OR: nebula and rockets

[Mark McCarthy]

Tuesday presented good enough conditions to justify a trip down to "Tranquility Base" on the central coast.  I wanted to avoid going out during a busy weekend, and I had a gap in my work schedule and could afford the time to go down.

There was no one in the area.  I set up and waited for night, watching the bats darting around as darkness fell.  As the song says, "I saw the constellations / Reveal themselves one star at a time."

I brought my 10-inch f/3.7 Newtonian and continued my project to observe from Reiner Vogel's Large Planetary guide, from which most of these photos are taken.  Using PVS-14 and 67mm Plossl+ and an assortment of filters on a filter wheel.

Abell 21: 07:29.0 +13°15' v.10.2 744"x509" Viewed while not fully dark.  Faint, raggedly round with one brighter side making it a C-shape, and a fission of faint nebula from the opposite side.  Ha.

Abell 24: 07 51 38 +03 00 27, 6'. Hazy edge, round, with two bright lobes facing each other inside the glow.  Near two bright stars, easy to find. Ha.

TK 1 = Ton 320: 08 27 05.53 +31 30 08, 30' diameter, PN G191.4+33.0: Small at low magnification, very vague diffuse cloud in a faint group of stars.  Noticed only when changing filters while looking through the eyepiece, as there is very little contrast with the background sky.  It could be mistaken for galactic nebula, I do not see rounding in it.  There is a very faint extension of nebula to the west into a group of 3 stars.  Very difficult, Ha & Ha+OIII dual band.

Abell 28: 08 41 35 +58 14 03, 5' diameter.  Seen Ha+OIII dual band only, very tenuously seen with flashes of averted vision, round, uneven surface brightness, hazy edges.

Abell 31: 08:54.2 +08 54, v12.0, 970"x930": Fairly bright, oval shaped, very mottled, bright patch to southwest, on one corner of a box asterism of stars.  Ha.  (Two hawks screaming at each other from a tree at the edge of the meadow during this observation).

Abell 35: 12:53.7 -22 52, v13.3, 938"x636": Pretty large, moderately bright and diffuse, centered on a bright star, mostly round, two brighter streaks through the southern half.  Ha.

Abell 36: 13:40.7 -19 53, v11.8, 478"x281".  Bright, fairly large, best with Ha+OIII dual band.  The bright asymmetric central shell has a bright uneven rim and has a sharp cut off along the northern edge, which is nearly flat.  A very faint, two-armed lobe emerges farther north and is about the same size as the central shell. There is a very weak, smaller shell to the southeast of the central shell, and looks like a dethatched comma.

Next, I did some browsing with my NV device at 1x and 3x, observing the Milky Way now that it was well up.  I re-observed the Spica Nebula, a very large roughly triangular shaped lightening of the sky background around and below Spica.  I think I'm still the only person to observe this through any kind of eyepiece.  I looked at Sivan 8, one of my favorites.

Around 11:30pm I took a break from NV and used my visual eyepieces.  Stars were much tighter, the sky background darker, but of course everything was fainter.  I did a small tour of some Messier objects: M4, M68, M83, and so on.  Omega Centauri was too low, but I had a nice view of the bright, disturbed galaxy NGC 5128.  

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a bright orange light rising from the hills.  I thought maybe it was a plane, but it accelerated and curved toward the west.  I realized it was a rocket launch from Vandeberg, though the color and the size of the plume was smaller than other rocket launches I've seen (I found out the next day it was an unannounced Minuteman III, of course smaller than the other rockets).  It was fortunate I was set-up for visual and quickly pointed my scope at it and started tracking.  There was a spray of debris (a dozen?) which was quickly following the rocket -- I wonder if it was an anti-missile defense mechanism? or just a stage separation?  As the rocket was headed due west (it was headed for the Marshall Islands), and I didn't need to slew the scope as much to keep up with it.  There was a bright flash and then a burst of vapor, so I assume that was a stage separation (it likely was, probably second stage ignition).  It seemed I was looking directly behind the rocket, since the vapor came out as a burst around the rocket, which stayed in the center.  After a few seconds there was a burst of a thick blue ring, like a smoke ring, which spread out from the rocket.  Third stage?  A few seconds later, there were pulses of vapor, forming concentric circles which spread out.  Then the vapor swirled -- like the rocket was spinning as the vapor came from it.  Eventually there was no more vapor, but I could still see the brighter rocket (maybe just it's glowing cone) swiftly followed by a fainter point -- likely a stage skirt or a stage itself.  Until I lost the view.  When I looked up from the eyepiece at the sky, there was a large, moustache-shaped, long vapor trail with a bright knot in the lower end which hung above Corvus.  In the west there was a large, thick-walled oval formed by the vapor I had seen, it was nearly as large as Leo.  As I watched it slowly grew in size: incredible to see it first as a complete oval, then as an arch intersected by the nearby hills.  My quick field sketch tries to show it in relation to Leo:

Now that I know it was a Minuteman, I can only imagine the scene when dozens of them are launched at the same time -- a terrifying spectacle.  

After trying and failing to use prime focus in this set-up, I went back to afocal NV observing.  I reobserved Sivan 8, at the base of Scorpio's tail, with the 10-inch.  I was careful to reobserve the large cone-shaped nebula along the north inner rim of the nebula -- a larger, more challenging Cone Nebula.  It was clearly there, along with several other crenelations along the rest of the rim.  This is such a dramatic nebula, amazing to behold.

Outers 4: 21h 11 48 +59 59 12 69'x20': This is a very strange bipolar nebula in the center of Sh2-129.  I observed it first a couple years ago with my NP101.  Now with the 10-inch, it was a little more obvious, meaning I could more quickly pick out the very subtle, thick-finger-shaped milky contrast change.  The southern portion is relatively brighter than the northern, of which I barely made out the section nearest the star.  With Ha, it was still very subtle and helped by knowing where to look.  It was even fainter than what's shown in the photo. 

IPHASX J205013.7 +465518: Near Deneb, this appeared best unfiltered and was a small, very faint, irregularly oval milky wash with a stronger western rim and mottling in the center.  Nicknamed the Ear Nebula, it is a relatively old and very faint planetary nebula that was discovered by the INT/WFC Photometric H-alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane (IPHAS) in 2005. The black and white photo is a good representation of what I saw (though at larger scale).  The color photo was taken by the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. 

I went to sleep in my car at 3am, waking at 6am.  Only 3 hours of sleep -- though it was that solid, blackout kind of sleep of the very tired.

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

" ... that solid, blackout kind of sleep of the very tired."

Now try and explain to someone who doesn't share our obsession how that night was fun.

[Brad Templeton]

The missile was not unannounced.  They do warn these are going off, and I got an alert for that night, but the alerts give a wide launch window.  In this case, they launched right at midnight, the start of the launch window.     I have never seen one because I don't want to see around for 5 hours without knowing when it will go up.  In theory visible over a pretty wide range.     Starlink launch coming shortly at 3:30, but a daytime one.  https://www.spacelaunchschedule.com/category/vandenberg-sfb/

[Brad Templeton]

BTW, the re-entry of a Dragon capsule is scheduled for tonight over California, hitting land around Big Sur, then splashing down off of San Diego.         I've seen two forecast times -- 10:45pm and 1:45am.  (Makes me think one of them has the wrong time zone?)    Either way will be very obvious from LSA or anybody down there, and also pretty visible from both the Bay Area and down south, though it may have stopped ionizing by L.A.   I saw a reentry of the Boeing Starliner, it's pretty cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVea7MY437w