Observations on Burns Night.

[AstroJunk (Jonathan)]

Inspired by Astrogeek, I went out to see the Dorado galaxies. Well, whilst the seeing was rock steady, the transparency was not too clever. I could easily see 1566,1549, 1553, 1546, 1533, 1596 and 1617, but non of the aforementioned were going to give up an decent structure.

Down but not out, I turned for a scan through Argo Navis. 2669 was way to large to be of interest – my lowest power in the 20” is 83x., but 2516 turned out to be a pretty open cluster. Now I didn’t notice 2867 at first – even at 83x this planetary was quite star like. I pumped the power to 515x to make a decent sized object. Still bright and ‘possibly’ a ring with adverted vision.

The big surprise of the night was 2808 which was a very fine globular cluster. Fuzzy at 83x, but clearly resolved at 167x. It withstood 333x easily. One thing I noticed – the core seemed to me to be slightly off centre. Every one else says it’s symmetrical – it must be the whiskey!!!

Cloud cover followed …

[Mick (Michael)]

Nice report AJ. No not the whiskey, it looks a little of center to me as well.

[astro_south (Andrew)]

Nice work and report AJ

I am surprised the 20" didn't give even a hint of spiral structure in NGC1566. Where were you observing from and is the light pollution heavy there? From dark skies the spiral structure is very evident in my 12.5".

Your right about NGC2808. It is a superb glob that is easy to find, but often overlooked. I haven't noticed the core before, but I will be sure to check it out next time I'm at the eyepiece.

[AstroJunk (Jonathan)]

I’ve got a reasonable sky given that I’m only 20kms from the CBD, but occasionally, like last night, it goes grey!

Don’t know what causes it – there were plenty of stars visible and the seeing was rock steady for a change, but all the contrast had been leached out of the sky. I took a quick squiz at the Tarantula (or Biohazard as I call it) to get a comparison and it was nowhere near as impressive as usual.

I’ll just have to wait for a better night.

[Satchmo]

[QUOTE=AstroJunk]The big surprise of the night was 2808 which was a very fine globular cluster. Fuzzy at 83x, but clearly resolved at 167x. It withstood 333x easily. One thing I noticed – the core seemed to me to be slightly off centre. Every one else says it’s symmetrical – it must be the whiskey!!!

To me this globular has always looked eliptical, as close to a match of the appearance of Omega Centauri , but a third the size. Surely one of the most under rated / undermentioned objects of the southern sky !

Mark

[AstroJunk (Jonathan)]

http://www.astrosurf.com/antilhue/ngc2808.htm
Squint at this (BTW these guys take great photos).

Then look at a version of the photo I've contured and placed a circle on for reference. Not overly scientific, but certainly shows it is oblate!