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Thanks Les
The best view I have ever had was from Ilford a few years back. The Seeing was the best I have ever seen and Hector was operating wonderfully.
This is the observation report made at the time. I know of NO other report that gives some of these details.
The Homunculus is the small nebulae that surrounds Eta Carina. It is the
envelope of stellar material that was ejected from the star about a century ago. This is the only nebulae that shows an obvious colour, Bright orange. This colour is very striking against the star background. The initial observation was at 160x. This shows the surrounding keyhole nebulae NGC3372, which defies description. The Homunculus appears as a peanut shaped orange blob about 30" across. At 300x it appears as a bright hazy star with a lobe or bubble of material on either side, orietated SW-NE. The lobe to the SW is the brightest, and appears granular with a dark lane running through the middle which curls to the southat the end. The NE lobe is fainter and shows no internal detail The center star is about 6.5 magnitude and has a jet progecting to the north about 5" long. Averted vision at this power intensifies the colour and shows a bright knot 5" WSW of the star in the SW lobe. By increasing the magnifaction to 720x even more detail was glimpsed. In moments of perfect seeing the granulation in the NE lobe became apparent. The bright knot became visible with direct vision,and the colour remained. The dark lane seen before in the SW lobe lost some of its structure, looking more difuse and ending in a small dark hole positioned about 5" from the southern edge of the nebulae. The higher magnifaction increased the contrast. The edge of the nebulae remained sharp across the entire perimeter and the arm or jet was easily picked up. What became most noticable about the homunculus was the FAINT halo that surrounded the entire object and doubled its size. The diffuse glow had an indistinct edge and appeared evenly distributed about the object. No intermal details were seen in this faint envelope A right angle of 15th magnitude stars are positioned about 15" NW of the central star adding to the view at this power. As a side note to this observation stars of 4th magnitude and brighter had difraction rings visible, one complete ring and two partial. The seeing was the best in several years that I had seen. Reducing the magnifaction to 300x I looked for the faint halo but it would not reveal itself, probably due to the glare from the star and the nebulae.
This goes down as one of the TOP 5 objects in the entire sky.
Since this is from about 6 years back the magnitude of the central star is low by over a magnitude. this increase in brightness is I believe what has caused the fainter lob to be even fainter in appearence. The light of the star is overpowering the rest of the nebula.
Clear Skies
Andrew
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