Wednesday 9th March 2005

Southern Sentinel Observing Report

Wednesday 9th March 2005

Date:

9th March 2005 (Local)

Time:

21:00 - 11:30 NZDT (UT +13)

Location:

Kumeu Observatory

30 Minutes from Home

Weather:

Clear Skies. Mild & Calm. Ocassional Cloud

Seeing:

Limiting Magnitude 6.0, transparency 3/5, seeing 4/5

Moon:

Nearly New Moon.

Equipment:

13.1 Inch Dobsonian, TeleVue Paracorr & Eyepieces & Lumicon Filters

Met David Moorhouse & Alan Kane again, for the second time this week, at the Kumeu observatory. I arrived early to set up the laptop for a run with the DSCs with Skymap Pro v10. Alan arrived about 15 minutes later and Dave arrived about half a hour later at 8:45 pm.

Despite early evening cloud by the time all three scopes were set up there was almost a perfect evening on offer. No wind, completely clear and no cloud. Seeing was particularly good with not much movement of the stars and Saturn, however the sky appeared a little more milky that on Monday night.

I set up the DSCs to communicate directly with the laptop. This is to be my most common setup for observing as I have used the laptop at the scope for over 5 years now and it is indespensable. So having the map now move with a crosshair displayed on the screen it just complemented the already excellent observing setup.

No problems setting up...the telescope performed excellently with the ASCOM driver for Skymap Pro v10 doing all the seting up. No extra checking or config compared to the Palm.

Working through the March Observing List, I didn't have the list on the laptop, so I followed Dave around the sky as he had the March list on his laptop.

Objects observed were;

Object	Type	Magnification	Notes
NGC 2539	Open Cluster	114x	An rich open cluster with stars of very even brightness. About 100 members of about 12th mag. About 7 degrees to the E of M46.
NGC 2555	Galaxy	114x	Faint galaxy with no real detail. A couple of stars involved in the halo. Interesting view despite not mush detail.
NGC 2610	Planetary Nebula	114x	A moderately large planetary nebula with a mag 12 star is embedded on the NE edge. Gave the impression of a wedding ring. Almost round no central star or annularity noted.
NGC 2775	Galaxy	114x	Fairly bright oval galaxy. Fine halo and a stellar core, look elliptical but in fact it is a spiral.
NGC 2903	Galaxy	114x	Very bright and large galaxy with a mottled appearence, therefore must be a spiral. Oval in shape. Immpressive not Messier galaxy.
NGC 3055	Galaxy	114x	Faintish oval galaxy with a brightening to the eastern end. Unusual. Stubby fain version of NGC55.
Sextans B	Galaxy	114x	Very faint galaxy only detected by moving the eyepiece slide to side and detecting the brightening. Needs observation from a darker sky.
Abell 33	Planetary Nebula	114x	Very faint planetary. Large and round the nebula was just visible without a filter. The OIII was most effective at showing the form. Appears big round glow with a bright star in the southern edge. The nebula also appeared to have a slightly darker center. Reminded me of a blood cell.

I did observe other objects but just general objects such as Omega Cen and 47 Tuc. I also went over the objects that I had seen on Monday with the Palm.

Saturn was steady and at 200x + looked very sharp despite the collamation being slightly out on the dob.

The DSCs ran out of puff during the night as well, so I had to change the 9 volt battery and realign. No other hassles.

Another good night at Kumeu with good weather predicted in coming days. We will see what happens.

Paul Kemp

13.1" Reflector

Auckland, New Zealand

36° 55' 09 " South, 174° 43' 30" East

-- The Southern Sentinel --