OR: Golden State Star Party
by Steve Gottlieb
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Last week I spend 5 nights at the Golden State Star Party (GSSP) on the Albaugh's Frosty Acres ranch, located in the northeast corner of the state on the Modoc plateau. I’ve
attended all 11 of the previous GSSPs at this location since 2008 (as well as nearly all the earlier versions at Lassen NP and the Shingletown airstrip) and always look forward to
getting together with friends under dark skies in a great location.
I believe attendance this year was about 400 (from California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Texas and ?), spread out over a fairly large cow pasture. The row I was set up on was packed with a number of large telescopes, including Howard Banich's 32-inch, Rick Linden's 28-inch Webster and Bob Douglas' 28-inch Starstructure. The two best nights of the star party were Tuesday and Wednesday (first official day). Clouds arrived after midnight on Thursday, so we only had a good half-night before the skies became too murky. Then after a mostly cloudy Friday night, skies were clear until late on Saturday night. Afternoon temperatures soared a few of the days (mid 90's?), though I generally stayed cool in a motel a couple of miles away in Adin. But there are several attractions in this area of the state to escape the heat including Lava Beds National Monument, Lassen NP, Burney Falls and the Warner Mountains. Evenings were very pleasant and I mostly just wore a sweater in the early evening and a light jacket later on. Over 3½ nights I logged about 100 objects using my 24-inch f/3.7 Starstructure, observing together with Jimi Lowrey. Here’s a selection of a dozen of the most interesting targets. Images are from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) or the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS2). Steve Gottlieb |
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A couple of years ago I wrote an article for Sky & Telescope titled “A Trip to the Northern Frontier”, which was a tour of the galaxies north of +85° declination
using observations with my 18” Starmaster. The northernmost NGC galaxy I discussed was But is NGC 3172 actually the closest galaxy to the pole? The answer depends on how faint you want to go. UGC 3211A is the northernmost galaxy in the UGC (and original PGC) at a declination of +89° 20’ (J2000). I couldn’t find a reliable magnitude but it’s significantly fainter than NGC 3172 and I would guess the blue magnitude of this low surface brightness dwarf is between mag 16 and 16.5. Unfortunately, one of the major galaxy catalogues (MCG) made a 1 degree error in reporting the declination and this error was copied into the PGC. As a result, the galaxy is misplotted on Megastar one degree too far south. If you’re curious about the “A” designation, this galaxy doesn’t appear in the main UGC catalog but was added in an addendum list of galaxies that were missed when the catalog was compiled but found before the UGC went to print. Even using a corrected Megastar chart, UGC 3211A was a tough catch in my 24-inch and required some searching to notice the galaxy. At 375x all I found was low surface brightness glow, perhaps 15” diameter, which required averted vision. Examining its DSS image later, I see I only picked up the brighter core . But once it was locked down in the center of the eyepiece field, it was held ~80% of the time with averted vision at 375x. By the way Polaris is 40’ to the west (of course cardinal directions are somewhat meaningless this close to the north celestial pole) so can be used to easily to easily star hop over to the galaxy. I didn’t have good transparency at the time of the observation (observing through thin clouds at best), but I would guess an 18-inch would be required to pick up this galaxy. The southern hemisphere has its own “Pole Galaxy” —
This galaxy group is located in a rich star field just 7’ N of 16 Cygni, a bright wide double star of mag 6.3/6.4 stars at 39” separation (split in 10x50
binoculars)! At 375x UGC 11465 appeared moderately bright, fairly small, round, well concentrated with a bright core that gradually increased to the center. Very near are CGCG
257-007 = PGC 63534 2.3' SSE, PGC 63531: faint, extremely small, round, 10" diameter (375x). The galaxy group's location is not far from the Milky Way’s “Zone of Avoidance”. But there appears to be little visual extinction here due to dust (clear window)
as UGC 11465 was relatively prominent at a distance of roughly 350 million light years. By the way, the separation of 16 Cygni is quite close to that of Albireo, but is an easier
split in binoculars due to its similar magnitudes.
NGC 5829 appeared moderately bright, irregularly round, very small brighter core, low surface brightness halo, ~0.8'x0.6'. A mag 12.4 star is 1.2' W, a mag 14.5
star 1.3' ESE and a mag 16.2 star is 1.3' NE. Two other members of
NGC 5526 is a fairly low surface brightness edge-on located 7.5° NE of Mizar, not far from the Draco border. It appeared faint, moderately large, very thin 7:1 NW-SE, ~70"x10", nearly even surface brightness with only a slightly brighter core. A mag 14.3 star is 40" NNE of center. William Herschel discovered this galaxy on Apr 17th, 1789 and called it “considerably faint, small, elongated.” He missed the fainter companion,
NGC 5759 is the main component of an interacting pair with a tidal bridge and is quite distorted with a warped dust lane on this SDSS image. Here we really do have
a messed up version of Édouard Stephan discovered NGC 5759 back on 7 June 1880 using the 31” silver-on-glass equatorial reflector at the Marseille Observatory in southern France. He
missed the tiny companion.
NGC 6175 is an interacting/overlapping pair and one of the brighter galaxies in the rich cluster William Herschel discovered NGC 6175 on 18 Mar 1787 (his 718th sweep) as well as several other members of Abell 2197 the same sweep —
For an extreme challenge, there is a tiny galaxy (MAC 1756+1820) less than 1’ N of the bright double star. Furthermore, the galaxy has a low surface brightness and
the best I could do was get an occasionally pop as a very diffuse hazy spot. Even then it was difficult to confirm due to the bright pair.
Using 200x and a NPB filter this gorgeous planetary appeared bright, moderately large, slightly elongated SW-NE, ~50" diameter, crisp-edged, irregular surface brightness, weakly annular, resides in a rich star field. At 375x the elongation was more evident as well as a noticeably irregular surface brightness with slightly darker interior areas. A faint star is at the SSW edge and one or two extremely faint stars seemed to be superimposed. John Herschel found this planetary on 7 June 1837 from Cape Town, South Africa and gave a rather detailed description: "a large, faint, oval, planetary nebula,
about 60" long, 50" broad, or 55"; considerably hazy, or rather indistinctly terminated at the borders, but not a brighter middle; a star mag 6-7 precedes it, just 1 diameter of
the field and nearly in the parallel [this is probably
This distant globular (~135,000 light years) has a high surface brightness with a very bright mottled core. A half-dozen very faint stars were resolved around the edges of the halo. When William Herschel discovered this globular 21 August 1784, he logged “pretty bright, irregularly round, easily resolvable, about 1' diam. Hazy, otherwise I suppose I might see the stars in it.” His comment “easily resolvable” had a different meaning than observers use today. We would call it “mottled” instead. Three very faint to extremely faint galaxies lies to the southwest; NGC 7006 lies far out in the halo of our Milky Way galaxy, but the three nearby galaxies lie at a distance of nearly 400 million light years — nearly 3000 times as
far as the globular!
At 375x this merged eastern pair appeared fairly faint, small, elongated 3:2 or 5:3 NW-SE, 20"x14”. The eastern component had a faint stellar nucleus, but the fainter northwest component (UGC 10987 NED2) was not separately resolved. A faint galaxy 30” W was easily resolved and appeared faint, extremely small, round, 10" diameter, faint stellar nucleus. The triplet was discovered in the early 1960s from galaxy surveys using the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. But since then it seems to have been little studied,
though its part of a small galaxy group (WBL 747) at a distance of ~470 million light years.
Although this was the fourth time I’ve observed this fascinating UGC triplet (look at the stretched tidal arms on UGC 11797 was very faint, fairly small, very thin edge-on 5:1 or 6:1 E-W, 0.7'x0.1', very low even surface brightness. Situated just 2.2' E of a mag 8.5 star
(which was annoyingly bright) There’s a great thread on this group with a sketch by Uwe Glahn on DeepSkyForum at http://www.deepskyforum.com/showthread.php?18-UGC-11798-in-Cygnus
Again this is the fourth time I’ve taken a look at this photogenic interacting pair with a pair of amazing tidal arms. Additional descriptions from Alvin Huey and a sketch of this group by Uwe Glahn are on DeepSkyForum at http://www.deepskyforum.com/showthread.php?401-Object-of-the-Week-July-14-2013-%96-VV-289 |
