back to my galaxy. I decided to draw a picture of what I could see through the eyepiece, and then compare the drawing to some sky mapping software. I went inside (with an eye patch on my observing eye) to grab a book to sketch my galaxy in. on the way I also informed my brother of the meteor, as he is a keen meteor observer.
After finding a note book to draw in, I went back outside to find my bother lying on his back outside. Waiting for another meteor. After giving him the details of the meteor (colour, brightness, direction, etc) I went back to the scope and started sketching the galaxy. I started with the smudge galaxy, then started dotting in the brightest stars surrounding it. although one star was more of a dim smudge then a point of light, another galaxy in the same field of view!!! Now I’m really excited!!! It was so small and dim that I would not have noticed it if I had not tried to draw it. happy that I now had too galaxies to identify, I went inside to consult my computer’s sky software. I soon identified the two galaxies as NGC1553 and NGC1549. I went back outside to have another look, but the clouds were coming, so I didn’t have time to find any more.
I waited until 2:00am for the clouds to clear, but as dorado had moved so much in those several hours I had trouble getting me bearings. I eventually found NGC1553 and he’s little friend 1549, I had a quick look, but the wind and clouds were getting a bit unbearable, so I began packing up.
Well, that was probably more of a short story then an observation report. But its my first time. The image I’ve included is my sketch of the two galaxies. I inverted the colours in paint, to make it more realistic.
Jarrod