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This was a great night. I went out to Cherry Grove and met up with four guys from the MAS. The sky is much darker here at Cherry Grove than the other club observing location at Baylor.
I found many objects that I've tried but failed to see many times before. I also stumbled on a bunch of open clusters. John Bright estimated the sky had
a limiting magnitude of 5.5.
The first target of the night was M109, a very faint magnitude 9.8 galaxy in Ursa Major (the Big Dipper). I used DeepSky to print out a chart with a telrad overlay. It was amazingly easy to find with the telrad and the chart. Next I found M108, another faint galaxy (mag 10.1), and M97, the Owl Nebula (mag 11.2), also in Ursa Major. This was fantastic because both objects fit into the same field of view in my 26mm Plossl! M51, an old favorite, was next on the list. It was stunning as usual. Rounding out the targets in Ursa Major was M101, a very very faint mag 7.7 galaxy. Don't let the 7.7 number fool you. M101 is very spread out and because of that it appears much fainter than it's magnitude listing would suggest.
Standing back from the eyepiece, I took in the view of the stars from such a dark site. Nearly overhead, there was a smudge of light. I trained the
scope on it and a large,
very bright open cluster was revealed. It turned out to be the BeeHive cluster (M44) in Cancer. It's an interesting experience to find Messier objects with the naked eye!
M1, the Crab Nebula in Taurus was next. Once I looked near the correct star, it was obvious. A little brighter than the Owl Nebula. While looking for
Hind's Variable Nebula in Taurus (and not finding it) I strayed across NGC 1647, a large open cluster.
Leaving Taurus for Canis Major, I found M46 and M47, two open clusters. M46 was much fainter than M47 (Mag 6.1 vs mag 4.4). Sweeping the area above
Sirius, I stumbled over M50, another bright open cluster. It was a good night for open clusters! Lastly, south of Sirius I found M41, the last open cluster of the night.
I did try out some new equipment tonight. The telrad, as I said, was very useful. It has to be the best $50.00 you can spend on your scope. I also used
Celestron's vibration supression pads for the first time. They seemed to really help. The scope was much more solid than without them.
Even though the temperature dropped to 14 degrees F, I only had to use the warming house once, to switch from tennis shoes to boots. Another fantastic
night under the stars.
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