Date: 12th March 2010, Sat
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 12pm (~3 hr)
Location: Jon's home, Blvd CA
Weather: Initially really windy.. cold: below freezing.. intermittently cloudy.. intermittently foggy.. heavy dew.. Seeing was mediocre till 11pm.. later improved, but dew made life miserable.
Instruments: Jon's 16.5", TV NP101 APO. Didn't open my XTi-10.
Buddies: Aparna + Jon's friend Elli.
After India trip and dual-mode status :), this was first dark night session.
Had nice hot chocolate session ~8pm and shrimp curry ani Jeera rice session ~9pm. Aparna was with me till 9pm and later stayed in the house to keep herself warm.
M42 Orion Nebula: Nice view thru NP101. Aparna immediately noticed the quadrilateral stars. seeing wasn't that good. Tried 16T4 and 35mm pan.
Pleides: thru NP101.. 10 stars. Pan 35mm. Some of the main stars seems to be double.
Double cluster: Excellent view thru NP 101. Clearly shows the differences betn 2 clusters. lower right one is salt-pepper type while upper-left one seems more widespread.
M41 - NP101, Pan35 view of M41 want that great... lil tiny cluster.. thru jon's 16.5" dob, definitely a bright cluster.
M46 - M47: Impressive view of both clusters in NP101-Pan35 combo. Can fit both clusters together in same view. Again clearly see differences in both clusters. In Jon's 16.5", planetary in M46 was definitely big and bright.. filter wasn't required.
Rosette nebula in orion [New]: Saw this one for first time. NP101-Pan35. Its lil hard to grasp this object. Its really widespread and hence too faint.. if jon wouldn't have mentioned abt it, I can't even make out the nebulousity.. I am sure its hard to find.
M1 crab: Easy to locate. Crab was bright, but hard to see any details. I had better view of Crab before. Definitely seeing was poor.
Tau CMa: for got the location, Jon reminded me. Two star pairs above the CMa dog hind-leg. Pick up the uppermost pair, thats Tau. Central bright star with the star cluster around it.. sort of in a triangle shape..
M93 - NGC: Lil N-E of the Tau, lies M93.. Pick up the brigh star.. NW of is M93, while SE of bright star is the NGC ?? Don't remember anything specfic about M93. NGC is another fuzzy.. never read abt this one before. (UPDATE 03/10/2011: NGC seems to be 2467)
M76 Little dumbbell: Couple of stars from Andromeda lined up to point to the double cluster.. just above these stars you have little dumbbell. Too faint.. can see lil dumbbell shape.
Gamma Leonoid: Initially when split it from home, i think i messed up. This is lil hard to split with 60x magnification. you need lil higher mags to split it up.
M35 - Browsed thru binocs. Easy catch..
Continued..
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