[Rob_K]

No scope at Snake Valley (knew I forgot something ), and Ken was kind enough to let me commandeer his 12" dob.

Time: c12:00am – 1am AEDST, 13 November 2007 (14:00-15:00, 12 November 2007 UT)
Seeing: Fair - good
Transparency: Good, deteriorating
Telescope: 12" GS Dob
EP: 32mm Erfle

I started out just mucking around with a few familiar galaxies that were bright enough to be visible in the finder scope:

NGC 253 in Sculptor – Large and bright, some structure visible on intent staring. One of the best edge-on spirals in the sky!
NGC 55 in Sculptor – Long, bright, narrow smudge; the asymmetry of this interesting edge-on galaxy was very clear.
M31, M32, M110 in Andromeda – A very bright nucleus in M31, with very faint extensions for more than a FOV each side. Both satellite galaxies clear – smaller, brighter M31 & dimmer, larger M110.

I decided I needed some charts, so consulted SN for some more galaxies in the region of Sculptor. Back to the EP and:

NGC 247 in Cetus – Easy to find because of its proximity to a bright triangle of stars. Quite dim but clear, similar shape but considerably smaller than 253. First time I’ve looked for this galaxy, spurred on by talk about it in recent posts. Would now like to check it out in 4.5" reflector.
NGC 300 in Sculptor – Faint, small irregular smudge, strangely nowhere near as good a view as I had in the 4.5" reflector at Silverton in October. Then, I could faintly make out structure. Perhaps this was an early sign of the deteriorating transparency?
IC5532 in Sculptor – Mag 11.1 galaxy, small, roundish and faint. Nearby NGC 7713 at mag 13.2 was not visible (or not located)
Grus Quartet in Grus – Had real difficulty using a ‘proper’ finder scope (used to red spot finder), and in the end panned the rough area looking for fuzzy spots. No success, but who knows where I was looking!

Anyway, wanting to continue the galaxy hunt (and with a whole night ahead of me, woo hoo!) I went back to generate charts for NGC 936, M77 (both in Cetus), NGC 1236 (Eridanus), and some of the many galaxies in Fornax. However, clouds/fog rolled in before I could get back to the scope, and that was it! But it was an interesting and fun short session anyway. Thanks Ken!

Cheers -