Telescope Reviews: Faint Target Observing List

Never before seen? There are plenty of those. Try Hewett 1 in Sextans, which is tied with Sh2-216 as the closest planetary nebula to earth. Hewett 1 was discoverd in 2004, is 2 degrees acorss (with evidence for a fainter outer shell 10 degrees acorss), and has never been observed visually. I attempted it with my 18" scope from West Texas in December 2006, and found not even a hint of anything. Furthermore, it's quite likely that it is simply unobservable visually, period, regardless of scope size- it may be large, but it is EXTREMELY faint. It wasn't even discovered by imaging it- it was discovered when it was noted that all the galaxies in a circular region in Sextans had a very faint OIII emission line at near zero redshift.

Other never observed (to my knowledge) targets include the planetary nebulae JaFu1 and JaFu2 in Palomar 6 and NGC 6441, respectively.

There are hundreds- thousands even- of very faint and distant Abell galaxy clusters that have no records of ever being seen visually. I have seen a couple of these in my "small" 18" scope. Some of them have such large central elliptical galaxies that they can be seen with my 18" from over 2 billion light years away- twice the distance of ACO 2065, the Corona Borealis supercluster. It's thrilling to track down such distant galaxy clusters.

Even such well-known catalogs such as the Sharpless nebulae have members that have no record of being observed visually.

There is, to my knowledge, no place that records who or when the first visual observation of a target took place. Thus, it's very hard to say who was the first person to see something visually, unless it was JUST discovered. No real way of checking to see if anyone has ever observed Sh2-135, for example, without just doing a google search of Sh2-135. Furthermore, more often than not, people will see something and not post anything on the web. I've actually observed Sh2-135, but I never posted an observing report of it, so someone who just has seen it and does a search for information about it could conclude that they may be the first person ever to see it. That said, now that I mentioned it in this thread, there's a good chance that this will generate search engine hits for this object being observed...

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John T.
Auburn, AL
25" f/4.2 Dob
18" Obsession #701
4" Stellar Vue Achromat
8X56 Binos

Edited by tatarjj (04/22/08 01:28 PM)