Last Friday I took a good advantage of a clear weather of the last dark night of the Moonless time. I went to my dark place (I'm beginning to find that addictive) to look at open and globular clusters in Lepus, Canis Major and Puppis that culminate very low at my latitude: M79, NGC2362, M93, M47, and M46. The winner was of course 2362 with its Tau CMa in the middle, but the others were beautiful too - I wish they were higher.
After that I looked at NGC1275 - an active Galaxy in Perseus cluster some 230,000,000 light years away! Mind blowing. It looked as a small, dim, grey fleck between two magnutude 11.8 and 12.3 stars. There was something vicious in its appearance - a galaxy eating another galaxy, a black hole creating enormous jets, seen at this huge distance. A good chart is a must for finding this galaxy.
Then it was time for Rosette. I could saw "something" with my naked eye where it is supposed to be; after checking in the telescope I decided that it was the central cluster, NGC2244. Then I tried to look with the naked eye through the UHC filter - the cluster became dimmer, but the glow became bigger - I'd say as big as the Moon. The Rosette blinked! In telecsope at 22x the nebula could be seen without filter. With the filter I could see the central hole, and there was more both of nebulosity and of the hole to NW.
An excellent night! Now I face two weeks of clouds/Moon/double star observing.
Dmitri
After that I looked at NGC1275 - an active Galaxy in Perseus cluster some 230,000,000 light years away! Mind blowing. It looked as a small, dim, grey fleck between two magnutude 11.8 and 12.3 stars. There was something vicious in its appearance - a galaxy eating another galaxy, a black hole creating enormous jets, seen at this huge distance. A good chart is a must for finding this galaxy.
Then it was time for Rosette. I could saw "something" with my naked eye where it is supposed to be; after checking in the telescope I decided that it was the central cluster, NGC2244. Then I tried to look with the naked eye through the UHC filter - the cluster became dimmer, but the glow became bigger - I'd say as big as the Moon. The Rosette blinked! In telecsope at 22x the nebula could be seen without filter. With the filter I could see the central hole, and there was more both of nebulosity and of the hole to NW.
An excellent night! Now I face two weeks of clouds/Moon/double star observing.
Dmitri
