A few weeks ago I stumbled on to a distressed Celestron Comet Catcher, which I have detailed over on the ATM forum. Long story short, I decided to attempt to rehabilitate the distressed girl and give her another shot at the stars.
What was really cool was a discovery I made on the first night out. I thought I would repeat the observation here for the benefit of the EAA crowd that does not visit ATM forum. I was using my L3 WP tube with the Comet Catcher, 12nm and 7nm H-alpha filters:
Nebula in Cygnus were easy pickings. North America, Pelican, the wreath below the NA/Pelican complex, Gamma Cygni, The Cocoon, the Crescent, the Veil (east, west, center). All seen with direct vision from my light polluted suburban location. Fun, but nothing new here, right?
I was using the scope Astroscan style, just cradling it in my arms on a zero-gravity chair. So, just kind of sweeping around without much means of aim, other than known landmarks. I move east of the North American and I see this huge patch of nebulosity stretching roughly north-south. Fairly obvious too. It was nearly as big as the California Nebula and I was not familiar with anything in that area.
I thought perhaps it was merely unresolved stars (Milky Way background) but after looking at it, I was certain it was nebula. It responded better to a tighter bandpass H-Alpha filter. I made note of the orientation of the brighter stars around the area. In particular, there was a broken line of three that made a right angle with a line of two bright stars. Where the two lines intersected was the nebula location.
The next day I get out Uranometria 2000. Ironically, NV has brought my old paper atlas out of retirement as it can actually be better than SkySafari in terms of plotting large structures visible with night vision. I was able to find the star pattern, one of the bright stars was 68 Cygni. But no nebula or star cloud was plotted.
So, I fire up SkySafari and center on 68 Cygni. No nebula. Curiouser and curiouser. I had an evil thought that perhaps it was that film on the primary mirror - I was just about to give up. Then I got the idea to change the Milky Way settings in SkySafari from “Realistic Image” to “Hydrogen Alpha”. Bingo! Nebula there, the brightest section with correct size and orientation!
Is this new, or just new to me? I have never heard a visual observer mention this one before. Perhaps Walter Scott Houston wrote of it? I wonder if this nebula is even known to imagers?
SkySafari H-alpha overlay may contain a wealth of "new" nebula for the NV observer.
NV does change everything.
One other cool observation - Eddgie claims to be able to see the HorseHead nebula in his Comet Catcher from light polluted city conditions. The feat is confirmed, and perhaps one better: The HorseHead (B33), the Flame Nebula (M78) and 1.7 magnitude Alnitak all in the same field - direct vision.
Edited by nicknacknock, 17 June 2020 - 06:05 AM.
