Observing Report

Astro Home

Articles
   Gravitational Lens
   Variable Stars
   Astrophotography
   Observing Reports

Pictures
   Trip to Kitt Peak
   Astrophotography
   Visit to the VLA
   Sites in Tucson

Equipment
   Telescopes
   Cameras

Links
   Astro Clubs
   Observatories
   Organizations
   Other Websites

First object I looked at tonight was the Orion Nebula. I took a closer look at M43 which is still a part of the Orion Nebula, but is still separated from it, by a "dark lane". Being that it is much smaller then M42 overall, and with a magnitude of 9.0, I really couldn't notice any features, other then overall shape.

Since I was so close by, I wanted to look for a new object I haven't seen before to mark of my list. So I went hunting for M78. I honestly didn't expect to find this as its not as easy to find for someone like myself, still in town for the most part. And having a magnitude of 8.3 without any bright objects nearby makes this a little more difficult to locate. Took some time, but without patience astronomy wouldn't be fun lol. At first pass by, it appeared as two fuzzy stars (which I had assumed it might). The smaller of the two was actually NGC2071. I did not however take note of NGC2064. According to SEDS site, it states that "M78 is the brightest diffuse reflection nebula in the sky", so I guess its just going to be harder to find the others :: big smile ::

For some odd reason, seeing tonight was rather exceptional. I could locate M31 naked eye rather easily this time. So I located it in the telescope and made out to find M110 (I didn't really think to concentrate on finding M32 as well, so I "missed" it this night).

M31 is about 3.4 magnitude, and M110 is 8.5 mag. Being able to reference from M31 made M110 a breeze to get. At 24x it was rather effortless to get both into the same field of view. Since I was so close, I decided to close out the morning by viewing the double cluster NGC 869 + 884 again. Looking beautiful as always.