the horse head neb!!!!!!!!! i have seen it last summer faintly and averted vision my original thought was seeing it like all the images you see or even the head of black caviar!!! only joking but yes seen faintly....also one day sirius b iv'e tried and tried!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah the horse head is tricky. Only saw it one dark night through a 10 inch f4.5 scope using a deep sky filter. Couldn't see it without the filter. All I saw was a dark notch, no shape to it or anything. Have tried on many other nights using different scopes without success.
I've managed one so far from home in my 17.5", Henize 2-295 (see chart below). It was my first "discovery" using the blinking technique. Brilliant how neat through the EP you don't see anything. Flick the OIII filter in front of your eye and a tiny ball pops up out of nowhere! Bloody awesome.
I suspect that the boarder shown below of M7 is smaller than the actual limits of M7 really are. Other charts I've seen have NGC 6444 wholely within M7.
The GC NGC 6453 is just visible in an 8" under urban skies (just). It makes for a nice wide field view with the core of M7, 6453 in the middle and 6444 on the other side.
The chart below is thanks to our mate NGCles. Ta Les.
Horsehead and Pluto perhaps for me, though neither are really 'obscure', just tricky!
The one that sticks with me though is seeing some of Barnard's Loop with just my eyes and a UHC filter on an unbelievably transparent -25C night in the Highlands of Scotland. It was the same night I saw the Horsehead (8" and UHC), the only time I've seen the Horsehead, and it was easy that night!!
It requires a perfect sky, and the emission nebula vs dark nebula contrast on the two sides of the object is usually a matter of comparing a black section of sky with a section of sky which is a little less black!
I have also seen the brightest portion of Barnard's Loop, in 10x50 binoculars. Extremely hard, even in an excellent sky and with well coated optics.
Neptune is another for me. It's only identifying feature is its excessively intense colour - too blue to be a star or planetary nebula, as it is stellar like in appearance too as it really doesn't have a resolvable disk.
It is currently not too far from Uranus in the sky. Uranus is brighter & with a greenish blue colour & a tiny resolvable disk. It is observable with 50mm binoculars from urban areas as it glows at magnitude 6.
Neptune is another for me. It's only identifying feature is its excessively intense colour - too blue to be a star or planetary nebula, as it is stellar like in appearance too as it really doesn't have a resolvable disk.
It is currently not too far from Uranus in the sky. Uranus is brighter & with a greenish blue colour & a tiny resolvable disk. It is observable with 50mm binoculars from urban areas as it glows at magnitude 6.
Neptune Does have an Identifiable disc,that is how you can Identify it in comparison to a Star, and at 35 degrees separation is now quite far from Uranus.
Neptune rises at 21:57 and Uranus rises at 00:38 in the morning nearly three hours difference in time.
Cheers
for me it was The Ghost of Jupiter planetary nebula. It was recommended by Suzy to check out and i was not disappointed. Even though i viewed it in moderate light polluted skies, moderate seeing through an 8'' Newtonian at moderately low power, i was still amazed in that knowing what it was i was looking at. Having to star hop my way to it via skysafari on the Ipad to track it down made the thrill of the chase even better. Can't wait to try and view it again soon under really dark skies
Barnard's Galaxy in Sagittarius. I only went after it because it's in the Caldwell Catalogue. I wan't impressed, either with the the object itself or the choice of it for the catalogue! Why pick something with such a low surface brightness...? I wondered that about a number of objects in the Caldwell cat.
But the planetary nebula Shapley 1 is a fave, one of those smoke rings. Worth the hunt.
My most obscure obs would probably be Uranus' moons Titania and Oberon, and Neptune's moon Triton with the 8" dob from my backyard.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blue Skies
Barnard's Galaxy in Sagittarius. I only went after it because it's in the Caldwell Catalogue. I wan't impressed, either with the the object itself or the choice of it for the catalogue! http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/..../rolleye09.gif Why pick something with such a low surface brightness...? I wondered that about a number of objects in the Caldwell cat.
Obscure can depend a lot on what aperture telescope you have available.
I have a few that I have clocked over the years, all of which are aperture dependant.
1. Observing Murrell 1 in the 25" Obsession at Coonabarabran. Murrell 1 is a faint planetary nebula discovered by my observing colleague Andrew Murrell in 2004. It is located in Norma and dimmer than 15th Magnitude. The Central Star is ~18th Magnitude. Despite several attempts I have been unable to observe it in a <20" scope under pristine conditions
2. Observing the Cone Nebula in my 14" SDM from Coonabarabran. This target is a threshhold target in an 18" scope under pristine conditions.
3. Observing Mars satellites Phobos and Deimos during the 2003 Mars opposition in Andrew Murrell's 20" scope from Brisbane Waters National Park.
4. Observing "The Bridge" between the two components of M51 in a 7" Starmaster Oak Classic, at the 2007 Texas Star Party.
5. Observing "the jet" eminating from M87 in my 18" Obsession from Coonabarabran.
6. Observing M33 naked eye from Timor Rock at Coonababran when it was located only 20 degrees above the horizon
7. Observing NGC 5128 (Centaurus A) naked eye from Franz Joseph Glacier in the South Island of New Zealand.
These are some that stick vividly in my mind and will remain there forever.
Great thread Sab. Interesting that obscure could mean the hardest to see or the most esoteric. My most obscure definite would be Henize emission nebula N70, a large supernova remnant in the LMC. Using my 16" under the dark sky at home it was quite a challenge. My other is the Aquarius Dwarf galaxy, but even though I checked against a DSS image, I still find it hard to believe that I saw it. Again 16" dob from Strangways.
