PYXIS - The Grand Tour

[Tropo-Bob]

Welcome to the Grand Tour, commencing with Pyxis. The concept of the Grand Tours was explained earlier today in the General Segment of ISS.
In essence, I am using this as a plan to view the 5 brightest stars of each each constellation and 5 other objects of interest. (However, not Messier objects). Let's begin...

I read that Alpha, Beta and Gamma Pyxidis are all of different colours. I will be interesting in examining this further.

Alpha Pyxidis- Blue White. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Pyxidis
Beta Pyxidis- Yellow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Pyxidis
Gamma Pyxidis- Orange. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_Pyxidis
Delta Pyxidis- The seventh star of the Chinese Celestial Dog. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Pyxidis
Eplison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Pyxidis (Member of Sirius Supercluster of stars)

NGC 2818/18A (Hartung's 383). This is a cluster with a Planetary Nebula within it, like M46, although somewhat fainter. Said to be visible in a 6inch telescope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2818
https://observing.skyhound.com/archives/mar/NGC_2818.html

Beta 208 (Hartung's 350) A Double Star. All of the mentioned Hartung's objects are viewable on the following Website. It may take 30 seconds or more for the pages to load. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=FTsDDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT456&dq=Hartung%27s+350&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjKouSXx5jaAhXFu7wKHXNYCs oQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Hartung's%20350&f=false

h4166 (Hartung's 373) A Double Star.

NGC 2613 (Galazy- Hartung's 346) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2613

Finally there is the recurrent Nova T Pyxidis. It is normally visible with an 8inch scope. It last went nova in 2010 and seems to do so on a semi-regular basis of about every 2 decades That said, there was no observed eruption in the 1980s, but previous eruptions were observed in 1890, 1902,1920,1944 & 1966.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_Pyxidis

There are no Messier of Caldwell Objects in Pyxis.

I have yet to make my observations, but will follow this plan when the weather clears; although the weather people are saying that we may have a cyclone next week!

So if anybody observes any of these before me, feel free to share your observations.

[Tropo-Bob]

Circumstances have not favoured me, but tonight, I finally had a chance to visually see Alpha to Epsilon Pyxidis through some small gaps in the clouds. With these conditions, I only observed these stars without optical aid. (except for my prescription glasses.)

Alpha and Beta are only about 2 degrees from each other and are the brightest stars in Pyxis. They 'point' to Gamma Pyxis, which is also seen reasonably at magnitude 4. Delta is only about one degree from Gamma, however, I had difficulty viewing it directly.

Epsilon Pyxidis was the most difficult to see and I could only view it sometimes with indirect vision.

Lambda Pyxidis appeared brighter than both Delta and Epsilon, which underlined the already known fact that the stars of constellations are not always strictly listed in orders of brightness.

I found it interesting to try and imagine these stars in 3D. Alpha is the most luminous, massive (it is a supernova candidate) and is twice as far away from the next furthest star, which is Beta. Indeed Beta is almost directly located half way between us and Alpha. Nevertheless, on any planet orbiting Beta, Alpha would be a far more impressive sight than our sun.

[gaseous]

Thanks Bob, it’s good to get an idea of what other people like to target - weather permitting I might try to nab a few of these tomorrow night.

[Tropo-Bob]

At last, I was able to view these last night. (19th April). Some of these objects were more difficult than I expected, and I tried to sooth aperture fevour by using larger scopes as the night continued.

5 Objects of interest:-

I commenced with Beta 208. I failed to split this double with my Vixen ED115mm, so tried again with my Meade ED 127mm (F9). My observation was inconclusive with a 6mm ortho EP (190x). I thought I saw a small globe near the 0 degree PA position. Hass in Double Stars for small telescopes gives the PA at 33 degrees in 2001. The star is a binary, so the PA may have well changed.

Hass's book states the pairs magnitudes as 5.4 and 6.8. However, what I saw seemed more like 2 or slightly more magnitudes in difference. I notice that Burnham quotes the magnitude as being 6 and 9.

Any more up to date information would be appreciated re this double.


Galaxy NGC2613. I observed this galaxy with 3 scopes, my Vixen ED115mm, Meade ED 127mm & Vixen 140mmSS. It was barely visible with the 115mm. Though best with the 140mm, I could only describe it as a faint elliptical haze. The shape was difficult to determine with the smaller scopes because of faint foreground stars that came into view when I used inverted vision. I used an 15mm Delite EP with all 3 scopes.

Double Star h4166. This was a nice, easily split double with the 140mm scope using the 15mm Delite (53x). It is in the same general region as T Pyxidis.

T Pyxidis. There was nothing to see here, the excitement comes when something is visible, which would indicate a Nova outburst was occurring. In my opening post, I said it was visible in an 8" scope. My mistake, I was thinking of another recurrent nova.

NGC 2818/18A: Open cluster with Planetary Nebula. Through the 140mm, this cluster looked more like a thickening in the Milky Way. The cluster is made up of a cloud of faint stars and I would not normally have even identified this as being a cluster. I did not see the Planetary. I will attempt to view this again with a larger scope, as some guides say that at least a 6" scope is required to view this object.


The Main Stars:-

I viewed all these with the Vixen ED 115mm with 15mm and 5 mm EPs.
No doubles were noted, not even with Eplison, which is said to have a wide Mag 9.9 companion.

Colours I noted:-
Alpha Pyxidis- White
Beta Pyxidis- Yellow
Gamma Pyxidis- Orange
Delta Pyxidis- Blue white
Eplison Pyxidis- Blue white.

[Tinderboxsky]

Excellent report Bob. It made for interesting reading.
Last night was our first clear night for April and I was stuck inside with a separate commitment. :sadeyes:
Shall just have to be patient. We are leaving for a six week road trip in Vic and NSW early next week, so a chance for a different perspective on the night sky. I will be loaded up with all my gear as we are attending the South Pacific Star Party in mid May at Wiruna. Really looking forward to this.

[Tropo-Bob]

Sounds great Steve,

Enjoy your trip.