Lurking In Lynx...

Instead of freezing and becoming a statue at the LAAS site in Lockwood valley on Saturday night, 1-28-17, I observed in front of my moderately light polluted home and, to my surprise, I had a pretty decent night.
First up, observations in Lynx were great! Check out the galactic rocket ship known as NGC 2419, a globular cluster which has a true space velocity greater than the escape velocity from our galaxy at its location. It's looks like a comet face-on without a tail and it lies beyond the Magellanic clouds:
http://observing.skyhound.com/archives/feb/NGC_2419.html
After chasing down this one, I chased after a bear as well. The bear-paw galaxy, NGC 2537, is a neat object in Lynx, definitely better under dark sky conditions but still impressive in my 16" scope with broadband filter and a 10mm ethos eyepiece:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2537
Pop up the power and light up your scope with the photons from NGC 2683, a fine edge-on galaxy with a magnitude of 9.8:
https://dso-browser.com/deep-sky/3629/ngc-2683/galaxy
A bit more challenging is NGC 2782, an 11.6 magnitude galaxy with a stellar nucleus:
https://dso-browser.com/deep-sky/3733/ngc-2782/galaxy
Looking for halos? Check the Abell 779 galaxy cluster. The brightest member, NGC 2832, at magnitude 11.9, appears brighter than that at the eyepiece:
https://dso-browser.com/deep-sky/3789/ngc-2832/galaxy
I rounded-out the evening with fairly decent view of Thor's Helmut in Canis Major and now that Ursa Major is climbing back into the sky, my perennial favorites, M81 and M82 were beautiful in the view...
Happy hunting!

Hi Rod, Thanx for the list, descriptions, and Lynx links! I'm photon-starved for snow and clouds lately, another week forecast. I sold off the 29 and delinquent in replacing it with the 36 (in crates). But the 16-inch binos would of course be perfect for these targets and just 50-yards up the hill behind the house (where I'm sitting now). I intend to chase those targets down and report back. Tom

Rod Kaufman said:

Instead of freezing and becoming a statue at the LAAS site in Lockwood valley on Saturday night, 1-28-17, I observed in front of my moderately light polluted home and, to my surprise, I had a pretty decent night.
First up, observations in Lynx were great! Check out the galactic rocket ship known as NGC 2419, a globular cluster which has a true space velocity greater than the escape velocity from our galaxy at its location. It's looks like a comet face-on without a tail and it lies beyond the Magellanic clouds:
http://observing.skyhound.com/archives/feb/NGC_2419.html
After chasing down this one, I chased after a bear as well. The bear-paw galaxy, NGC 2537, is a neat object in Lynx, definitely better under dark sky conditions but still impressive in my 16" scope with broadband filter and a 10mm ethos eyepiece:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2537
Pop up the power and light up your scope with the photons from NGC 2683, a fine edge-on galaxy with a magnitude of 9.8:
https://dso-browser.com/deep-sky/3629/ngc-2683/galaxy
A bit more challenging is NGC 2782, an 11.6 magnitude galaxy with a stellar nucleus:
https://dso-browser.com/deep-sky/3733/ngc-2782/galaxy
Looking for halos? Check the Abell 779 galaxy cluster. The brightest member, NGC 2832, at magnitude 11.9, appears brighter than that at the eyepiece:
https://dso-browser.com/deep-sky/3789/ngc-2832/galaxy
I rounded-out the evening with fairly decent view of Thor's Helmut in Canis Major and now that Ursa Major is climbing back into the sky, my perennial favorites, M81 and M82 were beautiful in the view...
Happy hunting!

Oh come on, just because there is a lot of snow on the ground, cold and windy, where is your sense of adventure?