Okanagan Centre   Observing and Meeting Reports

Wayne Willet
March 29th, 2007

The March 28/07 Vernon meeting was attended by 13 members, plus Sharon MacKenzie who was upstairs at the Okanagan Science Centre working hard putting the finishing touches to the Space for Space area. It looks great Sharon & Bruce, we look forward to our guided tour when it's "completed".

Tickets are now on sale at $5.00, for Dr. Victoria Hipkin of the Canadian Space Agency, who will talk about the upcoming Phoenix Mars Mission, on Thursday April 19, 7:00 pm at the Okanagan Science Centre in Vernon. This should be a very interesting and rare event, seating is limited, and OC members are encouraged to attend and help support the OSC.

The presentation was a DVD titled Solarmax, provided by Wayne Willett, with fairly up to date photos and info about our sun.

Following a sizeable 50/50 draw (for Vernon anyway), an update was provided by Guy Mackie on the fantastic progress being made with regards to our OC Observatory project. The COTM then followed with a slide show of some of John Karllson's photos taken with his prize winning Barn Door Tracker at Mount Kobau and the Mable Lake area around Enderby.

Our combined meeting will be held at the Kalamalka Campus of Okanagan College, Vernon, room D212, Wednesday May 2 at 7:15 pm, speaker TBA.

Clear dark skies,
Wayne Willett,
OC Vice President, Vernon.

Jim Fisher

March 17th, 2002

What follows is my Sunday observing report:
When the skies finally cleared Sunday evening, I was able to go to Emeny Field. My goal was to do some long-awaited observing in the Virgo galaxy cluster, and I had a very successful time. Using my Sky Atlas 2000 and Steven O'Meara's Deep Sky Companion, appendix C, A Guide to Navigating the Coma-Virgo Cluster, I was able to observe fourteen of the galaxies in the area. These are fourteen new Messier objects for me, taking my total from 73 to 87. I had never attempted the cluster before, and in fact, I was a bit worried about being able to find my way around. However, O'Meara`s guide and prepratory work with the Sky Atlas paid off. All in all, a most enjoyable evening, in spite of the cold.

Clear skies,
Jim Fisher

Alan Whitman

April 1/02 2000-2050 PST

Comet Ikeya-Zhang is obvious to the unaided eye at magnitude 3.0 and sports a 3-degree tail. In 7x50 binoculars the tail is obvious to 4 degrees, faint to 7 degrees, and suspected to 9 degrees. (I went well above the comet and swept back and forth descending until I suspected a contrast feature. This was 9 degrees above the coma.) The comet looks a lot better than it did in Arizona two weeks ago when it was in the middle of the bright zodiacal light.

My 8-inch f/6 Dobsonian at 30x shows the innermost coma as a strong blue-green (the same striking colour as Comet Hyakutake displayed) with a small, but non-stellar white pseudo-nucleus. The blue-green colour of the innermost coma is noticeable in the binoculars and most marked at 30x in the telescope. At this power the tail shows a definite curvature in the first degree of its length, bowing outwards towards the preceeding side. At 30x and especially at 64x there is a narrow sharper ray within the tail about one degree back from the coma, presumbably a gas-tail feature. Within the coma at 135x there appears to be a very slightly brighter broad arc (a very broad jet?) from the pseudo-nucleus towards the following side of the coma . [Once objects get near the pole, I have a great deal of difficulty trying to figure out directions. When an object is already around to the NNW and moving eastwards below the pole, what direction is the preceeding side called?]

Comet Ikeya-Zhang is my eleventh naked-eye comet. (My first two naked-eye comets were Comet Ikeya in 1963 and Great Comet Ikeya-Seki. Ikeya only discovers high quality comets!!)

The telescope is in perfect collimation which is amazing as this scope just rode back from Arizona on my car's roofrack on a inch of foam padding. The paved roads in the Navaho and Hopi reservations in northern Arizona are NOT smooth.

Best,

Alan Whitman

Ron Scherer

April 1, 2002 (Comet Ikeya-Zhang)

Great view tonight! Naked eye view yields about 2 degrees of tail with coma
equal (or slightly greater) in brightness to Mu And (at mag 3.84). Very
handy references while it passed through Andromeda. Low power telescopic
views are much better than high power as I was unable to detect any increase
in detail with higher power. Use <80X for best views. Exactly what one
expects a comet to look like!!

Later,
Ron

Wendell Shuster

April 7, 2002

Hi Everyone:

The OAS star party in Cawston was a good time had by all. All being three members who were at this event which started off with mostly cloudy skies. However, by 9:00-11:45 more than half of the sky opened up to treat us with a good night of observing.

Wayne Still's residence has awesome skies! Even though the east horizon is somewhat obstructed by a mountain, the residual light from Oliver is kept to a minimum and seems to be the only source of background illumination. Having said that, clouds that went over the sky were black or not visible which is an indication of excellent dark skies.

I thought I would start with some easy stuff such as 14th magnitude galaxies in Perseus since that was the part of sky completely devoid of clouds. (I am only kidding when I say the easy stuff...) Little did I realize, the passing clouds would not make them "easy" targets.

According to Uranometria 2000, NGC 1212 (magnitude and morphology unlisted in RNGC) is less than a quarter degree from Algol. I tried searching for it but Algol's reflections in my eyepiece made it too difficult to find when using averted vision. (Falls in the BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME Category...) I don't feel too bad not seeing it though, it appears as a mag 17 galaxy on the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey Blue Plate, however, on the red plate it is highly unusual because it is much brighter being 14th magnitude and appears as a spiral. Incidentally most spiral galaxies appear brighter in blue light because spiral arms are active star forming regions.

NGC 1224 the next target galaxy on my way to the Perseus Galaxy cluster was a smudge barely visible. Dave Preston confirmed seeing it so I wasn't hallucinating this mag 13.7 galaxy.

I saw 6 galaxies nicely clustered in Abell 426 (NGC 1275 Group). Dave only saw 3 so my ego tries to explain this on the haze rolling into Perseus at this time... (grasping at straws here)

Observed M35 and the smaller "triangular shaped" cluster NGC 2158 just to the south in Gemini.
Observed M38 with the smaller NGC 1905 also to the south in Auriga.
Observed a difficult nebula IC405 only by using OIII filter. It did not appear in the UHC filter.
Observed M44 in Dave Preston's 3" telescope.
Observed M67 near alpha Cancri. It is a nice cluster of stars all of equal magnitude and color (ie no blue stars...) and probably a very old star cluster.
Had to shift back to Auriga due to clouds and observed M36. It isn't as exciting as M38, but in contrast to M67, the bluer stars were equal magnitude while the other stars all seemed to be fainter but equal magnitudes.
NGC 1931 a bright diffuse nebula that appears as an elongated galaxy is half way between M38 and M36.
M37 looks like poppy seeds in the sky.
M65 and M66 in Leo look highly elongated with definite mottling in star forming regions.
IF I had to pick out an OBJECT OF THE NIGHT, it would be the third galaxy near M65 and M66; NGC 3628. NGC 3628 blew my socks off because the dust lane is prominent at both 100X and 175X. This galaxy looks like a flattened rectangle with a dust lane running down the middle and is quite defined. There is a slight central bulge in the middle probably would make it appear as a Sc galaxy. Also observed these three galaxies in Wayne Still's 10" Meade.

When I observed the galaxies M105 and NGC 3384, I thought these two galaxies were M95 and M96 because M105 and NGC 3384 were so bright. What made me scratch my head at this observation was a fainter galaxy above NGC 3384 and a prominent double star (8th magnitude) which wasn't listed near M95 or M96. When I double checked my location, it became apparent I definitely saw this M105 which I've never seen before. What is interesting about M105 and NGC 3384 is both galaxies have a quasi-stellar like nucleus while NGC 3389 was uniformly bright throughout it's disk-like appearance.

Unfortunately by the time I saw M95 and M96 the haze rolled in and blanketed all of the sky. M95 and M96 have the same star like nucleus, however, the galaxy's width appeared more extensive than M105. I couldn't make any other comments on these two galaxies because it was difficult to observe by the sky's degradation. (Also falls in the BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME CATEGORY)

Well that was my list of objects I observed tonight and if anyone is counting, you may put these observations toward my Messier certificate...

Wendell

Guy Mackie

April 14, 2002

Hello All

There are several examples of gravitational lensing that are accessible
to amateur astronomers. One such object, QSO0957+561A/B or the "Double
Quasar" has been a (unsuccessful) target for my 12.5" scope for many
months now. Located just off the tip of the Ursa Major galaxy NGC 3079
at 10 01 20.8 by +55 53 52.0, there is a small asterism which makes
positive identification of the field relatively easy. It has been
reported that this object is possible to see using a 14.5" scope, so
naturally I figure it must be possible in my 12.5" [:)] Wendell Shuster has researched this object and reports that
QSO0957+561A/B is about 7 to 10 BILLION light years distant with a
redshift of 1.413. 

On Sunday night Wendell Shuster and I went to the 4000' Goudie Road
observing site and enjoyed a very good night of observing. Several times
in the night I examined the field for QSO0957+561A/B, and remarked at
how the seeing was superior to any other times I had attempted to find
this object, and at one point (Wendell may remember) I muttered that I
thought I could see a faint light source in the target area. Just before
leaving Wendell turned his 16" light bucket on to the QSO0957+561A/B
asterism and we could immediately see the quasar!! Both of us agreed on
a nebulous elongated smear of light. There is actually a 6" separation
between the double image (lensed around a foreground mass) of this
distant quasar. However by the time Wendell and I were on the target we
were so cold that the idea of switching up to a higher power eyepiece,
in order to separate the images, while still tracking would be beyond
our abilities on this night. At this time I returned to my scope to
compare the view. I felt that the seeing was slightly worse than it had
been earlier in the evening and quickly gave up, (thoughts of a warm van
dominated). I believe that a more determined observation with a
light-hood and my newly acquired familiarity will resolve this object in
my 12.5" on a night of superior seeing.


So 7 to 10 BILLION!
The light left there before the solar system started to form!

For more information on QSO0957+561A/B and other challenging targets,
check out
http://www.angelfire.com/id/jsredshift/

Kindest Regards
Guy

Wendell

April 18, 2002

After cutting the lawn tonight I waited at dusk for the planets to come out. By 8:20 I had
Jupiter and Venus naked eye, Saturn and Mars with binoculars, but no Mercury. At 8:26,
I spotted Mercury with binoculars (2^ above the horizon), and by 8:29, Mercury was naked
eye as well but Mars and Saturn were not. About 8:32 I could see all five planets by straining
then at 8:35 all the planets could be seen clearly with by naked eye. It is a great sight.

So, five for five by 8:35!

Stew Hill

June 16, 2002

It was a very nice night for this last night of the June dark of the moon. After tonight I am almost finished the UMa Herschel 400 galaxies, but I don't know when I'm ever gonna get the Virgo H-400 galaxies done -- there are so many and Virgo flies by so fast each spring.

After tonight's observing, my H-400 total stands at 271.

So far I haven't found anything very tough for my 8-inch in the H-400. The supposedly toughest H-400, NGC 6118 in Serpens, was somewhat challenging when I viewed it on May 31st, but it doesn't compare to the toughest NGC Finest in an 8-inch. Here's my May 31st observation for NGC 6118: "Virgo was getting low but Serpens was on the meridian so I tried NGC 6118 which is universally agreed to be the most difficult of the H-400. Yep, it's tough -- in the 8-inch it is about equivalent to the easiest Palomar globular clusters in my 16-inch. With the 8-inch I didn't see this large galaxy at 122x, but the 13mm Plossl (93x) showed it immediately: large, elongated, very faint but visible with direct vision once I knew just where it was. Three stars of perhaps mag 12.5 to 13 lie just SE of the galaxy, parallel to it, and the three stars form a line as long as the galaxy. Well, now I know what the toughest H-400 is like, confirming my impression that the RASC's Finest NGC list includes significantly tougher objects than the H-400 does." The Finest NGC in the Observer's Handbook has half a dozen objects tougher than anything that I've encountered in the H-400.

So those of you who have completed the Finest NGC will find the H-400 to be a relaxing, enjoyable romp, as I am finding it to be. I have enjoyed having the freedom to observe recreationally this spring with my 8-inch without having to worry about observing for magazine deadlines for awhile. Soon I'll have to get serious again and tackle more challenging objects with my 16-inch and on two scheduled observing runs with 0.6-metre scopes. It's been fun doing the relatively easy stuff on the H-400. [And my old 8-inch is certainly a much easier scope to use than my recalcitrant 16-inch is.]

Best,

Alan Whitman