I have a strange desire to look at obscure things. When you venture away from the charts into "new" territory, the sense of exploration is evident.
Last night was great. For the first time in 2025, I made it to my NELM 6.5+ dark site with the trusty 15" Obsession. Despite the equinox, winter was in full swing. Ice covered the nearby lake and piles of crusty slush along driveways showed evidence of the 1+ foot of snow that was prevalent until a few weeks ago. On the way up to this Northern MI location, I battled a 40 MPH headwind and blowing snow. It was a pretty miserable drive with fog, snow, and soaking roads. I was beginning to feel skeptical of the high pressure forecasts, but patches of sunshine and dry conditions greeted me as I ventured further north.
Before I knew it, darkness was approaching. My plan for tonight was simple: Have fun! I intended to visit plenty of eye candy while leaving time to hunt for a few of those obscure objects.
The night started with a beautiful view of the zodiacal light. I cannot recall a brighter sighting of this galactic dust. It looked like a huge cone sticking up to the winter Milky Way. Incredible.
Now it was time to look at some eye candy while testing the sky conditions. Slipping my new-to-me 35mm Panoptic into the focuser, I turned to the Pleiades. The Merope nebula was blindingly obvious. I spend a good 10 minutes looking at all of the patchy nebulosity. This new eyepiece allowed me a 1.2 degree field. With 15" of aperture and dark sky, the contrast between blue stars and nebulosity was amazing.
OK it's looking transparent. Now time for an object that's been on my list for a while: IC 2118, the Wizard Head Nebula. It's an obscure reflection nebula in Orion, a popular photographic target that most visual observers skip. I can see why. Using my low power and wide field 35mm Panopic, I picked up a thin band of nebulosity near two field stars of 8th and 9th magnitudes. This nebulosity was very irregular and traced north and south for around half a degree. Rocking the scope improved the view considerably.
I took a minute to go after M42 as Orion sunk to the west, then it was onto another obscure and faint reflection nebula: Sazhen 30. This nebula has a very cool story. It was discovered in 2023 by an amateur. Unfortunately, I did not achieve a personal discovery of this object. For around 40 minutes, I attempted to locate this nebula. I made a rookie error. Due to the seemingly easy position of this object, I did not print custom star maps or spend much time formulating a star hopping plan ahead of time. This lead me to dead reckon with only a few starts visible in my digital star map. The surrounding rich field steered me the wrong way several times and I just couldn't make a definitive sighting due to locational uncertainty. Oh well, that's the way it goes sometimes. I wasn't prepared enough to get this one. I'll print out a proper map next fall.
Onto the next observing project in Ursa Major. Looking at M81, faint spiral structure was evident. Swinging to one of my favorites, M82, three dark lanes were immediately obvious as they cut across the galaxy. Even at low power, mottling was viewable with direct vision. What a showpiece. I wasn't here for the eye candy though. My target was faint dust outside of our galactic plane.
Mandel-Wilson 3 otherwise knows as the Volcano Nebula lies a short distance from M82. This massive structure takes lots of exposures to reveal, but our eyeballs can do a surprisingly good job of picking faint glow apart from the background. Armed with a very detailed map of this complex (I actually did my homework unlike Sazhen 30!) I located a right triangle asterism. Once again, the 35mm Panotpic proved to be a valuable asset for these large and faint targets. To my disbelief, the IFN was immediately identified. Running north to south, a faint glow was clearly visible using direct vision. Averted vision helped to define the edges of this structure and allowed me to trace it further to the north.
Below you will find an image showing the section of this complex that I successfully detected. I mainly focused on the brighter region near M82 since other observers had made positive identifications with similar dobs. The image is inverted to show a similar view to my reflector:
I tried to look for some fainter sections (not shown here) but quickly moved on since there was zero indication of any additional nebulosity.
This is starting to get long. Below you will find some other highlights:
NGC 3758: Round glow that is slightly brighter towards the center. This faint galaxy shows two stellar like cores with high powers (247X or greater) and averted vision. I cannot see any structure.
Copeland's Septet: Nice revisit. Best with 330x, 5 members are visible when using averted vision. I suspect the 6th, but did not confirm it.
NGC 2357: A very thin and faint band of nebulosity runs east and west. The core is fairly bright compared to the edges and it tapers gradually. No mottling was detected. Best at 330x.
I also visited some additional Messiers. One view that stuck with me was M13. Swinging my scope to the naked eye globular, I looked into the 6mm eyepiece to see the massive and resolved cluster popping out at me. The propeller was extremely obvious. Wow, I forgot just how amazing this object was over the winter...
At just past 2:00, it was time for bed. It had been a long day of travel, balancing work calls, and observing. I also did not do myself any favors for staying warm, forgetting to put on additional layers as the temps dropped well below freezing. I'm ready for spring temperatures at night...
To end my sessions, I always enjoy a few minutes of naked eye observing. It was pin drop silent. Surrounded by the woods, I felt like I was in a painting. Vega's twinkling was the only movement. My fully dark adapted eyes soaked in the gorgeous starlight as I stood there silently. Looking east, a super bright shooting star shined above the evergreen forest. A perfect way to end the night.
Hopefully you enjoyed this little report. I would love to hear some Volcano Nebula observations. IFNs are the wild west and I intend to keep exploring them with my new low power eyepiece.
Clear skies,
Alex
Edited by Alex Swartzinski, 22 March 2025 - 02:14 PM.
