Telescope Reviews: OR - Denizens of the Dragon

Denizens of the Dragon

NELM 5.5+
Sky Conditions: Partly Cloudy
Seeing: Pickering 5
Transparency: Moderate
Equipment: 15" F5 StarSplitter (Swayze), Paracorr, 30mm BW (73x), 22 Pano (100x),
13mm Nagler t6 (168x) and 9mm Nagler (243x), Denkmeier Binoviewer (MC version) 30mm Ultimas (~80x) and 13mm Naglers (~190x)

July 29, 2003

Target List
Draco: NGC6543 (PN), NGC6503 (Gx), NGC5907 (Gx), NGC5866 (Gx - M102 according to some), NGC4750 (Gx), NGC6643 (Gx), NGC5949 (Gx), NGC5879 (Gx), NGC5905/5908 (Gx)

Observers: Tom Trusock, Keith Rutkowski

Well, after a late night observing session on Monday, Keith and I parted with "Well, I don't care how clear it is tomorrow night, I need to get some sleep.."

Sigh. The best laid plans...

As evening drew on, the CSC looked better and better and sure enough, both of us had the same thought at the same time: You just can't afford to waste a good night, especially when that ole moon is out of the way.

The upshot? Well, I'm sure you guessed, but on the rare chance you hadn't by 10:30 we were both out observing.

We spent a lot of time with the binoviewer tonight. Once we got it in there we were *very* reluctant to take it out. It's just so darn immersive with twin naglers, it's incredible. Interestingly enough, light loss seems less and less of an issue as the scope gets larger and larger. Most of the objects this evening, I vastly preferred the binoview to the Cyclops mode: and these are faint fuzzies! The one thing that I hadn't really been using the binoviewer on. Hmmm... How much are those 24 panoptics?? ANYWAY...;

Tonight we spent the evening in Draco.

NGC6543 (Pn, m8.1v) Cat's eye nebula. Obviously non-stellar and extremely bright even at low powers, in the binoviewer at 190x, this object is vividly three dimensional. Having spotted the central star on previous occasions, we spent a little more attention to the field and noticed a bright orange star in the FOV which provided a nice contrast with the blue green of the planetary. This object is very nice in every size scope I've looked at it with.

NGC6503 (Gx, SA, m10.2v) pretty bright in the 15" at 190x, this was another prime target for the binoviewer. It appears somewhat lenticular in shape, and shows a slight brightening towards the center with some apparent mottling.

NGC5907 (Gx, SA, m10.3v) Nice at moderate powers, this is a very large object. Needle sharp at both ends, it shows hints of a dust lane. Very nice!

NGC5866 (Gx, SB, m9.9v) One of the "missing" messier objects, suggested by Owen Gingerich (according to NSOG) to fill in the place of Messiers duplicate observation of M101. Compared to 5907, this is a rather short and fat (abet bright) galaxy. Brighter stars float to each side. Another nice target.

NGC4750 (Gx, SA, m11.2v ) This fairly faint oval increases in brightness as you approach the core.

NGC6643 (Gx, SB, m11.1v) At 100x, a very nice sight! First impression was that someone was staring back at me! Two mag 12 stars form the eyes and 6643 forms a somewhat lopsided mouth for this stellar face.

NGC5949 (Gx, SB, m12.0v) Faint and diffuse without a concentrated brightening towards the core, but stands out well at 100x.

NGC5879 (Gx, SA, m11.6v) A thin needle with a well concentrated extended core reaching through space, one bright star off the point, two dimmer ones above and below.

NGC 5906/5908 Clouds moved in and put a sudden end to our session before we could grab this target. Pity, this one sounded quite interesting from the description in NSOG.

I'm more than a little tired today, and willing to bet that Keith is as well, but it was a good run and we got to see several objects that we had never seen before. Tonight looks clear as well, but I don't know if I'm going to make it or not. I have a star party to go to this weekend, and I don't want to be falling asleep there or worse, on the way home.

The surprise of the evening was that there really didn't seem to be all that much light loss with the binoviewer. In my smaller scopes, I had estimated it at .2-.3 mag, but it seemed less than that when doing a-b comparisons this evening. More study is indicated.

Clear Skies

Tom T.

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There are two theories to arguing with my wife. Neither one works.