NGC-6822, "Barnard's Galaxy"
RA: 19 44 57.80    Dec: -14 48 11.0,
in Sagittarius.

In late July, 2006, there was a query posted to the newsgroup sci.astro.amateur about anybody's observations of the faint, elusive object NGC-6822, and a suggestion that it be added to a target list of especially challenging objects. I'd viewed it a few times at "my site", as well as darker venues down south, my last experience being about twelve years previously, with an 8" scope. It was visible under decent conditions, so I tried again with my C-11, and posted on the morning of 25 July these observations:

Ok: here's an observation "hot off the press" -- and I do mean HOT! My wife was too pooped out from the 100 d+ temperatures in the Santa Clara valley to join me last night/this morning but I had seen the post about the gx and made a point of observing it, on private property in the mountains between San Jose and Santa Cruz. (I must say that it is disconcerting to be observing on top of a mountain without my usual wintry clothes, even in summer. The temperature all night long never dropped below about 80, and it was close to 90 while I was looking at the gx.)

Using a C-11 in superb, steady seeing after midnight, local time, the gx was distinctly visible when the field was acquired. Naked eye magnitude in the Sagittarius region was about 6, there being a bit of fog at lower elevations and pouring inland from the Pacific, cutting off some of the light from Hollister, Gilroy, and Santa Cruz. I have seen the gx much better at this site, but not since about 1990.

Without any filter, the apparent diameter -- in an eyepiece that yields a measured FOV of 27 arcminutes -- was about 5-6 mins. Adding a SkyGlow general LPR filter improved that considerably. My guess is that I could trace it out for a diagonal of about 8-9 minutes, -- but just barely, the edges blending absolutely continuously into the background. The visual diameter is considerably less that its official measurement or the way it looks in a photo. I have seen it "to the edge" in a pitch black sky with no light pollution, using a Celestron Comet-Catcher f3.3 five inch aperture telescope; in the C-11 (not an ideal instrument for it) the gx was still pretty pale and indistinct: not an object that you'd really notice if you moved across the field without expecting it. Because I was *exactly* on the coordinates, and had a HGS plot with me, I could verify after a while that I was seeing it, which took me at least a minute or so to become absolutely certain: my estimation of its surface brightness during this particular (mediocre) observation was that the California Nebula looks much more distinct than this, in my 3" refractor in a dark sky. Yet, there was enough light from it to tell that there was a sort of mottled, rough surface, at least in the somewhat brighter center: a bit less smooth, and choppier, than (say) a vague, bluish reflection nebula such as the light halo around the Iris Nebula (NGC 7023).

As somebody said, there is no WAY you could see this in an urban environment.

Adding more filtration did not yield the H-II regions but I definitely had a sense that there was a speckling, a stellaring, to the overall glow at the center for a diameter of about 3 mins. or so.

The object may be a bit vague and indistinct, but all in all, the gx is much more easily perceived than Leo 1, which I once wrote about observing here, perhaps 10 years ago or thereabouts.

I tried viewing 6822 at first with an Orion 21 mm Stratus; then went to a 40 mm Plössl with filter, and determined that a 25 mm Plössl (Orion "Ultrascopic") ocular yielded about the best contrast; nothing shorter than 21 was useful: so my exit pupils were in the range of 2 to 4 mm. I had no long focal length 2" ocular beyond 42 mm, so I wished it had been possible to bring my 4" RFT with me; but perhaps the sky just wasn't dark enough and the extra aperture was really beneficial. However I think that a good telescope of 4-5 inches aperture will work at low power in a truly dark sky for this gx. In fact, I do not believe that I had ever seen it with an aperture greater than 8" until today's observation. You really need optics that can give you about a degree of field to see the low contrast of this spread out object effectively. (I seem to have the feeling that I once saw it -- marginally -- in the lowest power available in my old Astroscan, in a 3d FOV at 16x.)

At any rate, there is no wonder that it took a guy like Barnard to discover it, and to be sure he wasn't just seeing general background milkiness: what he called "luminous ground". I seem to have a dim memory of coming on Barnard's own announcement of this, which might have been in the "Astronomisches Nachrichten", in his original discovery report, written in English. Perhaps a historical minded enthusiast could fill us in; I haven't had time to look up more info as I am ready for some shut-eye!

I checked the next day, and found the explanation of the original discovery, which you may read by surfing to this page and typing in "NGC 6822" on the NGC/IC Project website. It was announced in The Sidereal Messenger, Barnard having discovered it with a small refractor; and I'm certain from memory that this was quoted somewhat later, in English, in the German publication I mentioned above, found by me during my research on Barnard at the UC/Lick astronomy library collection in Santa Cruz.

After a day's rest, I went back to the mountain and checked Barnard's Galaxy again with the C-11: the night was a bit darker, and with a hydrogen-line nebular filter (an Orion "UltraBlock") I was distinctly able to trace some of the H-II regions, bright red in a colored photograph but of course only very pale gray to the eye. In particular, the little pink "speck" that shows up vividly in this color image, was helped to be more clearly visible by means of the filter. A week later, with my 10" f/4.7 Dob, the galaxy was still quite distinct, H-II regions included, and had the "grainy" appearance I well remembered from viewing it in the late 1990s with my 8" scope -- at this site, not more than a dozen miles (direct) from my home in the center of San Jose. Although Barnard did not discover the object at Lick, it is fitting that in the vicinity of his stomping grounds at Mt. Hamilton, the galaxy could still be seen more than a century later, despite "progress" that had all but blinded us from seeing the night sky!

The POSS picture, above, is far too well resolved to resemble what I see in an amateur-sized telescope. There is no sensation that the stars (or clumps of them) are clearly shown, but a general roughness or graininess is evident when the sky is VERY steady -- and this is difficult to achieve here in No. California, the galaxy being too low for optimal viewing. Furthermore, the galaxy's outline is hard to perceive, and in small aperture instruments it may well be nearly at the threshold of detection, though it stood out well enough to be recognized at once in my 10 and 11 inch scopes.

This little, telescopic-visually rather insignificant, barred spiral galaxy -- rated at 15.1 (blue photographic) or 14.3 (visual) magnitude -- is just like so many other objects that are but "faint fuzzies" even in fairly large scopes up to, say, 17" aperture. It interested me, though, because of its proximity to M-57. I had searched for it years before; but without a precise deep field chart, just poking around near the Ring nebula had failed to turn it up. But, after seeing this fabulous color image of Comet 73P/ Schwassmann- Wachmann passing right over M-57 in May of 2006, with the faint galaxy in the distant background, I knew I'd have to try again with my new C-11. And, armed with my laptop and a field display of the Hubble guidestars down to 15th magnitude, I had my software program slew the scope onto the object. But... it wasn't seen! I carefully checked, back and forth, between the computer display and the eyepiece field, and found that the position was off by too many arcminutes (this was before I finally perfected the centering of objects via my computer); and, trying to get that distinctive "sextet" of stars circling the galaxy to be right in the center of the FOV, I finally perceived it. What confused me further was that, unlike the display in a photograph or CCD image, the WHOLE galaxy seemed like a big smudge over the entire larger diameter of 1 arcminute, not just a bright nuclear core with irregular extension. And that smudge was barely above the background glow of "dead sky". I swept the scope back and forth; changed to a different star-field; came back to the right spot; changed ocular focal lengths: and confirmed that I was distinctly seeing it, and identifying the correct object. This is one of the more challenging faint galaxies I've worked on at this site. The article on the "Skyhound" website at this link gives an alternative opinion about the way the galaxy looks under various conditions, and suggests a minimal aperture of 12 inches. Well, if so: I'm proud to have been able to see it with an ELEVEN inch scope, near the light polluted Santa Clara valley!

According to an article by Mikkel Steine at this link, this hard- to- locate and obscure 13.3 (visual) magnitude small planetary would show a ring structure in certain photos, but it was not visible to him in a 10" reflector; the annular shell wasn't distinct to me in an 11" scope either. On the same occasion that I viewed galaxy IC-1296, discussed immediately above, I perceived this planetary to be merely a rather pale ovoid blob -- though with fairly distinct outline -- MAYBE just a bit greener or more bluish in color than the faint stars around it (but, at my age, I don't detect colors of planetary nebulae as vividly as younger observers do.) I tried to modify the Palomar blue plate image to show this, but the result is still way too bright compared to the view in the eyepiece of my telescope. (In a deep color exposure, such as this one, the object is a raging bright red; but the telescopic eye can detect only the fainter green-blue hydrogen-beta or the oxygen nebular line wavelengths.) I probably observed the object because I used an accurate "GOTO" slew from a star chart; hopping to it would have been arduous. This probably explains why I never sought it out until recently, the electronic pointing mechanism saving me so much wasted time and needless struggle (what, exactly, DO you "learn" from most of this pushing and shoving? If you aren't privileged to have a "Goto" scope, I have provided finder charts, which I hope will facilitate its location.) An O-III, or a hydrogen (UltraBlock, UHC) filter helps discern the object with greater contrast. One important thing must be noted: compared to the photo, above, the object is distinctly "non-stellar" to the eye, viewed through a telescope; and high magnifications are borne well.

Wide Finder Chart        0.5d Eyepiece View Chart: upright, correct

• Link to Jaakko Saloranta's observation of this planetary with 8" Dobsonian.

In the Index Catalogue, this "tiny" faint galaxy is described in the original abbreviations as being "very faint, very small, round." That's about all that I see in the C-11. The tiny bit of structure visible, at some magnification, in the POSS plate is certainly not going to be detected in an amateur telescope; probably not even in a HUGE one. I simply came about this galaxy when looking at objects plotted in the constellation of Aquarius, and tried to discern it merely because it was so faint. It was, indeed, visible -- with diligent searching and staring. With a blue photographic magnitude of 16.1, and a revised visual magnitude of 15.4, this galaxy, measured at 0.7 by 0.5 minutes diameter, is a good challenge of your skills of location and perception. Note that the "limiting magnitude rating" of my Celestron 11 inch scope, for stars, is given in the maker's list of specifications as being 14.7. Supposedly, the limiting magnitude for "extended objects" -- galaxies, nebulae -- would be a smaller number, possibly on the order of 13.7 to 13.5 or even less, depending on the color wavelengths of the object. Well: this galaxy is FAR dimmer than the "spec". I exceed that all the time, and I'm not exactly a youthful observer. Not only do I follow all the precepts that I've harped about, above, but also I try to use sufficiently high magnification to achieve a good image contrast against the stars and background (especially with small- diameter galaxies.) So, don't hesitate to pump up the power. At, say, 50-100x, this galaxy might be, for all practical purposes, invisible in your scope's ocular FOV. At 250x, though, it would be much easier to detect.

This is not a challenging object to detect, but the nature of its evanescent gaseous shell may be poorly revealed in a light-polluted sky. One of the objects found by William Herschel, it was acquired by the eye of the experienced bay area observer Jay Reynolds Freeman, using a 55mm aperture refractor; but he is quick to point out that this was done not because of a human oddity of perception, but because the limiting magnitude ratings of many of these objects are given faulty, low, values: see the article "The Herschel 400 List -- Brighter Than You Think" at this link. While Jay might be a bit modest here, since he is widely acknowledged as being an elite expert observer, I agree that NGC 7008 is definitely not as faint as "13.5 magnitude" as stated in the traditional Herschel object list; it is thought now to be visually about 10.7 according to Freeman. I would not disagree with that, as NGC 7008 is brighter to the eye than many objects in the familiar Messier catalogue, and could be a candidate for 'one of those objects that Messier and Mechain strangely missed.'

The image that I prepared from the Digital Sky Survey, using the Palomar blue plate (first survey), shows a very distinct but somewhat irregular shell, with a bright interior that just about overexposed the emulsion: it is a much higher- contrast depiction than you probably would EVER detect in a 'live eyeview' by telescope. Unfortunately the observation's original report was on one of my missing logbook sheets, but I can estimate that the session was near the new moon in September, 2006. As I recall, the outer shell was distinct from the much paler, irregular inner glow, aided by an O-III filter, the object being a bit "easier on the eye" than the Owl nebula, M-97: somewhat brighter, but not as opaque; more delicate, as it were, with a very distinct central star. I checked the object again about a month later, on Monday, 21 August 2006 (not long before midnight) and used high power on my C-11, using my 6 mm Expanse eyepiece (466x): with NGC 7008 at the meridian during a night of splendid transparency and sky darkness, there was a sense of what I described as "overlapping lumpy bright patches" requiring no filter for detection: more pale and ethereal than the deep exposure, above, but with greater visual detail in the nebular brightness variations: a fascinating object.

I will make a point of checking the clarity and luminance of the nebulosity at a darker site, some day; but I am happy with the way it looked, at the zenith, at my convenient sub-sub-suburban site!

The Skyhound page for this object has a nice color image, a composite of the POSS plates, and observations of the varying visual character with different scope apertures.

Observations listed on this page stipulate that the faint 15th magnitude central star inside the dim shell of this planetary was detected by an observer with an 8" aperture scope, slightly diminishing my pride at doing so, incontrovertibly, with my 11-incher. But the article about observing all of Lyra's planetaries by Mikkel Steine at this link suggests that Abell 46 is the "most difficult" of those in the constellation; the author of that article is not certain that he nabbed it with a 10" Dobsonian reflector. I'm quite certain, though: it was clearly visible in my C-11, and (for once) not too terribly different from the POSS plate image that I have shown here. The object is slightly over an arcminute in diameter, and a bit uneven, though it appears somewhat smaller as seen in my telescope. I may well be underestimating the general quality of "my" skies, for on this page of observations, the legendary observer Steve Gottlieb notes that in a 13" aperture scope, it is "Just visible using a UHC...although appears near the visual threshold"; "can barely hold steadily" with O-III filter. I must say that with the object at the zenith, I found it not quite as difficult as this statement might imply, though it WAS indeed a faint one! I suspect that part of my relative ease of observation was made possible by using a motorized scope that tracked the object, and a GOTO function to locate it, reducing the sheer drudgery of pulling a large Dobsonian telescope around the region to star-hop to it. This is definitely the kind of faint object that you should strive to view when it is nearest the zenith; and alt-azimuth scopes are very unwieldy when pointed straight up. I recall that even my alt-az GOTO C-11 slewed quite slowly compared to its rate when pointed lower. By locating and then tracking the planetary, I was able to change oculars to get the optimal exit pupil, and even went as high as 300-400x to test its visibility: this is a painful task with a hand-pointed Dob. So, I could relax and study the planetary with ease, once it was in the FOV. Users of large stand-up Dobsonians often find it somewhat tiring to observe objects at extreme magnification, especially when the celestial object is high in the sky.

Unfortunately, a few pages are missing from my loose-leaf logbook between May and November of 2006, and I cannot locate the original entry for this observation; but I recall that it was done on a day very shortly after the close encounter of M57 and Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3c in May, 2006, on the same night that I observed IC-1296, discussed earlier on this page. I do have the printed chart that was used for finding Abell 46, which has a pencilled scribble indicating that I used the C-11, at high magnification, and indeed saw the central star.

Incidentally, SIMBAD -- the astronomical database used to resolve the image data for the Digital Sky Survey -- repeatedly refused to accept the names "Abell 46" or "55.4+16.0", which were designations for the object that I obtained from this webpage, agreeing with what I saw and what Gottlieb shows and describes. But, if I pasted in the coordinates, the Sky Survey plate picture came up. I did some searching on the net and found a few discrepancies in amateur website articles about this object, with slighly varying numerical designations. To be certain, I also tracked it down to Table 2 of the Perek and Kohoutek planetary nebula catalogue, where it is identified as "055+16.1" or "A 46", with the J1950 coordinates, which do work out to the ones given above for Abell 46, Epoch 2000. The discrepancy of listings that I found appears to be because the object is given as "055.4+16.0" in the PN G catalogue (the "The Strasbourg-ESO Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae".) SIMBAD 'likes' the following exact designation (quote marks not included): "PK 055+16.1"; this will resolve the object, using either that precise string, or the coordinates above by the picture of Abell 46, obtaining the image without an error message. Not all sky charts or planetarium programs show Abell 46; so I have provided two charts showing its position in the general region in Lyra, and in an eyepiece view.

Wide Finder Chart        0.5d Eyepiece View Chart: upright, correct

After a year's work to improve the accuracy of object location with my computer and GOTO scope, I had at last achieved about a 4-arcminute general precision, which I could increase in localized regions to 2 arcminutes: for visual purposes, "dead on". And so I began to sweep through whole constellations to pick up faint objects that would otherwise be extremely difficult to locate by star-hopping. While skipping from one galaxy to another in Cetus recently, I happened to be looking at objects plotted on Chart 10 of the Sky Atlas 2000. A narrow looking galaxy, identified as "M-3-1-15", was in the lower right hand corner. Checking its details in the atlas's Companion by Strong and Sinnott, I read that the magnitude was "11.1"; since the small subset p (for "photographic") was included, I intuited that this might be much fainter to the eye than if it were an older traditional "visual" magnitude (the approximate brightness equal to a star of that magnitude, defocused until it spread out to an area about equal to the galaxy.) This is hard to match accurately, especially with galaxies, like this one, that are longer along one axis.

I used a software program to center the scope on the precise coordinates and saw... nothing. "This must be Wil Tirion's little joke", I muttered to myself. The Sky Altas 2000 generally includes only galaxies that are brighter than 14th magnitude, some of which are challenge objects for an 8 to 10 inch aperture scope. But by careful observing, I was now exceeding this and getting about a magnitude deeper, even at my site near city light pollution, and almost always found that I could see the objects plotted in this particular sky chart.

I have learned, from experience, that what at first seems like "nothing" may, on careful scrutiny, turn into "something". And so, by changing eyepieces and increasing power, taking care to have at least a FOV of 15-18 minutes in order to "set off" the galaxy against the background, I finally saw something.

And, I must admit that it was a very pale, almost imaginary, presence. After perhaps ten minutes of fiddling and experimenting, I began to perceive that in a region about half as large as the catalogue dimensions, I could detect a distinctly brighter illumination, utterly devoid of clear shape or outline, that was above the faint background luminance of skyglow. What I saw does not begin to resemble the clarity depicted in the picture above, nor even the much more distinct illumination of Barnard's galaxy, NGC-6822.

I have taken the POSS image, above, and tried to simulate the view in my 21 mm Stratus eyepiece using the C-11. The key to recognition of the proper star field is the placement of the flattened triangle of relatively bright stars, shown here to the upper left of the galaxy (in my Newtonian, the view will be inverted.) So, a week later I was able to find the location -- in a sparse region with few distinctive guide stars -- and to realize at once that I was looking at the proper spot. Yes: WLM was visible -- barely -- in my 10" aperture scope.

I found an article mentioning the observation of a globular cluster in WLM, which is a "nearby" dwarf galaxy in the Local Group, and resolvable in large observatory scopes. I confess though that I misconstrued part of it, and thought that the author had defined the magnitude of the galaxy as "16.1 visual", [Mag (V) = 16.1] as shown in the caption above the picture. I wrote an email to the webmaster, Jim Shields, and reported my astonishment at being able to detect the galaxy in my 11-inch scope, and asked for any corroboration he might have from observers using instruments of this aperture, as opposed to the 'standard' 17.5" Dobs that many southwestern US deep-sky mavens use to spot such faint and elusive creatures. He wrote immediately to correct me and point out that the magnitude rating was given for the GLOBULAR CLUSTER in the galaxy, "WLM-1". Jim said he'd be impressed if I saw that globular cluster; and -- indeed -- I did not do so.

And, to tell you the truth: I'm not about to go and spend $7998 for a C-14 in order to make that possible!

Wide Finder Chart        0.5d Eyepiece View Chart: upright, correct

NGC-896: 'Bright' Emission Nebula

This is not a "challenge object" for many good observing sites. But it IS one for my particular venue, which often bathes all the circumpolar constellations in the light dome from San Jose photons. During the new Moon at the end of July, 2006, I was bewitched by the improvement of the sky after midnight, when fog had crept over the region where I live, though not reaching up to the 3,400 foot altitude where I was now observing. So I turned to the constellations around the north Pole star and naturally tried the planetaries and nebulae that are generally poorly seen because of their proximity to a giant city.

After observing the large 'bright' nebula NGC-281, a lovely sight with an UltraBlock hydrogen-line filter though certainly not in my equipment "bright", as described in the NGC, I turned to some others in the region, and examined (for the first time that I can recall) IC-1805, the "Heart" nebula, a large glowing patch of gas surrounding a 20-arcminute sparkling open cluster, which is of course not the vivid ruddy color shown in Marco Lorenzi's CCD image given in the link, but -- to the human eye -- a dim pale gray, with only a barely distinct 'shell like' outline. Normally, with San Jose light pollution undimmed in the absence of fog and low clouds, this object would be completely washed out, only the star cluster being readily visible. I then moved over to the emission nebula NGC-896, more compact and easier to detect (although a telescope with shorter focal length than my C-11 would be more optimal for viewing a nebula that measures 26 x 12 arcminutes: so I was glad that on this occasion, I had brought instead my 10" f/4.7 reflector.) At the lowest power I typically employ -- 57x, with an Orion Stratus 21 mm ocular (yielding a FOV of approximately 1.2 degrees) -- the nebula was an exquisite breath of haze, a bewitching sight. Adding an Orion UltraBlock hydrogen-line filter improved the contrast hugely. I chose the POSS1 blue plate, above, to render an image for this discussion, as the red plate (as well modern deep CCD exposures, like this one by Sean and Renee Stecker/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF, utilizing a 20-inch aperture Ritchey), would appear far more dense and colorful than the human eye can ever perceive in a 'live' view: having prejudiced your eye with such an image, the telescopic/visual rendition of NGC-896 would seem utterly unrecognizable.

The photograph that is given above, however, does seem to resemble my own remarks, jotted down immediately after viewing it, chosing slightly higher magnification for best contrast: "3 stars in nebula w/dark patch, v. distinct w/17 mm Plössl @ 70x w/Orion UB filter, 0.7d fov." I don't think this is a bad result at all, considering the short distance from the center of San Jose!

I was surprised to read once in a Sky & Telescope article that chronicled some experiences of observers at a midwestern-USA star party, that at least one amateur astronomer who regularly worked under dark skies had found the nebula Sharpless 2-101 an elusive object that he had finally achieved, after many tries: I read that and thought, "How odd...I see that here, at will." Here, being "the site" as well as in more reliably dark skies on the Pacific coast, such as Chews Ridge in the Ventana wilderness, a wonderful place south of Monterey bay, at 5000 feet above sea level, where my friend astrophotographer Chuck Vaughn has captured spectacular photographs. I can well remember my own excitement, more than a decade ago, viewing the nebulae in Cygnus as Chuck did his photographic wizardry about fifty feet below me during a crisp early fall California night. Sometimes I tend to forget that what is relatively easy for me -- viewing in the marvelous crystal-clear air that I'm blessed with -- is harder for viewers in the midwest or southern USA, where there are lower altitudes and higher moisture.

To check my certainty that Sharpless 2-101 could indeed be seen not only there, but also close to my home in San Jose, I planned to view it during my very next observing session. Shortly afterward, on 6 June, I sent the commentator an email:

I checked for two nights in a row at my 3400 foot site, ten miles south of my house in San Jose as the crow flies, but a good 45 minutes drive up the mountain. Yes, with the Cygnus region near the meridian, I *could* see it, with my 10" f/4.7 Dob. I was not at all convinced of the boundaries of the brightest parts of it after looking earlier at a long exposure monochrome image; but with an O-III or UHC filter, the luminosity in the region was distinctly different from the background, and I could see the narrow branching dark lanes vaguely. Not too bad, considering that the naked eye limiting magnitude the first night was about 7, and the second night about 6.2! Of course, this is the site where I have seen the Horsehead about forty times, even once with filtered 8x42 Carton binos. I took the laptop and kept this image on screen to make sure that I was looking at exactly the right star field -- http//gallery.rcopticalsystems.com/gallery/sharpless2_101.html -- scaled down and very dim so as not to blow my dark adaptation. All told, over two nights I must have spent about 3 hours on the nebula to make sure I was correct. For what it's worth, the Crescent nebula [NGC 6888]on the better of the two nights was VERY obvious, without a filter...)

I never received an answer so I can't relate any further impressions he may have had about his view of the nebula (which is one of the items in the 1959 Stewart Sharpless catalogue: which will confuse most people by listing the galactic coordinates; the correct equatorial coordinates are given here, depending on where you think the exact "center" happens to be; I used SIMBAD's by the picture above.) Item no. 2-101 is plotted on charts 8 and 9 of the Sky Atlas 2000, and therefore must be considered within reach of relatively modest scopes. Sometimes called the "Tulip" nebula (at least by amateurs), 2-101 has a general glow around two fairly bright stars, with distinctly darker areas jutting in, showing up vividly in this color image by Richard Crisp. The POSS plate above, however, is much more distinct than the paler glow evident in the eyepiece at either of my telescopes. One of the more interesting reports of a visual observation that I found on the Net is by veteran deep-sky observer Steve Gottlieb (who works in dark skies all over the western USA): "17.5": not seen with certainty at 100x without filtration. Using an OIII filter a fairly evident diffuse glow was visible surrounding a wide mag 7.5/9 pair... glow was fairly uniform ..." Mr. Gottlieb does not mention discerning the dark lane, which was very much evident to me in my 10" Dob at "the site". To confirm that, I have since then checked with my C-11: yes, I got an even better view, minus some of the light scatter of the cheaper telescope. The nebula's glow, barely evident even without a filter, was -- aided by an O-III -- surrounded by the dark regions, the one on the center-right, above, being more evident to the eye (reversed in my C-11's FOV.) Not bad, I'll claim, for a view just outside the third largest city in California! If you would like to try to make an observation, here are wide and narrow field finder charts.

Wide Finder Chart        0.5d Eyepiece View Chart: upright, correct

Early in 1997, when I still maintained the original "Waldee-Wood Astronomical Software" observing website (now taken off the web), there was a discussion of the faint galaxy Leo 1 on the newsgroup sci.astro.amateur that piqued my curiosity; so I viewed the galaxy at "my site", using an excellent 8-inch aperture f/5.2 photographic/visual scope that was a combination of efforts by Ron Wood, myself, and optical expert Carl Zambuto (who refigured the mirror and achieved a spectacular parabola whose accuracy was claimed by the Chabot Observatory's mirror-making specialist to be "surely better than 18th wave, our limit of measurement.") I used this scope for about a decade, and earlier -- with the original mirror, ground by Ron Wood -- many deep sky photographs were taken, some of which I have used in my "Eyepiece" program. (The scope, on its heavy German equatorial mount, may be seen here, protected from the blistering sun by a towel, in this photo, taken in the 1990s by Dr. Doug Hudgins: my scope is to the left, behind Doug's 17.5" Dob.)

That telescope replaced my older 'classic orange' Celestron C-8, and outperformed it by leaps and bounds, with the enhanced coatings I ordered for the primary and the expensive quartz diagonal. The inside of the tube was carefully flocked; but even so, there were the usual internal reflections that one experiences with a "fast" focal ratio scope using a standard four-vane spider. Thus, the instrument was not the ideal choice for viewing Leo 1, which is enormously faint -- and only 12 arcminutes from blinding Regulus (Alpha Leonis), a star that brilliantly shines at 1.35 apparent magnitude (one of the 25 brightest stars in the sky.) Glow from this beacon can easily wipe out any trace of faint Leo 1.

I haven't tried to see the galaxy recently (note: see update of new observation, below.) But my article about viewing Leo 1 (on the Google archive of the s.a.a. at this link) was posted for some years on our old astronomy website in the 1990s. Recently I have revised it with new illustrations, and have reposted it on our new website: click here for a complete report on viewing Leo 1. I have included a copy of the picture of Leo 1 that Mel Bartels obtained by means of a 6" scope and CCD in the 1990s (and which he permitted me to reprint in the original webpage article about the galaxy that I published shortly after, later in 1997.) As you can see, his telescope too had a diffraction spike caused by Regulus; I had to rotate my telescope to get Leo 1 "in between" the spikes in my FOV.

In my long report about a visual study I made at the mountaintop site -- which I do hope you will take the time to read -- I explained that with an 8-inch aperture instrument, "the galaxy was finally detected at the absolute outposts of dimness that could be perceived! No outer boundaries could be judged, and no image could be held for an indefinite period. It was necessary either to sweep the eyes continuously across the field (keeping the region generally averted) or gently to rock the telescope." Later in the observing session, the galaxy was seen with higher contrast, the sky darkness improving (as it always seems to do, well after midnight) so that I could definitely claim a good, solid observation rather than merely a self-delusion.

My C-11 would probably yield lower internal reflections than the 8" scope had, judging from many other comparisons I've made. I will try the object next spring, for sure! The photographic finder chart may be used at the eyepiece to identify field stars: you may wish to reverse the image before printing, according to the orientation as seen in your scope optics.

Update: On the night of 13 March 2007, with Leo 1 near the meridian, I used my C-11 telescope to make a test observation to see what I could make of it, the first time with this instrument. I carefully calibrated the telescope position on Regulus, and matched the star field seen with the screen display of my laptop computer's star chart program. At first, with my 21 mm Stratus eyepiece [113x, 30 min FOV] the galaxy did not seem to be visible. I tried the SkyGlow LPR filter and felt that I was starting to perceive it. I wrote that the "gx is inside a right triangle with 2 pairs of F stars", and made a drawing, based on the view in my 25mm Ultrascopic Plössl [87x, 36 min FOV, 3.2 mm exit pupil]: it agrees nicely with the position shown in this color image of Regulus and Leo 1 on the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" website. The galaxy was faint, and the SkyGlow filter seemed to help, but it was nowhere like my vivid recollection of the observation in the 1990s, using my 8" scope during summertime on a very transparent night, during which I spent much longer to make a careful scrutiny. Yet, I was thrilled to discover how little light scatter my C-11 has, compared either to my old 8" Newt, now gone, or to my current 10" Dob. Once you move a very few arcminutes away from Regulus, there is NO trace of the star's glow in the field, even with my 32mm 2" eyepiece. This scope has the lowest light scatter of any that I have owned, I suspect. Good design! -- 3/14/07, srw

Leo 1 webpage article by SRW.     Half-degree star chart.      Photographic finder chart: upright, correct - print out and use at the telescope (based on Mel Bartels image, used by permission.)

These two nebulae, IC-59 (top) being rich in the red wavelengths of hydrogen-alpha light, IC-63 (to the right) fainter as a bluish reflection nebula (as seen in this fabulous color image by Jerry Lodriguss), always eluded us at "the site" in the mountains north of Santa Cruz. The circumpolar constellations are usually washed out by light pollution unless there is heavy ground fog below the 3400 ft. altitude observing spot. Having failed to see them with amateur-sized scopes, Rich Page kept this in mind when I recorded the narration for the visitor's center of the Lick Observatory Shane telescope in the early 1990s, assisted by Rich at the controls of the tape machine, for we were both to be rewarded for our work by being given a private observing session with the historic Lick 36" refractor, operated by Tony Misch. Rich made up a list of objects to try for; I suggested Uranus, to see if there was any trace of cloud details, as had shown up on space probe photos (nope: it was just a blue-green blob, though bigger and brighter than in any amateur scope.) Among the objects chosen by Rich were the elusive nebulae IC-59 and 63, which are (as shown above) near the brilliant Gamma Cassiopeiae, a variable star that defines the middle point of the constellation's well-known "W" asterism, shining at an overpowering brightness that ranges from 3.4 to 2.2, guaranteed to wipe out any nearby faint details if the telescope suffers from any trace of internal reflections. The outpouring of energy from the star excites the gas clouds sufficiently that emission and reflection radiation are visible even as far as our Earth's distance of about 613 light-years. At the time, the star was to the northeast of the main lobe of San Jose light pollution; yet we failed to see even the slightest trace of the nebulosity in the great 36 inch scope.

After numerous tries over the years, always failing at "our site" in the mountains, I finally saw what I thought were the nebulae, using a lowly 4-inch f/10 reflector that had a c.1960 primary mirror made by Edmund Scientific, a scope that was put together decades earlier by my friend Norm Wild. When he quit up using it, he gave it to me. I rebuilt it, putting dark rich black velvet all around the long metal tube, and coating every exposed surface with low-reflectance paint used to blacken the insides of cameras. The small aperture did not gather enough light from Gamma Cas to blow away my dark adaptation; and the internal reflections were insignificant: I drew what I thought were the nebulae, at a dark sky site halfway down the Pacific coast of California; later, measured against a photograph, my drawing precisely resembled both nebulae: after years of trying, I had finally seen them (and I might add by using primary and secondary mirrors with the original coatings, over thirty years old, now slightly uneven and somewhat pitted: an object lesson for optical-quality fanatics.)

That was around 1999; and I am happy to say that during a moonless morning in late July, 2006, I once again caught them, my second viewing, at "the site". Ground fog had covered up most of the San Jose light pollution. Using my C-11, which has very low internal reflections, I viewed both nebulae, even more distinctly than in the 4" scope years before. I tested both the general LPR filter (SkyGlow) and the hydrogen-line filter (UltraBlock) by Orion, yielding better contrast. There is some general field glow in the region of Gamma Cas, which I have diminished in the modified image shown above; so to the eye, the nebulae do not stand out vividly: the background haze gradually brightens over two small patches near the star. I doubt very much if you stand a chance of seeing them unless you can spot stars by naked eye of 6th magnitude or fainter in the nearby region. And, be sure to get Gamma out of the field of view.

I have dealt with this object rather exhaustively in my "Horsehead Nebula Website, and with its observation in small telescopes in this particular article contained therein (see below the section on the astrophysics of the nebula.) After giving an account of a series of trials to see the Horsehead at "my site" in 1989/90, with four observers using a variety of instruments, I have started to add some recent experiences with it, in the last year, at the very end of the entire discussion. Experienced deep-sky observers will not be scandalized by our reports of detecting the dark nebula with 3 and 4 inch aperture instruments; but some may raise an eyebrow or two at my own observation -- not tried by my companions -- using a high quality 8x42 binocular aided by two Lumicon hydrogen-beta eyepiece filters! I haven't attempted this recently, not currently having access to a pair of those filters; and being more than 16 years older, approaching my dotage. But last winter I did see the nebula with a lowly, inexpensive Orion "StarBlast" 4.1 inch scope, a gadget that by itself costs a mere $169 (though I had to augment it with a hundred dollar high end ocular, and a Lumicon H-beta filter.) The view I obtained in my C-11, though -- despite the encroachment of human population in the last decade and a half -- was one of my all-time best. And recently, before dawn's twilight on 1 October 2006, a pitch-black sky background (afforded by deep fog in the valleys below) enabled me to see the dark cloud with full-on direct vision, a clear view -- not much inferior to a good monochrome photograph -- that took my breath away! I employed a 10" f/4.7 Dob, a 17 mm "Highlight" Plössl (yielding about 70x with 0.7 degree field and exit pupil of 3.6 mm), and a Lumicon H-BETA [TM] nebular filter: probably my third-best view at the site, out of more than three dozen occasions studying the object.

I must mention that the photograph above was done by my friend Ryan Wood, using prime focus on a Celestron 70mm aperture fluorite "Photostar" telescope on a Super Polaris mount, employing Tech-Pan 2415 gas-hypered film. When he did this splendid picture, in the late 1980s, he was fourteen years old: truly a talented and patient young man.

• Link to Iiro Sairanen's observation of B33 with an 18" aperture Dobsonian.

Recently I was leafing through Sky & Telescope magazine, and in the July 2006 issue came upon a marvelous amateur picture on p. 99 of the "Gallery": a fabulous image of a "bright" reddish emission nebula, NGC-2174, in constellation of Orion (about 13.5 degrees north from Betelgeuse.) That brought back a distant memory...

It was probably in the early spring of 1989 or the following year. I had been observing at "the site" with my unwieldy (and frankly 'lousy') Coulter 17.5" Dobsonian, a telescope suffering from a terrible primary mirror, barely acceptable for use on fuzzy extended objects, and not giving an aesthetically pleasurable view at that. Remembering as best I can (since I don't seem to have any existing notes) I would probably have been using an old copy of the "Atlas Coeli Skalnate Pleso", and a 30 mm eyepiece (which would have given a FOV of a bit more than 3/4 degree.) After the obligatory view of M-42 and the Horsehead nebula, I swept north. Eventually I came across an amazing sight: a strongly visible patch of nebulosity that almost filled the eyepiece field, not plotted on my chart; nor have I ever seen a citation of it by the legendary Walter Scott Houston, one of my important early references for deep sky objects. It was an unexpected, exciting catch. The next afternoon I called Rich Page in great anticipation, to ask if he knew what might be at the approximate locale that I described. He called back shortly: surely it was NGC-2174, as seen here in this fabulous Jerry Lodriguss color image. I probably had never noticed it before in a smaller telescope even though I might likely have seen the associated star cluster, NGC-2175, when sweeping up all the wonderful open clusters in the nearby region of Auriga. And, in winter, there are relatively few nights of ground fog, at "the site", to clear away the bay area light pollution. It took a large aperture scope to make this object distinct without a nebular filter.

The nebula is indeed plotted (chart 5) on the Sky Atlas 2000, successor to the older though simpler one by Dr. Antonin Becvar that bears some cartographic resemblance to Tirion's improved and more detailed version. Viewers of the nebula should use as wide a field as possible, as the catalogued diameter on the larger axis is 39 arcminutes, and it is very likely that a hydrogen-line nebular filter (UHC, UltraBlock, etc.) will improve the contrast. It certainly will not register to the live eye with as much detail and definition as in the POSS plate, above. But on my last view (October 1, 2006, in a dark sky aided by ground fog below) the nebula was a fabulous large glow in my 10" f/4.7 Dob, occupying about half the field width in a wide view provided by a 21 mm "Stratus" ocular (57x at 1.2d FOV) and UltraBlock filter. The photographer of the picture that jogged my memory, Barry Riu, is quoted in S&T describing the nebula as resembling "smoke and fire from a burning mountain." That is indeed aptly phrased.

On 23 July 1995, a comet was independently discovered in two nearby locales by southwestern USA amateurs Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. At first, an event only of interest to the usual amateur and professional astronomers -- and perhaps TV meteorologists, who always look for something to add as a chatty feature -- it gained focus from cometary authorities for its intrinsic properties (furthest-distant comet ever found by amateurs; very bright intrinsic luminance, the most vivid such object since 1976.) But soon, Comet Hale-Bopp was swept into international news-headline celebrity, starting with what seemed to astronomers to be either an ignorant blunder (at best) or an outrageous prank (at worst.) An alleged "amateur astronomer" named Shramek claimed he had taken a picture through his telescope, revealing a mysterious orbiting craft that was staying close-by (OOOoooh!!) Normally such silliness would evaporate almost instantly, but Shramek was featured on an interview in the nationwide night-time "Coast to Coast AM" show of Art Bell (who, at the time, presented typical subject matter that ranged little farther than conspiracy theories and new-age fancies. Indeed, compared to Shramek, the notorious "face on Mars" guy Richard C. Hoagland seemed like Professor Einstein...)

All of this would eventually become a nagging, painful thorn in my side: for about a day after the initial discovery, local San Jose comet hunter extraordinaire Don Machholz -- a friend of mine -- had received the news of the discovery direct from Tom Bopp; then phoned Rich Page, who called me. That night, I was up at "the site" with my 8" f/5.2 scope. Because of the notoriety of the events to follow, what would have been a pleasant but routine visualizing of the comet became instead a lifelong, vivid memory "etched in stone", an unforgettable moment.

I can recall everything about that night and following morning: the temperature, even what the brush smelled like in the still summery calm. The comet was not particularly obscure, near M-70; I don't think it took me more than 5 or 10 minutes to get the exact field. Indeed, it was a nice comet, one that was smallish but fairly bright and so well-defined that, even this soon after discovery, I wondered why no one had seen it prior to July 23rd. (Of course this is rather like the "100% certainty of hindsight", for that region of the sky is full of the puffiness of the Milky Way region, with lots of clumps of stars.) As I recall, the comet was just below the "imaginary lines" that are used by cartographers to trace out the "teapot" asterism of Sagittarius. The night was balmy, the seeing near-perfect. Even though I had no inkling of what was to come, being able to learn about, and capture, the comet so soon after its discovery was a rare privilege.

Though I wasn't searching for an alleged "companion" (that claim not yet being bandied about), I can say that there were no particularly anomalous looking stars around it: just a few in the range of 7-9 magnitude, and a LOT that were faint, fading out into imperceptibility (which would be somewhat dimmer than 13th magnitude in that particular telescope.)

I also observed the comet either the next night, or surely two nights later. The comet had moved; the stars around it were "normal".

In the next few months, I watched the object's progress, and so did my friend Rich Page. It was certainly going to be a fine comet, and we hoped that it would at last give the public a grand spectacle -- something surpassing the over-hyped return of Halley -- perhaps at least as exciting as Comet West had been in 1976. But, as recounted briefly in this Wikipedia report, and in more exhausting detail on Russell Sipes' SLO website, the Shramek allegations took the world of curiosity seekers and science ignoramuses by storm, after the Art Bell broadcast in November. I heard that, live; and was bursting with anger and frustration: not once in the many times I'd viewed the comet since July, had I seen even the slightest trace of the "Saturn-like object" with a bright roundish globe and extensions, as "imaged many times" by Shramek and diagnosed by foolish non-specialists, who did the usual pixel-prodding to try to dissect it, based on NO overall knowledge of astronomical imaging, telescope and CCD artefacts, or just plain common sense.

Meanwhile those of us who considered comets a "normal" but delightful part of our lives continued to enjoy Hale-Bopp for the real spectacle that it had become, if not the "exciting discovery of alien life". I posted a drawing to Russell Sipes' pages, which I include, somewhat cropped, above, done with a 26 mm Plössl ocular in a Meade 80mm refractor. The ion tail (not very often visible in other, fainter comets) was becoming an amazing sight, though the deep blue color did not register by eye in a small scope; you have to view a long exposure photo to see it well (as in Ron Richolson's Perihelion Portrait.) Hale-Bopp was clearly visible even at my house, in the light pollution of the Santa Clara valley, but with the same small telescope in the mountains, the sight in a wide field was something one could never forget.

On the morning I made the drawing, 13 February 1997 just before dawn, I estimated that the comet was at 22h 20m right ascension, and +23d declination; but for some reason, unknown to me now (drowsiness?) I printed "1996" on the picture; furthermore, I erred by approximately 2 degrees in right ascension, confirmed by working back with a starchart program using the current published orbital elements. What can I say, other than to quote Stan Laurel: "Ollie, remembah how bad ah used to be? Well...ah'm much bettah now!"

To round up the whole story: Hale and Bopp have become world-renowned, while Shramek is dead and forgotten. Although I was indignant about Bell's broadcast and his subsequent followups in which he was apparently hoodwinked into believing that both Lick Observatory and other professional astronomers had "confirmed" the alleged orbiting spacecraft, the terrible reality of how such "harmless fun" could impact the public finally sank in to all concerned, after the tragedy of the "Heaven's Gate" suicides. I wanted to embargo Art's radio show from my receivers forever, but Don Machholz (who had briefly advertised one of his comet books on Art's website) persuaded me to be patient with him; Don even managed to encourage Bell and Alan Hale to do a broadcast together, which I am happy to say heralded a sort of turning point in "Coast to Coast AM", in which Art Bell added real scientists to the lineup of interviewees: I have now had the pleasure, for some years, of listening to fascinating shows about cosmology, string theory, relativity, dark matter, biology and evolution, medicine, psychology, and other important scientific topics -- I can always skip the shows about "wolfmen" or "shadow people". And I contributed a tiny "debunking" of my own to Art's website, when I discovered "rods over Baghdad" on a Fox news broadcast, and diagnosed this so-called 'mystery' as being a video aliasing sampling artefact (unfortunately, their webmaster left out all my boring technical details, but did mention this on the C2C website in a nice little page.) I have occasionally shared email discussions with Art on various topics, and once called him via a ham radio phone patch while he was broadcasting in the 75 meter ham bands, to discuss the FCC and "BPL" (broadband over power-lines): as commercial broadcasting engineers ourselves, Art and I saw exactly eye-to-eye about this dreadful technology.

So, I have 'forgiven' the show for the controversy about the comet. It may have done some damage at the time, but perhaps we all grew up a bit. Some of the amateur scientists who were enraged into apoplexy about it years ago MAY, by now, be able to take these things a bit more lightly; and surely the show, host, and producers learned a thing or two about "unintended consequences."

And, in later years, Art seemed to improve (as far as real science coverage was concerned), and to leaven the diet of paranomal junk with fairly frequent interviews with genuine scientists (including astronomers.) In fact, I was so impressed at last that I wrote this article about his science-topic programs, but published it unpropitiously the week before he retired! Now, the "Coast to Coast AM" show is unmitigated garbage, I'm sad to say; but I enjoy listening to Art late at night on ham radio. I am so annoyed about the failure of George Noory and Ian Punnett -- his successors -- to put on genuine science topics in Art's absence that I have removed my tribute to Art from my "Full Moon Essays" menu. Hummmph!

One of the most heavily-covered astronomical events in the summer of 2006 was the near-earth passage of asteroid 2004/XP14, which was discovered by an automated search in 2004. The size is believed to be several hundred meters to a half-mile wide in diameter, but there are no closeup pictures from a space probe or satellite to confirm it. This "Apollo" object is considered "Potentially Hazardous" due to its orbit's closeness to that of Earth. Predictions suggested that it would pass near our planet, almost as close as the Moon's distance, on the morning of 3 July 2006; Sky & Telescope magazine posted three detailed charts prepared by Roger Sinnott as PDF files, plotting several pathways across the United States, since the proximity of the object would cause considerable parallax. Even local TV newscasts I saw made mention of the event; but since the visual magnitude of the object was probably going to be in the range of 11-12, it would not be a naked-eye experience. The occurrence coincided nicely with our schedule, so my wife Regina and I travelled to "the site" to be able to give it a shot. And, see it we did!

The image above is a small region of sky that is approximately where we acquired and began following it. There were very few posts to the newsgroup sci.astro.amateur of any visual success at sweeping it up in its long visible travel across the constellations that morning, so my wife and I cobbled together a quick report, posted a bit hastily and with a couple of minor mistakes (due to our exhaustion!) that we corrected in a followup. I have taken those posts and edited them, as follows:

Friends:
We started to look for the asteroid before midnight but it was too low, and there was still too much moonlight. We thought we saw it some time after it passed the faint cluster NGC 381, but did not become absolutely certain until about 9UT, or 2am local time. Using our 10" f/4.7 Dob, and a 21mm wide field eyepiece, we picked it up when it passed by SAO 11317 and watched it at varying magnifications until it passed close to SA0 11128, as the asteroid was approaching within 2d of NGC 7822 and about 1-2/3d of Cederblad 214: both nebulae so large and faint that it was difficult to see them in the 10" though they showed up with filters in a 4" RFT that we did not use to observe the asteroid.

Stephen searched for about a half hour starting at 11:30pm and simply did not find it along the path for Los Angeles in Roger Sinnott's Sky & Tel chart. We knew approximately how bright it would be and how fast it would go so when it finally became obvious later, very close to the predicted path, it seemed to be what we expected -- and another 5 minutes of viewing confirmed it with certainty.

At high power, it had a stellar aspect. Seeing was extremely good with good transparency. Defocusing slightly using a 6mm ocular (200X), its scintillation seemed slightly greater than -- and out of sync with -- close-by stars of approximately the same brightness. After watching this for about ten minutes, we tentatively concluded that it had a distinct period to the brightness variations: a sort of "blip blip...... blip blip...... blip blip....." a couple of times a second, as if it was tumbling. Was this "imaginary"? Or a variation in local seeing? Or really tiny changes in albedo depending on the rotation of the thing?

We never saw it enter the region of Ced 214/NGC 7822, because we diverted to the 4" to try to find it; we had set this up earlier to look at those nebulae. Going back and forth between the scopes, we finally lost the position and decided, since it was pushing 3 AM, to observe some other objects during the last hour before twilight, looking at NGC 7023, and a few galaxies and nebulae in the Cepheus region. Before putting away the scopes we observed the Pleiades, only perhaps 10d above the horizon, and were surprised to see how incredibly steady the seeing was, even that low: traces of fine filamentary sheen were seen around some of the brightest stars, with or without a Deep Sky filter.

Great night -- but too short! And we lost a good half hour of observing time on our private property site, at moonset, due to the unnerving cry of a too-close-by mountain lion, prowling about at 3400ft. elevation!

Regina Roper & Steve Waldee

The next day I sent an email to Roger Sinnott, thanking him for the charts: without them, we would have had NO chance of finding the small, faint object. He was kind enough to reply, indicating that "Yours is by far the most detailed report I've seen, and the first to mention rapid changes in brightness. That would be an important discovery if it turns out to be true, since an object as big as an asteroid can't rotate *too* fast without breaking up (unless it's made of solid stone or iron). I know some groups, as at Arecibo, were trying to observe it by radar. Those observations could shed light on its rate of rotation, but nothing's come out about that yet (at least that I've seen)."

Johnny Horne, who writes occasionally for S&T, posted a nice digital image in an article he wrote for the Fayetteville Journal, not now online, but another picture by him, and a QuickTime video, are available in a Sky & Telescope magazine link; and there is a wonderful page, with a time-lapse picture and a superb video, by Mike Fleenor, at this link. But, we still haven't heard anything significant about photometric measurements of the object determining rotation, nor of very many other visual sightings. (The closest corroboration of my impressions can be seen in the slight variations of luminosity visible in Horne's picture containing 4-second exposures of the asteroid's travel, on page 20 of the October 2006 issue of S&T.) I can certainly recall other such celestial events bringing out observers by the droves; what happened? If there are updates that we happen to see, corroborating or debunking our observations, I'll add them.

Regina at "the site": left, with dogs, looking for Perseids on August 12, 2006; right, looking into her Orion StarBlast 4-inch scope. It was underexposed so I tried to bring a little of the background up, yielding only a ghostly, fuzzy view of the back of her head and a shock of blonde hair spilling from the cap. For some better pictures of Regina, related to astronomy, click here, or here, where she is not blonde, but surprisingly a redhead. Hmmm. How did that happen?

I have been especially interested in the "Crab" Nebula, Messier 1 or NGC-1952, ever since coming on the first photograph, taken by Dr. Isaac Roberts with his 20-inch Grubb reflector telescope in Sussex in 1892, which I found in an old contemporary publication in the archives of the Lick Observatory astronomy collection at UC/Santa Cruz. At the time, I owned a 17.5" Dobsonian and figured that, under good sky conditions, I could see with it practically everything that Roberts had been able to photograph. And, at "the site", I did -- and more. For, using an Orion UltraBlock filter at an appropriate eyepiece exit pupil (4 to 5 mm), I could just barely detect a fine tracing of the filaments that are well known to modern photographers, appearing pale but standing out somewhat from the general glow of the gaseous cloud. The fine structure is shocking when seen in the recent Hubble Telescope portrait; to the eye, it is more subtle and smooth, rather like Lord Rosse's 1844 description using a 36 inch speculum metal telescope: "we see resolvable filaments singularly disposed, springing principally from its southern extremity, and not, as is usual in clusters, irregularly in all directions. Probably greater power would bring out other filaments..." (that and others are quoted here on this SEDS page.)

One of the finest images of the Crab by an amateur astronomer was recently published on the website of Anthony Ayiomamitis, who apologizes that it was done in rather sub-standard seeing (boy, I would like to see GOOD seeing, if this is an example of a poor Grecian sky!) Don't miss this one: and be sure to click on it to see the full-scale image.

The picture used here in this present discussion, above, is not from the Digital Sky Survey; rather, it was done by my partner in the development of astronomical software, Mr. Ron Wood. He used an 8" f/5.2 homebrew Newtonian on a Super Polaris mount, in a 25 minute hand-guided exposure with Kodak Ektapress 1600 film, and a Lumicon "Deep-Sky" general light pollution reduction filter; both the film type and filter gave the picture a greenish cast which I have not been able entirely to correct. However, the nebula has both hydrogen emission (green, red) and reflection (blue) components, hard to capture in proper balance with old film technology. A 4x6 color print was scanned and used in our program "Eyepiece"; but, sadly, the scanner available many years ago was only able to render a 256-color depth. So some of the fine filamentary detail that was just slightly apparent in the print did not come out. I have never seen the filaments in an aperture smaller than 17.5" though I almost talked myself into believing, once, that I saw them in my C-11 with an O-III filter at "the site" during very fine weather this past season; with averted vision I suspected that the mottled luminance had some structured clumps that could coalesce into fine streamers if there were just a tiny bit more light!

I saw nothing. Well, next to nothing, except for the background haze caused by millions of streetlights, and a star or two. The date was the winter of 1986, and the place was a clearing in the midst of some tall trees in front of the apartment building near downtown San Jose where my wife taught piano before we were married. I was staring intently into the ocular that had been inserted into the focuser of my 4-inch aperture Edmund "Astroscan" telescope, precariously attached to a camera tripod. I was trying to find the "Owl" nebula, M-97 or NGC 3587, to test a new product that I was supposed to write about for the Orion Telescope Company catalogue: a narrow-line hydrogen nebula filter, with the brand name "UltraBlock". Would it work as we hoped to advertise?

YES! With the filter, I got the first glimpse I had ever had FROM A CITY of the Owl nebula's faint gaseous halo. No detail; but a distinct gray faint oval glow, visible now that the brownish-yellow background luminance had been knocked way down by the filter's narrow passband. A huge success! I wrote a very enthusiastic "first person" report about viewing this and some other objects under nearly the worst possible conditions, truthfully described -- and truthfully enthusiastic. The product became a best-seller; but of course the market was already primed by competing filters released earlier by Day-Star and Lumicon.

A year or two later, my friends Rich Page and Ron Wood (and son Ryan) and I would go to "the site" to do a lengthy double-blind test of nebular filters, taking with us all the Orion products, including some that the quality-control inspectors had weeded out due to a somewhat weak amplitude response; and competing brands. We used identical oculars, putting in alternative filters; these were handed to an intermediary who received them with eyes closed, so as not to be able to detect the models. The eyepieces were inserted into the telescope focuser, and another observer (with back turned to avoid seeing the process) peered at the result. The last two parties did not have any way of knowing which filter was in use in each of the matched pairs of alternated oculars. The results of our test were summarized in general here, although I am not able to divulge a lot of proprietary details, such as the exact comparisons we obtained using a visual spectroscope, and the precise filter bandpass shape of all competing models investigated. Let us say, however, that really there was no consensus for any given type of filter, narrow or general purpose: not only did diverse objects look different, but each observer had a personal taste that varied. Each filter we tried worked well and yielded a very distinct improvement; even the "rejects" were so close in performance to "premium" ones that I lost a lot of my own prejudicial fussiness about "specifications", since real world eye views could not reliably and repeatably discriminate small differences.

The Owl nebula was one of the objects that we found most improved by the correct choice of filter: both the bandwidth and the passband frequency. Under hideous light polluted skies, an O-III filter can often help pry it out of the messy glow when nothing else will help; but the view is not exactly satisfying: at best you can claim, "I saw it!"

Under a dark sky, either a hydrogen or an oxygen filter will remarkably improve the shape and contrast and detail: for instance, the "eyes" of the Owl will start to stand out as two distinct dark pockets, given a reflector telescope of perhaps 10" aperture or larger (or a really fine 6-7" refractor.) The Owl received its moniker in 1848, Lord Rosse beginning his pioneering studies of nebulae with the world's then-largest telescope, the 72-inch leviathan. His most detailed drawing is utterly comical, and bizarre, looking like an anthropomorphized cartoon bacterium, even sillier than another Rosse drawing shown here (from an old 19th century astronomy book.) I have never seen it resemble this caricature. To me, with all the scopes I have used to view it (virtually every one I've owned except my first tiny refractor), M-97 is either merely a darkish oval smudge at worst, or at best something that resembles the image above: not exactly a photograph, but my re-creation, based on Ron Wood's image, as a simulated 'best eye-view' with a fairly large scope in a dark sky, using an appropriate filter and eyepiece exit- pupil.

I recently looked at it using my C-11 and O-III filter at "the site" when fog had closed in over San Jose. I was happy to see that what I evoked in this picture, back in the early nineties when creating our program "Eyepiece", was just about like the view in my modern telescope (though the rather bloated star cores in the simulation were instead perfect brilliant tiny points as seen in my Celestron scope's eyepiece.) If I took out the filter, there was just enough background glow to "wipe out" contrast and diminish the presence of the eyes: so one can still, despite the personal perceptions and their oddities, be impressed with what Lord Rosse thought he saw. After all, the great William Herschel himself discerned nothing of the details of the interior: he reported that "it is nearly of equal light throughout", being quite opaque and "nearly of an uniform intensity"; and his son John Herschel seems -- in his sketch shown here -- to have recorded individual 'specks' of light, similar to the view of a globular cluster. But of course, Rosse had done the damage. Once seen and described as an "owl", it would be forever perceived that way, as would its "eyes". Really, how many of us saw them back in the old days, before filters? I can't recall doing so, even with Rich Page's mighty 14" aperture f/6 Newtonian.

Interestingly, the central star -- rated frequently at 16th magnitude -- is somewhat more easily detected by eye, at least in my experience with very high resolution optics, than the elusive 15th magnitude star at the center of the Ring nebula, M-57 (it should be noted that the rating of V=16 is by no means universal; I have found figures ranging from 14 -- per S. W. Burnham -- to 12p -- via Heber Curtis -- to 13.2 according to Walter Koprolin quoting S. J. Hynes.) I saw the Owl's star recently in my C-11, though it was much smaller in diameter, and fainter, than the spread-out bright blob that resulted from Ron Wood's 20-minute guided exposure on hypered Kodak Ektapress 1600 (a now-discontinued professional print film, very green-sensitive.) I am sure that I also saw averted- vision traces of at least one of the other faint foreground stars, delicately visible in a modern color image such as this one on the Wikipedia page about the object, or in this very greenish looking Kitt Peak telescope photo. Yet, some other observers using large mirrors don't report seeing it. It makes me wonder about the seeing ("my" site has that exquisite laminar airflow!) and perhaps about the general fuzziness that occurs often when looking through a LOT of air with a large aperture.

The "Ring" nebula, Messier 57, is one of the most easily-distinguished items of the famous catalogue, visible even when city lights extinguish faint stars: I've seen it well at home with an 80 mm refractor in the heart of the residence of a million people.

But, the aspect of the object that continues to fascinate advanced amateur astronomers is the central star. Generally described as being "about" 15th magnitude, it would be quite detectable in good conditions with, say, a 10" scope at high magnification. However, two factors make it elusive: (a) the high surface-brightness of the milky luminescence of the nebula's shell: we look at the central star through it; and (b) an optical illusion caused at low magnifications, in which the viewer tends to perceive a brightness peak in the center of the ovoid shape of the glow.

Recently I came on a discussion thread in the Astronomy magazine on-line forum about the visibilty of this star. Two respondents made claims that were, to be charitable, probably mistakes (I won't call them "preposterous" since anybody can make a mistake; at least one of them might have been a joke.) It was asserted that the star was easily detected in a 90 mm aperture refractor, and a "4 inch telescope". The magnification specified was under 200x. I would rather not indulge in the temptation to outright DENY another person's alleged experience; let's just say that it does not jibe with my own, and allow for readers to do their own polling amongst other observers, and try it themselves.

But I could not resist posting my own comments (since the forum requires a user subscription I won't give a direct link to the discussion):

Re: Who Among Us Has Observed M57's Central Star?

This observation has, in my experience, been widely bragged about. Some of the people who have told me that they saw it were, however, probably making a mistake due to an optical illusion.

One fellow had just bought his FIRST telescope, a 13" Coulter Dob, and could *just barely* star hop to M57. Yet after looking at it a couple of times, he joyfully announced that he had seen the central star! I looked with him. At the magnification he was using, and with the substantial light gathering power of such an aperture, the interior glow of the nebula was really quite bright. At low power or with a smaller aperture scope the interior is darkish; with 13 inches of aperture it is really remarkably luminous, and would appear even *brighter* were it not for the contrast against the annular shell. We both "seemed" to see the central star; but I put in double or triple the power, carefully focused and it was GONE. The "star" was really just a perceptual illusion, a confluence of the interior glow of this region -- inside the shell -- seeming to have a sort of brightness maximum. If there is a real star there, higher power will tend -- given good seeing -- to make it more obvious, not less. Increasing the magnification caused it immediately to disappear. He tried, and then realized he was NOT seeing it.

Ten years ago or so, I obtained permission from Brian Skiff of Lowell Observatory to format a paper he had written, about a photometric sequence of stars in the region of M57, into HTML and to add some images taken from the POSS plates, with stars carefully plotted. I had that on my old website, which is not on the net; but various other people seem to have taken and modified it, and put it elsewhere. From time to time I turn it up. [I think it has moved about three times since I first wrote this article; as of summer 2008 it may be found here.]

Brian states -- and I agree with him from my experience -- that "With a large telescope (say a 24-inch) this is quite easy to do. But because of physiological effects in the eye, detection with minimal apertures can be problematic (an 8- or 10-inch telescope is required), with the eye sometimes showing a spurious brightening at the proper location even in quite small instruments."

At the time I formatted his paper into a popular web article, I had a high resolution 8" scope with a fine Carl Zambuto mirror; and after great difficulty was convinced I had seen the central star -- after dozens of tries. But it was much more obvious in larger 14 and 17 inch scopes. A professional astronomer friend of mine and I saw it nearly at dawn in breathtaking seeing in his large 17.5 inch Dob, and unlike another respondent in this discussion, we BOTH were independently rather surprised to find that it was distinctly a bit off-center from the *apparent* "exact visual center" of the interior. We did see the star and [did not mistake it for] one of the other two or three interior ones that could be glimpsed; the reason it seemed VERY slightly off center was, I think, because the brain's perception of the surface and varying width and dimensionality of the annular ring luminosity is quite different in an eye-view, using dark adapted vision, than when one looks at a long exposure photo.

And yet we also see here that one person finds it "exactly centered" while two other observers are both convinced that it is "slightly off-center", showing in the variation in human perception and judgment.

I obtained a Celestron GPS 11 scope just over a year ago and one of the first things I did with it was to try to see the M57 central star. A friend and I used 900x one night, and spent at least a half hour under a very steady sky -- and both failed. I tried again and again to no avail: frustrating, since I had distinct recollections of once getting it in that "perfect" 8 inch aperture Newtonian. But, early this morning, in a sky that was magnificently steady, at 3400 feet altitude just off the Pacific coast (perhaps 25 miles as the crow flies from Lick's Mt. Hamilton station) I *did* at last get it in the 11" SCT. I had a *fleeting glimpse* of not only the central star but also two others inside the annulus, including the visually brighter one (to the telescopic eye) that I'd usually get, even when failing to see the central star.

But, infuriatingly, the glimpse of the central star was IFFY. I was using about 700x and when I went up to 900, and down to 600, I never got it again. I went back to 700...and waited and waited. Finally I gave up. So, do you count a glimpse, for some fraction of a second, as *an observation*? Or, is it really "manufactured data", self-delusion, wishful thinking? Yes -- it CAN be seen in an 8 or a 10; surely, then in an 11 or 12. But unlike many other faint 'stellar appearing' small diameter objects -- such as 15th mag. PK planetaries that I can, and do, see time and time again; or faint field stars around familiar galaxies; this darned thing is incredibly frustrating, and infuriatingly elusive!

(The Horsehead nebula, compared to the M57 central star, is just "commonplace" to me now, something I can count on unless the winter skies are wretched. Wish I could say the same for the central star...) -- Steve Waldee

Contributors to the discussion whose observations I do accept were using such scopes as 20" high quality Dobs, and even observatory instruments like Lick's 36 inch refractor. I might add that among the instances were I failed to see it, even with such scopes as the marvelous Zeiss 12" refractor at Griffith Observatory, or the 40" Nickel telescope at Mt. Hamilton, it was probably due to the use of relatively low magnification to place the nebula aesthetically in a nice spacious star field, and to give its shell a high contrast. You don't WANT that to be able to see the central star; you should strive for the highest possible power, consistent with seeing conditions and the quality of your optics.

As to the issue of the "exact centering" of the central star: above left I have taken an image that Chuck Vaughn contributed to our computer program "Eyepiece", done in the 1980s with a Celestron C-14 and hypered Konica 3200 film. I greatly magnified the nebula, and stretched the central contrast. You will note that during this 15 minute exposure, the blue central star has been registered with a slightly off-center halo, indicative of seeing variations, with perhaps a secondary effect of very slight optical aberrations: perhaps a trace of field curvature or coma. Since the image scale, at f/11 with a "small" amateur telescope aperture and focal length, is miniscule on a 35 mm film frame, it is hard to quantify this with reliable accuracy. But, it looks slightly off-center to me. To check this with a virtually 'perfect' image of M-57, I took a Hubble photograph (credited to The Hubble Heritage Team -AURA/STScI/NASA), converted it to monochrome, reducing the number of quantizing levels to make the isophote steps more obvious to the eye, and rotated it to be about the same aspect as in Chuck's picture. You can see that the interior nebulosity luminance is not even: my theory is that this varies with different magnifications, exit pupils, telescopes, and observers: so at certain apparent sizes in a given eyepiece, the central star MAY appear centered; at other views, the changes in the background luminance and the edge of the annular shell may cause the star to appear a bit off-center. Well, it's my hypothesis, at any rate... [see 'update' section below at end of article for further information and possible corroboration.]

The coordinates above at the top of this discussion of the Ring nebula, resolved by SIMBAD on the Digitized Sky Survey search page, are for Messier 57 and not specifically the central star: but you will get almost exactly to that place, for the star that excites the gaseous shell is approximately centered in the interior of the planetary nebula. The image at the top of this section was done by me with the collaboration of San Jose amateur astrophotographer Charles Chew, who supplied his Meade DSI model imager; unfortunately it was taken down right in the center of San Jose light pollution "all wrong", as we did not have a telecompressor for my C-11 and had to use f/10 focal ratio, which resulted in very noisy and somewhat underexposed 5-second frames. About twenty were composited, reducing the noise a bit; then some enhancement was done to increase the contrast -- causing the star images to be rather bloated. A crisper professional color image, such as this one on an excellent SEDS page for the object, shows that the central star is slightly off-center when the exposure and processing are optimal. In mine, the overall bleariness and smeared quality is rather worse than the eye view of the object in a large-aperture scope in a dark sky.

Updates: A reader of these articles notified me of his own webpage, and on it I found an interesting picture of M-57. John Menke of Menke Scientific, Ltd. -- who operates his own "Starlight Farm Observatory" about 35 miles from Washington, D.C. -- writes on his Images page that he was "Stimulated by the excellent picture on the right by a well known astrophotographer [Benoit Schillings], I took the picture on the left with my 6 inch. Clearly the right hand picture is better, but the left hand shows that with effort you can still do good work with a small scope. Exposure was about 2 hours." The comparison image is shown here and is, of course, much better than my test picture with the C-11. It illustrates the frustrating paradox of being able to image, perfectly, the central star of M57 even with a small aperture scope, while at the same time you have virtually no hope at all of seeing the central star in an eyepiece, with the same instrument.

• Link to Jaakko Saloranta's observation of central star with Meade 12" scope.

• Furthermore, in October '07 I found a staggering picture of M-57 done by the team of Rick Gilbert, Jack Harvey, Steve Menaker, Steve Mazlin and Teri Smoot, accumulating over 50 hours of exposure time using the 16" Ritchey scope of the "Star Shadows Remote Observatory" (click here for this amazing deep image.)

When you examine close-up the middle region of the nebula, the central star looks off-center, just as I claimed from my observation in the 17.5 inch scope, discussed above! As far as I can tell by comparing with DSS images, the picture is rotated about 90 degrees counterclockwise from "north pole up". The central bright rim of nebulosity extends further to the NW (in the picture, shown toward the right-hand corner) than one sees in typical photos with shorter exposure, which creates the sensation that the 'emptier' central region is more oval than usual, with the central star further over to the E (top in picture) than one normally perceives. Surely this is the effect that my viewing partner and I were seeing with the large telescope in very clear, transparent sky conditions. In order to illustrate that I have created a tiny fair-use thumbnail version of the central region of the picture, and have used a yellow line to show the position of the central star with respect to the bright rim of nebulosity.

• Another M-57 observing challenge is to spot the faint star seen in the western side of the ring, as discussed here; the star is quite visible in the color image above. I have the vague recollection -- but no existing notes to corroborate it -- of seeing this star at least twice, in the late '80s with a 14" Newtonian, and in the '90s with a 17.5" Dobsonian, though I haven't looked for it since acquiring my C-11

• I was finally able to spot the central star of M-57, unmistakably, with my C-11 telescope: go to this astro-blog entry for July 7-8, 2008 where all the way at the end of the article -- if the link forwards your browser correctly -- I have included a short description of the magnification needed, and how it was perceived on this occasion. General information about the session (scope, time and date, weather) will be found at the beginning of the blog entry. Later, on 30 September 2008, while preparing to look for the faint planetary nebula Abell 74, I tested my sky conditions using the C-11, and was once again able to get intermittent peeps of the central star of M-57, at very high power: confirming my July 8th observation (documented in this blog report.)

Could this be the faintest galaxy that my C-11 scope can deliver to the eye, at least at "the site"? It's possible. I found it while looking through the region using a planetarium program that used the Saguaro astronomy club database, attributing to it a magnitude 16 rating. "C" is one of a cluster of galaxies related to NGC-7783, being the next to faintest one of the six. Alternate designations are PGC 72810 and Hickson 98C. As shown in the image above -- the POSS1 blue plate, a 15-minute square region centered on C -- the galaxy is even in a photograph a pretty inconsequential little "blip", measured at only 0.2 arcminutes' diameter. What attracted me to the task of visually viewing it was the faintness of the magnitude rating (16), but other sources give it as being as "bright" as 15.3. Whatever it may be, the surface brightness is low!. The main objects in the group, the overlapping galaxies NGC 7783-1-2-A, are pretty easily seen in my C-11, being an irregular, lumpy smudge that resembles the picture while being fainter to the eye. Using 466x on a calm summer night with superb seeing and transparency, I could trace out all three members. But "C" was a challenge!

I dug in my heels and spent more than 35 minutes on the task. First, I carefully synchronized my telescope pointing location with the onscreen display of my laptop computer, being careful to use my left (non-observing) eye, while keeping my right eye safely under an eyepatch. Next, I gradually increased the magnification of the field around NGC-7783, from a starting value of 87x up to 466. With a black cloth over my head, and taking breaks every few minutes to close and rest my eyes and to breathe deeply the cool night air, I finally saw the galaxy! To be certain, I changed oculars; then after observing several other objects in the constellation, I went back to the field and confirmed what I had seen. Yes: it was the faint "C" member, glimpsed along with extremely faint (c.16th magnitude) field stars that winked in and out as the seeing varied, right at the VERY edge of perception.

As one's perception of faint objects in a highly magnified narrow field gradually sinks in, as it did while I watched for "C", many fleeting details become obvious, including stars not plotted on any chart, and very irregular background illumination. It also helps to sweep one's eye around the field, and to tap or shake the telescope tube (all of which I had to do in order to be able to convince myself absolutely of the stable, repeatable position of the barely-seen tiny faint patch.) Once you do this, reliably, the next time you try to observe the object it will be easier: just as it was when, later, I went back for a confirming view. When I get my vision right to the depths of perception with a large telescope, I always feel a profoundly strong sense of being in true contact with the external cosmos!

On Monday 21 August 2006 I looked for this galaxy with my 11-inch aperture telescope at "the site" without any preconceived notions, having only seen it plotted as a screen icon in my computer planetarium program. I did check the diameter and visual magnitude rating in order to have an expectation of what eyepiece to use: it's about 1.7 by 1.3 arcminutes in diameter, being just slightly brighter than 13th magnitude. It should have been easy to acquire... and it was.

What was surprising, judging from the notes that I made, is that at 186x I felt that there was some structure though it was only subtly perceived, almost inferred, with averted vision. Did it have visible spiral arms, as I tentatively noted? YES! The photo I downloaded the next day -- above; field of approximately 10 arcminutes square -- clearly shows the details of this SBc type galaxy (with loosely bound arms.) Had I planned painstakingly in advance to observe the object, taking note of what it looked like in a photo and being aware of its type and shape, I would have prejudiced my eye and brain, which would then have tried to see these details. But, since I had no notion other than the general size and brightness, my perceptions of the shape were delightfully confirmed, helping me to have some trust in my first impressions and judgment at the eyepiece.

A diffuse glow of about 1.5 arcminutes' diameter, this planetary nebula in Scutum is often rated with an allegedly faint magnitude of 15, but it was bright enough to be seen without the aid of a filter, at least in my C-11 at "the site" during an observing session on 21 August 2006. With a hydrogen-line filter (Orion UltraBlock model) the nebulosity takes on a grainy, almost mottled appearance, at 186x. At lower power, using a 32 mm ocular yielding a wider field of 0.6 degree at 87x, the nebula is enhanced by means of an O-III filter, and with that combination the central region looks darker than the outer edge. At higher power with a wide field 21 mm eyepiece, the O-III filter helps one to perceive the nebular glow as being lumpy and slightly irregularly round.

The next time I looked for the nebula was on 28 July 2008, now using my 10" aperture Orion SkyQuest Dobsonian. I had quite forgotten the impression from two years earlier, though the number was vaguely familiar. The IC planetary is plotted on chart 125 (R) in the Uranometria atlas, in its rendering a tiny small oval just adjacent to a much larger PN symbol (for PN G 253-04.6, also known as K 4-8 or PK 25-04.1, a small and dim 'stellar' looking planetary, about 5 arcminutes to the southwest) I knew that the IC object was much larger but hadn't remembered seeing it in my C-11. While trying to identify the 'small' one I was distracted by the 'large' one, IC 1295, which showed up without any filtration at 200x. Just to make sure of my identification I tried filters and then made a small drawing of the spots around the 'blob', and found that with the SkyGlow filter I had certainly seen IC-1295 with quite excellent clarity -- though the PN G nebula wasn't one of my suspected candidates. Nevertheless, I felt rather good about seeing the IC planetary for a few hours: but then discovered at home on the Internet that my colleague Jaakko Saloranta has spotted it in his 3" refractor (see his "Scutum" page.) However, extrapolating from the sensation I had with the 10" scope, I believe that I might well on that occasion have been able just to detect it in my high-contrast 4.7" aperture refractor. It's well worth investigating!

The picture above, taken from the POSS1 blue plate, had so many field stars in this rich region that the nebula was hard to see; it was much more distinct in the live eyepiece view. I had to soften the photo's resolution and alter the contrast and brightness range to diminish some of the overwhelming star details.

This galaxy is a type S0, meaning that though it is categorized as being "spiral" in the Hubble classification system, it has no arms: it is lenticular, one of the most remarkable examples being the "Spindle" galaxy in Sextans. My impression of this galaxy, observed on 21 August 2006 at "the site" with my C-11, was that it had no visible detail, being (in my notes) "unbelievably faint". I had to shake the telescope tube to be sure I had really seen it, using an ocular that yielded 224x; lower power was unsatisfactory; all I saw was the bright central region. The discoverer, Marth, found it in 1864 with Lassell's historic 48-inch speculum metal reflector telescope on the island of Malta; the first NGC publication gave no magnitude rating, though modern observations suggest 14.4 visual, or 15.3 (blue, photographic.) The POSS1 blue plate, above, shows the galaxy (in the center) having a very faint oval extension on either side of the nucleus (the fainter galaxy to the right of center is UGC 12847, which wasn't plotted on my computer program and which I did not try to see: probably saving me lots of time, as it is extremely small and faint -- less than a minute in diameter -- having been discovered and plotted from this very Palomar survey plate.)

Noted deep-sky observer Steve Gottlieb finds that NGC-7787 is "extremely faint" even in a 17.5 inch telescope in a very dark sky; so I am glad I was able to see it using a smaller scope, not far from San Jose city lights!

I enjoy the challenge of the monthly celestial tour in each "Deep Sky Wonders" column by Sue French in "Sky and Telescope" magazine. She observes in what she describes as a "semi-rural" northern New York sky; judging from her results with scopes of the same aperture as some of mine, her venue might be a little darker than typical nights I have at "the site" here on the California coast. Thus, I was particularly hard-pressed to discern a faint, small object in her October 2006 article, "Return of the Little Fox": the 1-arcminute nebula NGC-6813, which I had never before observed. The image shown here is about 12 arcminutes square, taken from the POSS-1 blue plate and further modified by me to reduce some of the faint stars that were not apparent by eye in the view with my 10" aperture f/4.7 Dob, on a night (23 September 2006) with moderately good seeing but an absence of lower elevation ground fog: perhaps naked eye stellar magnitude limit of about 5.8 to 6 magnitude in the region. The star field was relatively hard to zero in on, not using my GOTO scope and having only the sparse plot of the Sky Atlas 2000 to guide me; though close to the area of Albireo, the stars immediately surrounding the nebula are, in a moderate power eyepiece field, in the range of 9th to 12th magnitude and fainter. An upright/correct image finderscope helped enormously, as did my calibrated Telrad finder scale. With a 6mm focal length Orion "Expanse" ocular, yielding about 200x and a field of view that was slightly wider than this image, the 'tiny' nebula was at the very threshold of detection, not really aided by a filter since the exit pupil was too small. At lower power -- which would have made the use of a filter more practical -- the nebula was simply not seen at all, nor even really "imagined" by wishful thinking.

But, two nights later I repeated the observation, using my more efficient C-11 (which has high transmission coatings on the corrector plate, and high reflectance coatings on the mirrors.) What a difference! The nebula was unmistakable using my favorite 'moderate' power ocular for this scope -- an Orion 21 mm Stratus -- and despite the lack of light pollution- reducing ground fog below my observing site, the bright core of nebulosity was very distinct, an UltraBlock nebular filter not being particularly helpful at all in improving my view of the emission nebulosity. Perhaps, if anything, the SkyGlow general LPR filter assisted in improving the distinctness. My first view, earlier, with the 10" Dob yielded a tenuous observation not as definite as Wes Stone's comment about seeing it with his very similar scope (found in his observing log entry for July 8/9, 2003.) Of course, by eye NGC-6813 is more tenuous and faint than as depicted in the Palomar telescope exposure; even by using averted vision, my perception of the nebula (in the 10" scope) was less distinct than as shown in Wes's sketch. But, in the C-11 I had the definite impression of the shape that Wes recorded, and then some: it seemed further extended out toward each of the two fairly bright inline stars than in either the Palomar plate (above) or in Wes's drawing. Seldom have I seen a more dramatic demonstration of the differences between my two largest telescopes!

• Links to Iiro Sairanen's sketch with 16" scope, and Eric Graff's drawing with 6" scope.

The next time you want to show someone an "impossibly faint" galaxy with a 10 or 11 inch aperture scope, try this barred spiral galaxy, rated according to the revised NGC figures as being either 15.2 visual magnitude, or 16 (blue, photographic.) Shouldn't be visible, right? Especially not in a sky that suffers from the glow of the streetlights that support the night time activities of a million people within a 15 mile radius. Wrong! On 23 September 2006 I noticed this object in my computer star chart and noticed the faintness and 'tiny' angular diameter of just 1.2 x 0.4 arcminute, and thought, "well, stranger things have happened, and I've seen 'unviewable' faint galaxies before with my C-11. Here goes!" I slewed to it while it was situated in a region of sky that was a bit darker than two surrounding light domes from the San Jose and Santa Cruz areas, which paid off: I saw the galaxy immediately, with no ambiguity at all. The only difference between my eye view, and the Palomar POSS-1 blue plate image above (12 arcminutes square) is that the central region was fainter, without having nearly as distinct and bright a nucleus. Its position angle and cigar shape were easily discerned. Go for it! This galaxy is an object-lesson that should discourage you about being too pessimistic about your scope's "theoretical" limiting magnitude, and the potential darkness of your observing site.

This is an exquisite view in a telescope with sharp, crisp optics (like, ahem, my Celestron 11.) The large diamater of 7 arcminutes means that this 12th magnitude object is spread out and very faint: in fact, I was surprised that it showed up so well, during 23 September 2006, a night when the seeing was steady but my high altitude observing site suffered from skies with greater than normal light pollution: it was hard to hold 5.2 to 5.5 magnitude stars with direct vision. Yet, in the FOV of an excellent Orion "Stratus" 21 mm eyepiece, the cluster was a splendid apparition: my notes recorded that it was "like breath on a cold window". In an 11-inch aperture scope, the numerous stars of this cluster (15th magnitude and fainter) are not distinctly resolved, but to my eye the surface was grainy, not at all smooth and diffuse. A drawing by Bill Ferris, in his overview of the Herschel objects (the cluster is No. 400) seems to me to be quite apt; but no "negative" depiction, nor even a photograph, such as the Palomar POSS-1 blue plate above, can render the delicate sensitivity of the sparkling sight I beheld by eye. (Note: the Digitized Sky Survey/SIMBAD 'resolves' the position of the cluster to be a bit offcenter, visually, on the Palomar picture, which I cropped and re-centered. Are there yet fainter stars here that seem to move the cluster's center, determined spectroscopically if not visually?)

By eye, with any kind of amateur telescope, you are NOT going to see what Richard Crisp has captured in a 14.5 hour multi-band CCD exposure! Nor will this faint nebula look even as distinct as in the Palomar POSS-1 red plate that I cropped and processed (30 minutes square) to the left. Since the eye is not quite as overwhelmed by the rich color of Crisp's image, the monochrome wide-angle picture shown here seems to me to be more comprehendable. At my site near San Jose, none of the large faint oval loop -- the "squid's tentacles" -- could be discerned in the narrow field of view provided by the long focal length C-11; but a dense, narrow interior region of Sharpless 2-157 -- an emission nebula -- could be perceived, along with a nice wavy trace -- circled in this picture -- using an UltraBlock filter and my 21 mm wide angle ocular: similar, though somewhat more tenuous, to the portion of the Veil nebula that is seen near 52 Cygni.

The narrow field of my C-11 is not ideally suited to an examination of this series of gas clouds; use a 'richest field' type in a very dark sky, and you stand a chance of seeing something that begins to resemble a monochrome photograph; charts linked below might help you locate it. At least I saw a part of the nebula, not far from my home in the Silicon Valley!

Addendum: In my original report, I neglected to give the date of the observation and to quote pertinent details in my logbook. The nebula was observed on the night of Thursday 24 August, 2006. I wrote, "Sh2-147: in C-11, saw with 21 mm Stratus [133x, 30 minute FOV, 2.1 mm exit pupil] & UltraBlock, sections near a chain of 4 * from the center. Looked a bit like Veil Neb. Invisible w/o filter. Central region better w/O-III."

For those of you who are interested in imaging, be sure to read Chuck Vaughn's article "Going Deep with a DSLR" (pp. 97-102, November 2006 Sky & Telescope) featuring his portrait of Sh 2-157: it was a pleasure to read, a week after I'd been trying to study the object by eye! This prompted me to exchange a series of emails with Chuck about the object and other such faint celestial phenomena. "Good luck at actually seeing SH2-157," he wrote. "I think it's well known that experienced observers are able to see more than non experienced observers. It's a learned and practiced skill like anything else. Good luck with your quest to see these very faint nebulae."

UPDATE, June 2007: Don't miss this fabulous wide-field digital image of the region (please note that it is an inverted view, with north to the bottom and east to the right), made with a Takahashi 90 mm astrograph by D. J. McCarthy, and set up with a mouse-over identification function to label the numerous objects adjacent to Sh 2-157, including a planetary nebula; NGC-7635 known as the "Bubble" nebula; emission nebula NGC-7538; and M-52.

A sometimes-overlooked item is the open cluster NGC-7510, about 48 arcminutes to the NW of Sh 2-157: a marvelous object that was the gem of my observing session of June 15, 2007 with the C-11. Consisting of a distinctive detached wedge shape of at least two dozen fairly bright stars, invested with a slight bit of nebulosity and a darkish region to the east, NGC-7510 may be seen here in a sketch by Jaakko Saloranta. My observation was done at 4:25 am just as morning twilight was breaking, which diminished the light and dark nebulosity; but the stars were exquisitely rendered in a nice, spacious 18-minute field, at 254x, using my Knight-Owl 11mm ultra-widefield ocular: no photograph I've seen can match the beauty of a live view! Then, almost week later on the early morning of 20 June 2007, I observed the ob