The (Almost) Final Four

I'm down to five. It was partly cloudy today but mainly cleared off by 9:00 so I decided to try for the final four in Coma B and Virgo: M61, M85, M88, and M91. I had tried to find these previously but had no luck. Tonight I found out why! All but 61 are in an area almost devoid of bright stars and they are super dim, all lying about 60M light years away. Armed with my pocket sky atlas I was able to hop from either Vindamiatrix in Virgo or Denebola in Leo using some of the very dim stars that the PSA shows on its chart. It took awhile though. I was out from about 9:15 to 10:45 and by the time I started hunting for M61 at the end, I was getting kind of punchy and making dumb mistakes. It was also a bit hazy from a few light high clouds moving through. At first, even fairly bright mag 4 stars would kind of come and go but it cleared up toward the end and I rewarded myself with a nice crisp view of Saturn, who was in the neighborhood, to round things out. I was able to sketch all four along with whatever stars were in the FOV of my 27mm ep but they were all nondiscript fuzzy blobs in my 8" dob. Getting to the right spot was difficult but once I had the scope pointed to the correct location, they were all four readily apparent and the sketches even match the pictures at SEDS fairly well!
M85 is closest to Denebola and there is even an Aquila-like asterism nearby that points the way to 85. M88 and 91 are closer to Vindamiatrix so I started there to find them but kept getting lost in the dim starfield along the way. There are a pair of very dim stars that bracket the two galaxies and I was finally able to find those and zero in on my targets. M61 was the easiest as the visible star 16 Vir makes almost a right triangle with Zavijava and Zaniah, two of the bright stars making up Virgo's cup. By the time I got to M61, it had cleared up enough that I could make out 16 Vir unaided, pointed my red dot at it, and zero'd right in on M61 with my 9x50 finder. It was also dim but perhaps not as much so and fairly large.

Galaxies Galore

A temperature of 67°F and a humidity of 48% with light winds, no moon, and clear sky made for a perfect night of viewing here in midmo. Last night was hazy but tonight was ideal. I took advantage of the good viewing to snag a few of my Messier holdouts: M81, 82, 102?, 87, and 90. M81 and 82 in UMa are in an area north of the Big Bear with few bright stars so I've avoided these in the past. Armed with my new pocket field guide though, I was able to zero right in on the area of interest. 24 UMa is just about diagonally opposite Dubhe and Phecda in the cup of the dipper and makes a handy place to orient. I found the pair easily after that. M81 aka Bode's nebula appeared as a bright fuzzy blob while M82 aka the cigar galaxy looked like a fuzzy needle in my 8" with 27mm ep. Both were well within the fov and made a nice sight although my rommate wasn't able to see both of them. After admiring these two I decided to try for M102? The question mark is there because Messier apparently mis-identified this one. A likely candidate is NGC5866 in Draco which appeared as a tiny, fuzzy dim irregular blob in my 8". I used iota draconis as my guide star which was just barely visible unaided. Nudge about a binoc fov toward Alcaid in the dipper's handle and look for a triangular group of three 7th mag stars. M102 is near the closest of these to iota draconis.
By the time I finished admiring M102, Virgo was high above the backyard oak tree and I slewed around to tackle the Virgo Cluster. The last time I visited this area I saw too many galaxies! The star field is too dim to get a good fix on the faint fuzzies and they can be hard to identify. M87 and M90 are two of the harder ones. After a few trips back and forth between binocs, 9x50 finder, and my pocket guide, I realized that the reason I didn't find these two last time was that I had the wrong star field! This time I started at Denebola in Leo, slewed a bit toward Vindamiatrix in Virgo (that's the northermost tip of the 'cup') and looked for the first fairly bright star, 6 Com which is barely visible unaided at mag 5. It is part of a distinctive asterism that looks a bit like a 'T'. About a degree toward Vindamiatrix is a dim group of 3 mag 8-9 stars barely visible in binocs. Another two degrees down and look for a triangular group of 3 very dim stars. M87 is very near that group. M90 is a bit to the left in a box-like group of four dim stars. All of these 'guide' stars are very dim in binocs or my finder. Both M87 and M90 were faint smudges, much like many of the other faint smudges in this area!
To add icing on my cake tonight, our pack of coyotes decided to howl about 11:00. It sounded like they were in the front yard!

Into the lion's den

Another good night for backyard astronomy and it wasn't nearly as cold tonight. I decided to pick up some Messiers in Leo that I skipped last night: M65, 66, 95, and 105. The areas around M105 and M65 are full of nebulosties and it can be difficult to identify which is which. These are all very faint, small galaxies which made it all the more difficult. M105 was the first and it has another almost on top of it which made it fairly easy to identify. M65 and M66 are fairly close and fit into my 27mm ep FOV. There was a fairly bright star in the field to the north which turned out to be SAO99552, a magnitude 7 star which also shows up on my field guide. There was a small lambda like four star asterism that 'pointed' to M66 that wasn't in my CdC catalog. This is part of the 'Leo Triplett' galaxy group which I was surprised to find out looks a lot like my little sketch I made of the two galaxies. This area was quite a bit more interesting than the area around M105 probably because there were more bright stars in the fov. M65 and 66 are about 35 million light years from earth which is considerably farther than the objects I saw last night. Those are in our own Milky Way galaxy.
After snagging these five I switched over to M44, the Beehive cluster, and Mars which were both bright in my 7x50 fov. By this time there was a bit of haze starting to form. I was able to see Mars through my 10mm with 2x barlow but still could not see any detail.
All in all it wasn't a bad night although it started out nasty when I knocked my red dot finder loose and had to reset it in the dark.
It always amazes me when I see satellites pass through my fov. Seeing sats is one thing. You can almost always see a few mag 3 or 4 satellites on a dark night in a half hour or so but when I almost always see one by looking through a narrow field eye piece, I realize that "hey, there's a lot of stuff up there!". These of course are much dimmer at about mag 8 or 9.

Canis Major's neighborhood

Last night was good viewing, but tonight was fabulous! Not a cloud, nor a whiff of wind, a cool 50°F, low 40% humidity, no moon, what more could I ask? I even heard some coyotes at one point. Canis Major was low in the south with Leo starting to rise in the east so I decided to try for some of my missing Messiers in the CMa neighborhood: M41, 93, 47, 46, 50, and 48. I started about 8:52 with M41. It was easily found with my 7x50 binos with α and β CMa in the FOV. With the 8" dob M41 looks like a four legged starfish, very large. M46 and M47 were about 2x the distance between α and β CMa with M47 the brighter of the two. It looked a bit like a golfer teeing off while M46 looked like a dim spider. Both filled the 27mm ep FOV. Both were easy to find in binocs. M50 was a bit harder to spot. It looked a bit like a butterfly with two bright stars off the left wing and a bit of nebulosity off the right. Binocs showed a lot of nebulosity in this region of the milky way. Worth revisiting. At 9:34 a satellite passed just below 11 and 12 Puppis, through NGC 2482 going roughly east to west. 2482 is a loose cluster with an interesting linear string of 5 or 6 dim stars. Any of these open clusters would be interesting to try to sketch, possibly using my ETX70. M93 looked like a small, tight, bishop's hat or a v-shape. M48 is HUGE, almost 1° and filling my 27mm ep FOV. It forms a triangle with the 1,2 Hydra triple, and the ζ, 27, 28 Monoceros triangle. It's almost visible unaided and was easily found with my 7x50's.
My observing strategy of using binocs, pocket field guide, sticky notes to mark pages and object location, and a small hand lens so I can read the field guide under red light seemed to work well. The FOV of the hand lens matches my binocs fairly well. I placed a sticky note with an arrow marking the approximate location of the object I was looking for so it was easier to find in the dark. I was able to match the star fields seen in either my binocs or 9x50 finder with the magnified section of the field guide chart pretty well with a lot less fumbling around as usual.
I need to try using the field guide with my ETX70 sometime soon. I suspect it will make a good companion for use on the road this summer.
I got cold and decided to quit about 9:53 but not until after I took a quick peek at saturn, just under Leo, high in the east. The rings were clearly visible and I believe I even saw a moon or two.

M108 and M97

Tonight started out clear, dry, cool, and still. This was the first clear night after returning from south Texas so I decided to haul out the old 8" dob and try out my new pocket field guide from S&T. UMa was high and bright in the northeast so I decided to try for a couple of Messiers that I haven't found before: M108 and M97. Both were near Merak or Beta UMa and pretty high for the dob. After fiddling with the red dot for awhile, I finally got it positioned on Merak, and doubled checked the alignment by slewing over to Mizar. I was right on target and was able to split Mizar's close companion easily. It looked like M97 was near a little 'hockey stick' asterism according to the field guide and I was able to find that in my 9x50 finder ok. I switched to my 25mm ep and, bingo, there was M97. It looked like a fairly large fuzzy round blob. It kept dissapearing on me as some clouds had started to move through. Next I started searching for M108. It looked like it was near a three star right triangle, a bit closer to Merak and I eventually found it, a nice but dim cigar shaped galaxy. The field guide was hard to see in my red light and when I used a regular flashlight, it was hard to see the DSO's right away. It worked ok for comparing to my 9x50 and would probably work just fine with binoculars or in the valley but nothing beats CdC for use with my dob. I compared the star field I saw near M108 and it was right on with CdC. The 'hockey stick' asterism was plain enough for confirming M97. I also played around with my new green laser and was surprised to find that I could see it easily in my 9x50. I could see it ok in my 25mm ep but it looked odd since the magnification was much higher.
Earlier this evening I used my old 60mm refractor to get a glimpse at Venus and Mercury just after sunset. I don't have a good clear view of the west from my deck so I had to move to the front yard but was able to see both with my 27mm ep. Both appeared as round shapes with no apparent crescent shape. Mercury is almost at the same altitude as Venus today.