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Old 08-12-2010, 07:38 PM
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Ro84 (Roberto)
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Location: Cagliari, Italy
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Report of Dec. 7, 2010

Hello there! I'd like to share with you the emotion of my last observing.

Like last time, yesterday night also I got the possibility to manage, for 1 hour, the 40cm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope of my association. The sky was good, even if not perfect, the seeing was fairly good. The northern Milky Way (Cassiopeia, Perseus and Auriga) was at the top, the Double Cluster in Perseus was visible to the nacked-eye as a double-nebular object. Orion to the East, Sirius and all Canis Major were well above the horizon, the arc of the Milky Way met the sea between Puppis and Vela, to SE.

NGC 2392, the Eskimo Nebula, was a diffuse blue patch strongly marked by a bright star on the centre. I selected this nice object to make a link to the last observing session, Oct. 28.

After that, I was looking for some bright nebulae.

M42, of course, was one of the first target. An extended nebula, clearly "purple", with a long sort of filament to the right. Trapezium was well detacted, its stars appeared blue-white.

M78 was very blue, extended well over the two "central" blue stars. It showed an elonged shape N-S.

NGC 2261 was without any doubt the queen of the session. What a wonderful nebula, a blue "comet" of the deep sky! The star to the right, the cone open to the left, zoomable as you want, and ever detacted.

Changed the target, I selected some well-known open clusters.

NGC 457 in Cassiopeia resembled the famous "owl" mentioned in many books, with the two bright eyes to the left and the chain of stars like open wings on the centre.

M37 in Auriga was a storm of white-yellow stars, many small bright dots were also visible to the background. M36 and M38 showed a similar aspect, but less extended.

M35 is too large, but NGC 2158 was perfect, a cluster "designed for my instrument". I think almost 100 stars were visible, close each others.

M46 in Puppis was a nice cluster rich of stars. With the adverted vision I was able to clearly see the blue disk of the famous planetary nebula, just to the left of the field.

M50 in Monoceros is really "open", a nice clustering of stars, but a smaller telescope is surely the best to see it.

M67 in Cancer showed tens of yellowish stars, well clustered near the centre of my field.

Then I pointed M79 in Lepus. It was partially resolved into stars, much better if using adverted vision.

After midnight, the Big Dipper was almost "vertical" above the horizon, at NE. This means a good occasion to see the famous M82 galaxy. So I pointed it, and of course it was really surprising. The long-shaped bright patch was clearly cut in the middle by a dark line, transversal (but not perpendicular) to the main axis of the galaxy.

Most of the object I've described here are easily visible also to the southern hemisphere, so I think many people here can share with me the same emotion (even if this feeling may appear upside-down ).
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Old 10-12-2010, 11:40 PM
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Paddy (Patrick)
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Absolutely we can share the feeling with the objects that are familiar to us. And I wonder about the objects in constellations that I've not observed in like Cassiopeia.

Thanks for the report
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