First night – 10/16/2025
A few weeks ago I had the chance to join Steve Gottlieb for three nights of observing in farm country. When I arrived, Steve’s 24” StarStructure was already set up, standing in the driveway. I set up my Orion 10” Dobsonian, my 14.5” Teleport, and my Seestar.
Polaris - The North Star in Ursa Minor
I started by looking at Polaris. Polaris is one of the most famous stars in the sky due to its position almost directly above the Earth’s North rotational axis, which makes it appear nearly stationary in the night sky.
Polaris appears as a double star, with a yellowish primary, Polaris A (magnitude 1.97), and a pale white secondary, Polaris B (magnitude 9.1), separated by 18.6”. However, Polaris is in fact a triple star system. Polaris A has a close companion, Polaris Ab, which forms a spectroscopic binary.
Messier 30 - Globular Cluster in Capricornus
M 30, also known as NGC 7099, is a bright globular cluster elongated east to west that contains at least 200,000 stars. It has a dense core and prominent star chains.
Looking at it in the 24”, I can distinctly see two star chains looking like two legs. These two bright star chains extending from the core are internal structural features, not tidal streams. There are some true tidal tails that are composed of fainter stars, extending far beyond the cluster’s visible boundary, but not detectable visually.
Messier 13 (NGC 6205) - Globular Cluster in Hercules
Just taking a look at
The propeller, a dark three-lobed pattern in M13’s core, is not visible with the binoculars. I also don’t see its many red giants and blue stragglers.
Messier 57 - The Ring Nebula in Lyra
The Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula in Lyra. Once a sunlike star, it exhausted the hydrogen fuel in its core, which led to an expansion of its outer layers and it became a red giant. Further internal instabilities caused its outer atmospheres to be expelled in energetic pulses. The expanding gaseous shell forms the planetary nebula, while the stellar core collapsed to become a white dwarf, brightly illuminating the nebula.
We tried to look at it in the 24” but unfortunately, due to the clouds, the view was not clear.
NGC 6826 (Caldwell 15) - The Blinking Nebula in Cygnus
The Blinking Nebula is a planetary nebula. It is so called because it appears to blink in and out depending on how you look at it. The “blinking” effect comes from the bright central star overwhelming the nebula when viewed with direct vision; when using averted vision, the nebula brightens and the star seems to fade.
This blinking effect is an effect of human retina physiology. When you look at the nebula directly, your fovea (center of vision) picks up the bright central star, and the nebula appears to fade. And when you use averted vision, your much more light sensitive peripheral rods detect the nebular glow, and the star seems to dim relative to the nebula. A key ingredient that makes this nebula appear to blink is that its central star has much higher surface brightness per unit area than the nebular shell.
The central star is a post-AGB core that has finished its red giant phase and is on its way to becoming a white dwarf. It is extremely hot, its spectrum is classified as O6f, and it is currently illuminating the nebula.
In the 24”, the nebula appears white with averted vision and then when I
look directly at it, the central star
NGC 457 (Caldwell 13) - The Owl Cluster in Cassiopeia
A fun cluster that looks like an owl or E.T. with two stretched arms and two bright stars as eyes. I can see it easily in my 10”.
Depending on the sources, it contains between 140 and 350 stars. And it is located 7922 light years away.
The stars forming the eyes are Phi Cassiopieia and
Phi Cassiopeia is a multiple star system that forms the brighter eye, its primary star is a very luminous yellow F-type supergiant while its second brightest component is a bluish white B-type supergiant.
HD 7902, that forms the other eye, is a bluish white B-type supergiant.
HD 7902 is likely a member of the NGC 457 cluster based on its Gaia DR3 parallax and proper motion, but the status of Phi Cas is uncertain since its parallax distance is closer than the cluster.
Messier 103 (NGC 581) - Open Cluster in Cassiopeia
Also in Cassiopeia, one can find the open cluster
Messier 42 (NGC 1976) - Orion Nebula in Orion
Going around randomly with my telescope, I caught a bright nebula. I got really excited about how impressive it was. I did not realize immediately that it was the great Orion nebula that had just risen from the East. I had not seen it since last winter/spring.
We are getting close to midnight. Groups of coyotes are calling back and forth from different locations all around us.
But going back to the Orion Nebula. The Orion Nebula is a giant cloud of ionized gas and dust where new stars are being born. At the center of it lies the Trapezium Cluster which consists of four main stars, A B C D, two of them, A B, have been identified as eclipsing binaries. The most massive and brightest star of the Trapezium, θ¹ Orionis C, is an O class main sequence star C1 with a B-type main sequence companion C2 plus a closer fainter companion apparently escaping the system. θ¹ Orionis C1 is responsible for generating most of the ultraviolet light that is slowly ionizing, and perhaps photoevaporating, the Orion Nebula. The star is making the gas glow and may also be causing it to disperse away from the ionization source.
The evening is reaching its end. It is time for an easy and satisfying treat. Steve attached his enhanced night-vision device with an H-alpha filter to the 24” and I got to look again at the Orion Nebula in all its splendor.
Barnard 33 - The Horsehead Nebula in Orion
Last object of the night, the Horsehead Nebula in the 24” with the electronic eyepiece. I can see a lot of details.
The Horsehead Nebula is a small dark nebula also located within the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex just south of Alnitak (zeta Orionis), the easternmost star in Orion’s belt.
It is made primarily of cold hydrogen and helium gas, as well as thick
dust blocking the light of stars behind it. It is silhouetted against
the glowing emission nebula
This concludes a quiet, satisfying evening.
Second night – 10/17/2025
Tonight I wanted to try my new 14.5” Teleport and compare it to my 10” Orion Dobsonian. Unfortunately it turned out that the optical viewfinder made the telescope too top heavy. I then tried the first generation PiFinder that came with it, but the interface was too different from the v 2.5 that I am used to. So I’ll just have to use the Rigel QuickFinder with its elusive concentric red circles.
C/2025 R2 Swan Comet
Looking at comet SWAN in Steve’s 24” StarStructure, the coma appears wide, softly rounded, and diffuse, almost like a faint face-on galaxy. I do not see a tail even though it has one. Steve sees a little bit of a tail, I try harder and I think I catch a glimpse of it.
The SWAN comet is a dynamically old comet, meaning it has made many previous passes through the inner Solar System and its orbit has been significantly altered by planetary gravity.
It is a long-period comet whose inbound orbital period was about 781 years, and whose outbound orbital period is about 752 years. Its orbital period changes not just from gravitational interactions with the planets, especially Jupiter, but also from non-gravitational forces created by jets of sublimating gas. The comet reached perihelion on September 12, 2025, and is now moving away from the sun.
Although SWAN originally formed in the Oort cloud, its most recent inbound path came from about 170 AU, far beyond the planets but still before the inner edge of the Oort cloud, which begins around ~1000 AU. This means the comet has already been perturbed inward many times over its lifetime.
NGC 7000 (Caldwell 20) – The North American Nebula in Cygnus
The North American Nebula is an emission Nebula in the constellation Cygnus, close to Deneb. It is named because its shape resembles North America.
In 1959, American astronomer Stewart Sharpless realised that the North
America Nebula is part of the same interstellar cloud of ionized
hydrogen (H II region) as the Pelican Nebula (
As an emission nebula, the North American Nebula shines because its
hydrogen gas is ionized by the ultraviolet radiation of a very hot star.
The star mainly responsible is the deeply embedded O-type star 2MASS
J205551.3+435225 (often listed as 205551.3+435225). It lies behind the
central dust cloud LDN 935 within the America/Pelican complex (
The North America Nebula covers a region more than ten times the area of the full moon. And indeed it does not fit in a single Seestar frame. In the part of it taken by the Seestar, much of it appears reddish due to the hydrogen alpha emission lines.
Somehow I did not take notes from looking at it with my 10” and 14.5”, it may be that I did not see it or see it well. Without a filter it would have been faint.
Messier 20 (NGC 6514) – The Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius
The Trifid Nebula is an H II region in the northwest part of
Sagittarius, situated in a rich star-forming region in the Milky Way’s
Scutum-Centaurus Arm. It is a combination of an open cluster, an
emission nebula, a reflection nebula, and a dark nebula (
I compared how the two nebulae, NGC 7000 and
Messier 11 (NGC 6705) – Wild Duck Cluster in Scutum
The Wild Duck Cluster is an open cluster of stars in the constellation Scutum. Its name derives from the brighter stars forming a compact triangular pattern which early observers thought resembled a flock of ducks in flight.
I am trying to find it with the Teleport and I am having some troubles. It is low and I can barely see Beta Scuti and Iota Aquilae. The circles in the Rigel QuickFinder keep shifting as I move my head. It is much easier in the 10” with the Telrad.
In my mind, a flying flock of ducks looks more like a V-shape, so I had been scanning for that pattern without success. But I learned later that the “wild duck” shape is actually a small bright triangle full of stars, that is formed by the brightest stars in the cluster.
Wild Pigs Cluster
All of a sudden I hear some pig noises fairly close in the dark. The sound was intense, a mix of deep, rough grunts, short explosive snorts, and long, high pitched squeals. It was unnerving enough that, like a bird joining the flock for safety, I decided it was time to go see what Steve was looking at in his 24”.
NGC 195 – Galaxy in Cetus
NGC 195 is a 13th-magnitude Spiral Galaxy in Cetus. It is a barred spiral galaxy of morphological type SBa, located about 226 million light-years from us.
NGC 195’s SBa classification places it among the earlier-type spirals, with a bright central bulge, smooth structure, and tightly wrapped arms. In my 10”, however, it appears as a faint smudge.
NGC 185 – Galaxy in Cassiopeia
NGC 185 is a dwarf elliptical galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. It
is a member of the Local group and a satellite galaxy of the Andromeda
Galaxy (
Unlike most dwarf elliptical galaxies, NGC 185 still shows signs of ongoing star formation. It contains young stellar clusters, as well as dust lanes, planetary nebulae, carbon stars, and evidence of recent star-formation bursts.
NGC 185 has an active galactic nucleus (AGN) and is usually classified as a type 2 Seyfert galaxy, though its Seyfert status is debated.
Looking at NGC 185 in Steve’s 24” (while trying to ignore the pigs noises), I see a soft, diffuse glow.
M 31 – The Andromeda Galaxy in Andromeda
This report inspired me to learn more about the Messier objects, so I bought the book “The Messier Objects: Highlights of the Deep Sky” by Ronald Stoyan and Klaus-Peter Schroeder.
M31 is a barred spiral galaxy type Sb and is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. It is not a perfectly flat disk, it has a warp (an S-shape distortion) likely caused by gravitational interactions with its satellite galaxies.
Similarly to our own galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy went through numerous mergers and accretions. Current evidence suggests Andromeda experienced a major merger about 2-3 billion years ago, which temporarily turned it into a luminous infrared galaxy for roughly 100 million years.
Because it is so close, it has been intensely studied and a wealth of
delightful details are known.
Here is a list gathered from the book mentioned above. M31 contains:
-
553 globular clusters in its halo,
-
721 planetary nebulae in its disk,
-
2 candidate remnant cores of dwarf galaxies, G1 and G78,
-
35,000 variables stars (at least),
-
1 stellar stream and bridge between M31 and
M32 , with M32 likely having had its disk stripped off by M31, -
38 dwarf companion galaxies,
-
1 supernova observed on August 20, 1888,
-
Numerous star clouds (OB associations) and open clusters.
I wish I saw some of these and was able to write a report like this
but instead I am going to tell you what I saw in my 10”: a bright core,
a diffuse disk, two dust lanes, and M31’s two neighboring galaxies M32
(
To conclude the very short description of M31’s long history, one must mention that our galaxies are on a slow-motion collision course over the next several billion years. Andromeda and our Milky Way Galaxy are expected to merge in roughly 4-6 billion years, eventually forming a giant elliptical or a large lenticular galaxy.
M33 – The triangulum galaxy in Triangulum
The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy type Sbc from our local group, the third biggest after the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.
I find it particularly elegant because of its long arms and the absence of a prominent central bulge. M33 does have a nucleus with massive young and middle-aged star clusters, dust, and gas; as well as a high-mass X-ray binary containing a stellar black hole paired with a luminous blue supergiant. But it lacks the classical bulge because it likely does not host a supermassive black hole. Supermassive black holes grow from mergers with other galaxies and M33 never experienced a major merger.
Another reason M33 looks particularly attractive is that, even though the two main spiral arms and the inner bar contain an older stellar population, it is also full of young star clusters and numerous nebulous H II regions. In fact, its integrated light appears slightly bluish because young, hot stars dominate the total starlight.
Looking at M33 in my 10”, it looks like a glow. But I am just happy to see it.
Looking at it in Steve’s 24” and all of a sudden it takes shape, I see:
-
its multiple arms,
- some knots, including H II star forming regions such as
NGC 588 , IC 131,IC 132 ,NGC 595 , andIC 142 ; as well as young clusters and OB associations such asNGC 592 ,IC 133 ,IC 137 ,IC 140 ,IC 139 ,IC 143 ,IC 135 , and
IC 136 . -
A bright patch of glowing gas in one of the arms, likely
NGC 604 , one of the largest H II region in the entire local group, - And a mottled appearance from all the young star clusters mixed with the numerous H II regions.
Looking for inspiration on what to look at next, I check the lists I
created from the Orion DeepMap 600. I have one list for each RA and my
guess is that at this time RA=20 must be about right, from there I
select
NGC 6857 – Emission Nebula in Cygnus
NGC 6857 is a compact H II region located in the rich Milky Way fields of Cygnus. It is a small dense pocket of ionized hydrogen powered by at least one massive young star (likely an O-type). It is faint in broadband light and is best seen with a nebula filter, such as a UHC or O III, which suppresses starlight and lets the nebular glow through. That likely explains why I couldn’t see it at all in my 10” without a filter.
NGC 6866 – Open Cluster in Cygnus
NGC 6866 is a young open cluster in Cygnus. It lies along the Galactic plane and contains a surprisingly rich population of variable stars, including 31 Delta Scuti and 8 Gamma Doradus variables, four eclipsing binaries, and 106 stars showing rotational modulation, which means variations in brightness caused by star spots rotating in and out of view.
Looking at NGC 6866 in my 10”, the cluster appears loose and clumpy, its stars forming a shape that reminds me a little of a crab with long legs.
NGC 6888 – The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus
The Crescent Nebula is an emission nebula, and one of the first known
examples of a Wolf-Rayet wind-blown bubble. It is formed by the fast and
violent stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (
Looking at the Crescent Nebula in my 10”, it is very faint. I mostly recognize it from the pattern of stars within it. I tried again with a 13mm eyepiece and a UHC filter that I borrowed from Steve. My PiFinder dies so I star-hop with the Telrad to it. The strange shape of the nebula reminds me of a curled foetal silhouette. I see 3 bright stars, one of them WR 136, plus two foreground stars, and a faint halo around the whole structure. Steve offers to take a look at it in the 24” but strangely it does not look much better, it is looking soft and hazy. We shine a light on the mirror and realize that, like the tables and all our other instruments, the mirror is covered in thick dew.
Because of the dew situation, and since the sky is still beautiful and fairly clear, I give up on the telescopes and decide to do a tour of the constellations with my binoculars instead.
Constellation tour
Going through the constellations, I look at a few notable stars: Albireo, a lovely golden and blue double in Cygnus the Swan, Deneb, the blue-white supergiant also in Cygnus, Mu Cephei, the red supergiant also known as the Garnet Star in Cepheus, Zeta Cephei, another red supergiant in Cepheus, and Epsilon Pegasi, also called Enif, an orange supergiant in Pegasus,
I am tired and cold, and it is time to warm up in a midnight bath. At least we don’t have to pack up the very wet telescopes tonight.
Third night – 10/18/2025
Our last night in Glenn County. I continue with my list from the Orion DeepMap 600 and some suggestions from Steve.
Comet C/2025 A6 - Lemmon
Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon is a comet discovered on January 10, 2025 by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona. It is a long-period comet originally from the Oort Cloud. Its inbound orbital period is about 1,350 years, and after reaching perihelion on November 8th 2025, its orbital period will shrink to roughly 1,160 years. On October 17th, its estimated magnitude was around 4.8, with a dust tail roughly 1.6 degrees long. Since September 21st, its ion tail has been active, though only detectable in photographs.
On that night, the comet was moving toward the southeast at a rate of about 4 degrees per day, which is fast for a comet.
Looking in my 10”, I search for
Comet C/2025 R2 - Swan
Looking again at Comet Swan, currently located near Scutum, in my 10” this time, I see a fuzzy patch that looks like a galaxy. I do not see a clear tail.
NGC 6888 - The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus
Looking again at the Crescent Nebula in the 24”, it resembles a cosmic egg and is definitely looking a lot better without the dew!
NGC 6781 - Snowglobe Nebula in Aquila
NGC 6781 is a planetary nebula similar to the Ring Nebula (
The bipolar dust shell of this nebula is believed to be barrel shaped
and viewed from nearly pole-on. The Nebula itself contains cold
molecular gas and dust (outer shell) and ionized gas (interior). Its
central star is a white dwarf.
In my 10” I see a little grey patch. I am surprised to see it but it looks like I may have gotten the wrong number for its magnitude. I thought at first that its magnitude was 14, but later on I found 11.4. I heard that a long time ago, magnitudes were calculated based on old photographs and those are not accurate.
In the 24”, I can see more details but not the middle star (often listed around magnitude 15 to 17 depending on the source). With a UHC filter, it appears brighter on top, with the brightness decreasing gradually towards the bottom. It has a dark spot in the middle.
UGC 12570 - Galaxy in Aquarius
UGC 12570 is a faint spiral galaxy often listed around 14th magnitude. It is visually close to the Helix Nebula but lies far in the background at a distance of about 230 million light years.
In the 24”, it looks like a little patch of light near a double star.
NGC 6811 - Open Cluster in Cygnus
NGC 6811 is an intermediate-age (a little less than 1 billion years) open cluster at a distance of 3500 to 4000 light years. The cluster is no longer compact and many original stars have drifted away but it is still clearly identifiable as a physical group.
Its brightest stars are magnitude 10. It contains many pulsating stars (delta scuti, gamma doradus and red giants) and rotating stars that have made it a key target for stellar evolution studies.
In the 10” it looks a little bit loose with one long extension.
NGC 6891 - Planetary Nebula in Delphinus
NGC 6891 is a bright compact planetary nebula known for its complex, triple-shell structure revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope. A white dwarf in the center is heating the surrounding gas. It appears as a small bluish disk.
I can’t see it in my 10” at first but it is clearly visible in the 24”. It looks small and appears slightly bluish. With averted vision, it appears slightly bigger.
With the 2 inches UHC filter Omega (NPB type), it appears very bright, and did I see it wink?
I look again in the 10” and find it this time, thanks to its proximity to a double star. The nebula is the size of a star when looking straight at it but with averted vision, it looks slightly bigger.
French 1 asterism in Cygnus next to NGC 7025
To find the Toad Stool, the other name for the French 1 asterism, I
first found NGC 7025, a nearby barred spiral galaxy.
Next to it is the Toad Stool, an arrangement of stars that looks like a
mushroom with a cap and stem.
Abell 72 - Planetary Nebula in Delphinus
Abell 72 is a very faint, large planetary nebula. It is an old highly evolved planetary nebula with extremely low surface brightness. The nebula is faint because the gas has expanded and thinned over tens of thousands of years and the ionizing radiation from the star is weakening.
I use the PiFinder to find it in my 10” as it is a challenging object. Thankfully the PiFinder has the Abell catalog. I see some stars and wonder if one of them might be the planetary nebula but I am not sure. A filter might have helped.
Barnard 142 - Dark Nebula in Cygnus
Barnard 142 is a dense cloud of cold interstellar dust and gas that
blocks the light of stars behind it. It appears as a dark void cut into
the Milky Way star field. Along with the double-pronged
I can see it in my 10” and … it is a dark patch!
NGC 253 - The Sculptor Galaxy or Silver Coin Galaxy in Sculptor
NGC 253 is a barred spiral galaxy, one of the brightest galaxies outside the Local Group. Caroline Herschel discovered this galaxy in September 1783 with a 4.2” comet sweeper at just 30x.
It is a starburst galaxy, meaning it is undergoing an intense burst of star formation, particularly in its core. It also hosts hundreds of compact super star clusters near its center.
In the 24”, it looks like a nice elongated galaxy, mottled with dust
clouds. I can see lots of details.
Looking at it in the 10” for comparison, I am surprised by how well I
can still see it.
NGC 288 - Globular Cluster in Sculptor
NGC 288 is a loose low-density globular cluster. It has no strong central concentration, a relatively flat brightness profile and widely spaced stars even near the center. It orbits our galaxy in a retrograde motion compared to most stars. This, and other evidence, suggests NGC 288 was captured from a dwarf galaxy the Milky Way cannibalized - the most likely candidate is the Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage galaxy.
In the 24”, I could distinctly see around 50 stars with a glow behind that has a distinctive shape.
In the 10” at low power, I just saw a ball of fuzz, and at high power, around 10 distinct stars on top of the ball of fuzz.
NGC 7023 (Caldwell 4) - The Iris Nebula in Cepheus
The Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula named so because of its
petal-like appearance in photographs. Its dust grains scatter and
reflect the light of a nearby binary star (
NGC 7023 sits inside a larger molecular cloud in Cepheus that contains:
-
Dense dark lanes of cold dust
-
Bright reflection regions (NGC 7023 being one of them)
-
Ongoing low mass star formation at the edges
NGC 7023 is known for its predominant photodissociation region (PDR). The PDR is a transition zone between the ultraviolet radiation from HD 200775 and the surrounding molecular cloud, where UV radiation breaks down molecules and heats the gas, revealing complex organic molecules (PAHs).
Looking in my 10”, I see a glow around one star. I don’t really see the dust lanes. According to SkySafari, the nebula is on top of a cluster but I don’t see that either.
Night Vision device on 24”
We are getting close to the end of the evening. It is time to blow out our night vision with Steve’s night vision device on the 24”. The model is a PVS-14 Gen 3 (white phosphor). It was used with a low-power eyepiece that gave 34x, along with a H-alpha filter. It is also really fun to use across the sky handheld. It makes all the nebulae appear in the sky!
With the night vision device on the 24”, we look at a large number of nebulae. They are all shaped by massive stars, either glowing under intense ultraviolet radiation or torn apart by supernova shocks. I list them in 2 categories below.
Nebulae ionized by massive stars (H II regions and wind bubbles)
These nebulae glow because ultraviolet radiation from hot stars strip electrons from hydrogen, making the gas emit light.
-
California Nebula (
NGC 1499 ) -
Pacman Nebula (
NGC 281 ) -
Wizard Nebula (
NGC 7380 ) -
Bubble Nebula (
NGC 7635 ) -
Flaming Star Nebula (
IC 405 )
They have in common that they are powered by O and early B stars, they emit strong H alpha emission, and in some cases O III emissions, and they are regions of active or recent star formation within larger molecular clouds.
Supernova remnants
These nebulae glow because supersonic shock waves heat and ionize the gas.
-
Jellyfish Nebula (
IC 443 ) -
Crab Nebula (
M1 ) -
Veil Nebula (
NGC 6960 ,NGC 6992 ,NGC 6995 ,IC 1340 ,NGC 6974 , NGC 6979)
Their common features are that they have expanding shock fronts, strong
O III emission, filamentary lace structures, and are no longer forming
stars.
They are regions where a massive star has died.
The bat
Finally going to sleep, I am met with an unexpected surprise. There is a bat flying in circles just below the ceiling of my bedroom! It is late, I am tired, so I go to sleep in the third bedroom that was thankfully unoccupied, leaving my bedroom to the bat.
In the morning, the bat is nowhere to be found. We check all possible hiding places: curtains, bed covers, … nothing. It was time to leave. I wondered what happened to it, apparently it was still there as the new guests were welcomed by it after its daytime nap.