Mersing Trip on CNY

[rlow]

Here is another Ob Report for the Mersing trip on 30 Jan 06:

It had been already 3 months since the last Mersing trip on 1st Oct 05 and 4 "die-hard" amatuer astronomers, hungry for deep sky objects, decided to go to Mersing on a CNY weekend. As usual, Elton brought his Teleport, Yang Beng (Canopus) has the C5 on Microstar Deluxe mount, Arief mounted his M603 on the Astroslew mount, while I brought the 80ZSFD on Velbon panhead. So we have 4 different scopes of varying apertures & focal lengths and all on alt-az mounts.

We moved off from Lavender MRT just after 3pm and the journey was very smooth, not much traffic on the road. The road trip was rather uneventful, except for a little drama when we were crossing the bridge, as the T10 was not inconspicuous enough... but some perseverence and a little magic did the trick. We stopped by for dinner at our usual restaurant before Mersing at about 6pm, stop at Mersing to stock up some provisions and by 7.45pm, we are already at our usual ob site near Tg Resang.

Though it was already dark, we did not have much problem assembling our quick-setup scopes. We noticed that the field was rather free of dark "land mines", ie, cow-dung; maybe due to the recent rainy season, the cows decided to graze elsewhere. Also there was a constant sea-breeze all night long, which must have got rid of the mosquitoes and the dew, but that also induce some minor vibrations of high-powered views thru our scopes.

Some of the DSOs we saw are as follows:

Orion region:
M42 Orion Neb - splendid when viewed at zenith even without filter
M43
NGC 1977 Running Man Neb.
M78 - visible at 13x80mm
NGC 2024 Flame Neb. - faintly visible in the 6" scope even without filter
IC434 & B33 (Horsehead Neb.) - 1st time seeing it; direct view with filter on the 10" scope
M79 globular cluster in Lepus
IC 2118 Witchhead Neb - wanted to see this but the clouds keep getting in the way

Taurus region:
M1 Crab Neb - visible at 13x80mm, mottled irregular profile in 10" scope
M45 Pleiades - nice view at low power wide field;
NGC 1435 Merope Nebula was visible in the Pleiades
Hyades
Alpha Persei Cluster - star association; naked eye object

Auriga region:
M36
M37
M38

Gemini / Monoceros region:
M35
NGC 2392 Eskimo Neb. - barely visible at 13x80mm
NGC 2264 Christmas Tree Cluster
NGC 2244 - open cluster in Rosette Neb.
NGC 2237-39 Rosette Nebula - 1st time viewing it with filter on the 10" scope

Canis Major region:
M41
M93
M46 - open cluster in Puppis
M47 - open cluster in Puppis
M50 - open cluster in Monoceros

Leo region
M44 Beehive cluster in Cancer with Saturn in the same 3 deg. field of view
M65
M66
NGC 3628 - same field of view as M65 & M66

Carina region:
IC 2391 - naked eye sparse cluster in Vela
NGC 2516 - open cluster
NGC 3114 - rich open cluster
NGC 3372 Eta Carinae Neb. - splendid view with prominent wide dark lanes
NGC 3532 - big beautiful open cluster
IC 2602 Southern Pleiades - naked eye object

Crux / Centaurus region:
NGC 4755 Jewel Box Cluster
NGC 5139 Omega Centauri - beautiful; fully resolved in the 10" scope
NGC 5128 Centaurus A galaxy - prominent dust lane visible

Corvus region:
M104 Sombero galaxy
M68
NGC 4038
NGC 4039 - Antennae galaxies, together with NGC 4038

Ursa Major region:
M81
M82
NGC 3077 - seen in the same field as M81 & M82
M51 Whirlpool galaxy
NGC 5195 - together with M51

Many times, the clouds drifted into our field of view and we had to move our scope off to another region and then back again later. Yang Beng had quite a frustrating time sketching M44 because of this. Arief and I did some quick EP comparison between the 40 MK-70, 40 XL & 40 XW and also the 10 XL, 10 Radian & 11 Nagler. Yang Beng was a great help when he used his superduper green laser (mounted on his C5) to aim at some of the DSOs for us to follow with our scopes. But the key highlight of the night was the viewing of the Horsehead Nebula & Rosette Nebula, which was the first time all of us had seen them.

At about 3.30pm, Elton spied some dark cloud moving in from the sea and we decided to start packing up. In two minutes we felt the first few drops of rain; this send us in a packing frenzy and we managed to pack everything into the car in about 5 minutes. When we finish, then we realised that the sky has cleared up completely, but we were too tired (lazy?) to unpack, so we headed back to Singapore and reach home before sunrise.

[qu1xs1lv3r]

*feeling really sad now*

wish i was there!! i saw saturn for the first time through the science centre observatory! wowowee!