A Few Messiers
| Observer: | Jason Newquist |
| Location: | Henry Coe State Park |
| Date: | March 3, 2000 |
| Transparency: | Fair |
| Seeing: | Very poor, but with good moments. |
| Weather: | Breezy and cold. |
| Moon: | None. |
| Equipment: | TV101 |
| Session Objectives: | None. |
Using Nightwatch by Terence Dickinson to take a tour around the late winter sky. As many do, I started the evening looking at planets.
Jupiter: 45 degrees up to the NW. Looks clean! 4 moons visible. Lots of banding, when sky permits.
Saturn: Pretty good.
M41: In Canis Major. Semi-circle of stars around a cluster.
M47: In Puppis. Central triangle of stars. Unremarkable.
M93: Star patterns appeared as two pizza slices, plus some sticks.
M46: Did not see a planetary in my scope, but it was just visible in the 8-inch Meade SCT brought by Gil and quite obvious and had structure in Bob's 11-inch SCT.
NGC 2451: Observed. No detail.
NGC 2477: Very faint in 35 Pan. In 7 Nagler, an evident collection of faint stars -- not so much puffy cotton as much a mass of slightly individuated resolved but faint spots.
M45: The Pleiades. Easy to grab the whole thing in 35 Pan. 7 Nagler just misses encompassing it all. 4 Radian catches some faint haze around the stars. Not quite nebulous, though.
I decided to end the evening looking at some prominent stars.
Sirius: Wildly erratic in the eyepiece. Seeing crappy.
Polaris: Split in 4 Radian despite turbulent seeing.
Castor: Split. Unstable seeing. The two stars almost completely separated.
Mizar and Alcor: A nice, wide double. Mizar itself split easily.
Dubhe: Orange and reddish.