Session report:
This partly successful session was coming to me after a long time
indeed, where I got to see my first new DSO or specifically speaking first
new galaxy (but very unfortunately, unconfirmed) after an impatient long
wait of around 9-11 months!! Five of us reached Hosahalli, our usual
sky observing site 70 km north of Bangalore city, and once again under
cloudy skies in positive hopes of clearance. The observing duo of Akarsh
and Me, along with Pavan, Anindita and Akarsh's IIT-Madras friend Sri
Nidhi left Bangalore pretty late by 4:00pm, and surprisingly made it to
Dodballapur at 5 pm just in time for the bus. We had quite some luggage
with us, they all managed to climb inside the bus and I was left behind
with Akarsh's bag containing bed spreads, unable to get inside. I was
assured by some people that I would get the next bus at 6:30 pm, and now
it was 5:30pm, I knew I had to keep standing alone for one hour doing
nothing.
I got the bus on time and luckily a seat too. When I reached Halli by 8:00
pm, the school's 8" f/8 equatorial scope was setup and the observers were
just awaiting clearance from the completely hazy clouds. We spread our bed
sheets in the big school ground, and removed our star charts and other
belongings. This time Akarsh had brought a very important and special tool
required for observing : Sky Atlas 2000.0 laminated field edition
charts. This observing star chart was a superb replacement on-field for
Cartes software, incase you did not have a laptop for it. It showed tons
of objects, lots of galaxies, which was my main focus for the day. Also
was the focus on 2 new periodic comets which I was determined to see; 46/P
Wirtanen and 8/P Tuttle.
Observations:
First about the Geminid meteors, the highlight of the night, which were
peaking close to that date. We had our good share of meteors. The time we
observed meteors from around 9pm to 2am in clear skies, we counted
approximately 85-90 meteors! The rest of the time we could not observe due
to bad weather or sleep. This shower produced some bright meteors, and
many faint small ones. Nearly half of them were around mag 2 or brighter,
and fireballs. The best meteor of the night I should say was an exploding
one which was bright green in color and estimated at -8 magnitude! This
one just fell down towards the Southern horizon and when it totally
disintegrated, it lit up that region of the sky, like a firecracker!!
GALAXIES:
To me the first new object of this season was an open cluster. Akarsh
found one new open cluster in Gemini, NGC 2420 which he just stumbled upon
while finding Eskimo Nebula and pointed with the telescope. I later on
re-observed it with the 10x50 binoculars. It was very small and condensed.
I thank Akarsh for making me get this new open cluster.
With the huge Sky Atlas 2000.0 charts and it's plethora of galaxies,
Akarsh and me had a hard time selecting which galaxy to observe, there
were just too many.. Anyway I randomly selected one, to re-begin my first
galactic observation after a long spell. My eyes fell on one near the
Fornax group of galaxies, at IC 2006. An IC catalog galaxy as my first
choice would have been sure difficult, but I was somehow feeling "lucky"
this time for hunting galaxies. I found the reference triangle of stars in Fornax and scanned that region for something faint and small. After
sufficient staring at the right place, I luckily sensed something very
small, circular and faint. I called Akarsh my mentor, for confirmation, who with his
ever sensitive and experienced eyes verified my finding. This galaxy just
discernable; I was thrilled after the confirmation! My 234th recorded
galaxy...after the 233rd one some time earlier this year...wow!!! I
am a deep-sky observer who belongs to that elite group of sky-aficionados
who get excited on seeing the faintest object...the "more fainter" the
object, the more hyper and elated we get!!
I tried lots more galaxies in the Southern sky, but all in vain. Selecting
gals from the star chart was like...well...going on a blind date; you did
not know how the gal mentioned there was (I mean what magnitude), hundreds
were just depicted but none listed. I did not know whether I was searching
for a 11th mag (visible) or a 12th mag (non-visible) galaxy. Anyway I gave
a try at quite a few of them.
I got my second galaxy, and what misfortune, I did not note it's name even
though I drew the star field! NGC 2325 was my third galaxy which I "had"
to get confirmed from Akarsh, and whew...this was more fainter than the
first one! Illusion is the best word to describe their appearance. I drew
the star fields of these 3 galaxies, and finally none matched Cartes du
Ciel software for verification. I sadly have to give another attempt at
them, however I would like to include them in my list this time.
COMET HOLMES:
Comet Holmes was unusually splendid, this time not at it's brightest best,
but the faint very large glow of it really excited all of us. We could
have gone staring at it. I estimated it's diameter with binoculars as
nearly 1 degree!! (approximate distance between the stars 39 Delta and 37 Psi Persei) I wonder how important this comet has been these months, and
what a splendor it still is visually from a dark site.
Speaking about new comets, I was once again, not destined to see
the 2 new comets I was aspiring for. Well this has been happening to me
since the past 4 years each time!! Wherever I go, comets get away and when comets
are there I just cannot get to observe them! This time I could not
observe the 8th magnitude periodic 8/P Tuttle because of the continuous
haze and clouds in Northern sky (and everywhere else it was relatively
clear!). And I missed out another periodic, the 10th magnitude 46/P Wirtanen because first I went to dinner when the sky was clear in that
region, and then got clouded when I had come out. Maybe...some other
time...I can only pray.
Trip back:
We all slept out in the open from 2:30 am or so onwards. Very heavy and
layered fog from nowhere had entered the scene, and it meant wrapping up
our observing session. We had a good sleep, atleast me. But Akarsh was
shivering his body off and could not sleep most of the time...I've never
seen him suffer in the cold this much, all due to lack of protective
clothing.
We returned the next dawn, early at 6:30 am catching the second bus. We
reached Dodballapur and from there came to Bangalore city. We had
breakfast together at Shanti Sagar in R.T. Nagar, close to Akarsh's home.
Everyone dispersed to their respective locations by 10 am, and I stayed on
in Akarsh's house till afternoon. It was a sort of good coming back to the
night sky for me, and now I am awaiting my next session wherein I "really"
confirm new galaxies. :)
