Autumn Favourites

29 September 2021, 20:30 – 22:45 (BST)

Seeing: Poor

Transparency: Average

Conditions: A cool, somewhat chilly night; gusty to begin with, but the wind dropped off fairly quickly. Low patchy clouds passing overhead (like fluffy icebergs), joined later on by high hazy clouds (all coming from the west). The sky wasn’t great and the moon was due to rise at 23:00, but with the forecast not looking good for the coming nights I figured I had to make the best of what I had.

After warming up with a look at M15 (at 133x), I popped in the OIII filter and had a somewhat optimistic search for the nearby planetary nebula NGC 7094 (using an article in the November 2018 S&T as a guide). It’s not plotted in the PSA or SA 2000 – and perhaps with good reason; I couldn’t see any trace of it.

I thought about swapping the Nagler for the Ethos to give myself a better chance of finding it, but I didn’t want to waste too much time on a single (very faint) object, so I pushed the scope up to Cygnus to drop in on an old favourite.

Veil Nebula, SNR, Cygnus

133x + OIII filter. 133x is really too high a magnification for this object, but quite a lot of structure was visible in both arcs, including the brighter edges of the Western Veil, and the “talons” extending from the Eastern Veil.

Before leaving the Veil, I tried a quick experiment: removing the OIII filter and holding it over the eyepiece of the 9x50 finder. The two arcs were just about visible using this method, but they were extremely faint – nowhere near as good as the view through the TV60 (15x + filter).

A quick look at NGC 7331 (Pegasus) confirmed that the sky (the part of it that was clear at least) was much better than it had been on 7 September, so I went after some galaxies before it got too cloudy.

NGC 7457, galaxy, Pegasus

133x. I couldn’t remember if I’d seen this one before (turned out I had), but it was fairly easy, showing as a soft oval glow which was brighter towards the centre. Suggestion of a stellar nucleus with averted vision. Two faint 12th magnitude field stars to the south; three brighter ones to the east.

NGC 7662 “The Blue Snowball”,  planetary nebula, Andromeda

133x. (A quick look before tackling galaxy NGC 7640.) Small and very bright, with a distinctive blue-green tinge; it almost seemed like it was sparkling. Even at 133x I could still see a hint of the darker core.

NGC 7640, galaxy, Andromeda

133x. Very faint streak of light, aligned roughly north-south, and “encaged” in a triangle of 11th magnitude field stars which make seeing the galaxy harder than it should be. An easy one to overlook; I can appreciate now why I had trouble spotting it before. The brighter core seemed “clumpy” with averted vision, with two points of light popping in and out of view. Reading about this galaxy later in NSOG I learned that one of these points is a magnitude 13.5 foreground star.

The advancing haze brought the galaxy-hunting to an end, so I pushed the telescope south for a look at Jupiter and Saturn. Sometimes a bit of haze can improve planetary viewing, but not tonight. The seeing was consistently poor with only coarse details visible.

I had expected to pack up at this point, but the sky had cleared over Cassiopeia and Perseus, allowing time for a few bonus objects.

NGC 7789, open cluster, Cassiopeia

133x. Another old favourite. Rich, large cluster with stars arranged in spiralling “petals”. As noted on previous occasions, the wider field of the Ethos gives the best view of this cluster.

There's an interesting (and very close) double nearby in the shape of Sigma Cassiopeiae. Worth revisiting at higher magnification on a night with better seeing.

M76, “Little Dumbbell Nebula”, Perseus

133x. North of Phi Persei. Easy at 133x despite its reputation, with the bi-lobed structure immediately apparent. The seeing wasn’t good enough to pick out the knots in the brighter lobe. Orange 7th magnitude star in same field 12’ to ESE. With the OIII filter the nebula seemed a little more boxy, with the faint outer loops just about visible with averted vision. The northern one was a little easier to see, but appeared patchy and discontinuous. 

Gamma Andromedae (Almach), double star, Andromeda

171x. Another favourite to round off the session. Golden primary (west), indigo-blue secondary (west); one of the most beautiful double star systems in the night sky.

Also of note: two medium-fast meteors after 10pm, both of similar brightness and both travelling on similar east-to-west trajectories about 10 or 15 minutes apart. Sporadics, or perhaps a pair of Southern Taurids?