Observations 1st and 2nd March, Werribee

[desler]

The seeing was just too good to even bother going to bed, for a newbie anyway. No cloud and no moon until the wee hours.

M35 I found it a very difficult to see cluster, with two brighter stars at the top of the cluster which I found worth noting on the PDA.

M1 The crab nebula, It has been one of my favourite images on the net. To say I was just a tad dissapointed is probably accurate but I was still very happy to finally get another of those difficult to find obects in the EP. Not much more the a faint smudge, but a smudge all the same!

M37 It's funny how this cluster is listed as a lower mag than M35, yet to me seems far brighter and easier to find. Clearly visible as a cluster and a pretty easy star hop.

NGC5128 Just to the north of Omega Centauri and lower in the sky, the faint haze which I now know as 5128. Detail was minimal, with averted vision I knew it was there, but that was the best I coould come up with.

NGC4361 I hunted around inside Corvus for a while, but am yet to satisfy myself that I've clearly seen a Planetary Nebula.

I then spent the nest hour or so, checking out Scorpus and surrounds.
So many oblects and clusters, It really is a wonderful place to spend an evening, Then the moon appeared. I had my first go at A-focal photographey, courtesy of a rigel system quick adapt and a Nikon digital 5110 pont and shoot.

Now for sleeps, catch you all later.

Darren :sadeyes:

[goober]

Good stuff. M1 is just a smudge for me too, but what a smudge :) Check out the clusters M36 and M38 - they are very close to M37 in Auriga. 5128 takes a bit of study and nice dark skies to give up its secrets.

Good read - I love obs. reports! :)

[desler]

Never posted an image before, so hope I don't embarras myself!

[Karlsson]

Darren,

Enjoyed reading your report!

Disappointing as it may sound, there are objects that look good on photos but invariably disappoint in a less than very large scope in not so dark conditions... M1 and NGC5128 are among them.

For M1 in particular conditions were less than favourable, too: in Werribee last night it only became astronomically dark at around 21:35 and at that time M1 was at an altitude of only some 27°. If you observed it later than that it was still lower in the sky... so you had to look through a lot of atmosphere to see it at all (about two times as much as if you had looked straight up). Going back through my obs records of the last 10 years of observing M1 through an 8" scope I have only seen some filaments in the smudge once, under a very dark sky.

NGC5128 can be disappointing because it has a low surface brightness - but at least at some stage it gets high enough in the sky to be a rewarding object. Currently it culminates at around 4:00 in the morning, but in May around 22:00 in the evening. It will then be due South, which also takes it further away from the Melbourne glare I reckon (and perhaps into the haze over the bay...?)

Anyway, keep it up... :thumbsup:

[§AB]

Interesting coz here the seeing was terrible. A couple of good planetary nebulae are the Ghost of Jupiter in Hydra, the Eight Burst Planettary in Vela and NGC 3918 in Centaurus.

[desler]

Thanks for the replies guys!

I'm just having so much fun at the moment, detail or not, as long as I can sit and look through the ep, I'm happy! :D

[goober]

He .... is ... assimilated. Next!

:ship1: