It was an exellent time at equeleus observatory (as always)
tonight. Roland took note of all the objects we observed and
will hopefully annoy all the people who couldnt come out
to play, but wanted to, with a detailed, yet lyrical and compelling,
observing report.
I'll just mention one object we were trying to observe: copland's
septet. A little cluster of 7 galaxies each about 14 to 15
magnitude. We all saw 6 components. There was some question
as to where the 7th was. I thought I saw someting at 12:30 or
1 oclock relative to the reference star (an 11.7 mag star near
the center of the cluster). Roland thought me might have seen
the 7th component at about 11:30. We both thought mystery 7
was close to the reference star.
It turns out that we did see 6 components in the right place. But
both Roland and I were useing "averted imagination" on the
7th which, in reality, is nowhere near where Roland and I
were seeing things.
The 7th component, I would guess, is ngc3751 and it would have been
about 8 arcminutes away to about 10 oclock.
This is based on an image I downloaded from the Palomar digigal
sky survey and overlayed on Guide 6.0's starmap. Have a look:
Sorry about the pea-soup colored backgroud. Guide 6.0 seems to
have buggy screen-snapshot code.
It was fun. We were sure seeing things.
Clear skies and many photons.
-ad
