OR Henry Coe 2/7/26

[Richard Navarrete]

Tales from a hopeful astronomer

The weather had been rainy and cloudy for a few days, but the forecast was for a mostly clear night on Saturday, February 7, 2026. The following new moon week didn’t look promising, so I decided to join a few other hopeful amateurs at Henry Coe State Park. In the end there were maybe nine observers in the overlow lot and some impressive gear. David K. brought his 3D printed binoscope and a Smarteye eyepiece. Both gave impressive views. Sean M. brought his impressive 25” dob which also gave wonderful views. Lucky me was set-up between them.

I arrived with an 8” dob on an equatorial mount and a pair of 25x100 binoculars on a parallelogram mount. The evenings plan was to continue working through Sue French’s ‘Celestial Sampler.’ I was the first to arrive and the sky was more cloud than clear, but the forecast was for clear by sunset, and that proved to be true. Other than a band of clouds that rolled through between 7:30 and 8, we enjoyed a cool and clear night.

I started the evening with ‘Winter Wonders’ and objects in Perseus and Casseopeia. I started with the Double Cluster, NGC’s 884 and 869. 884 is not as rich as 869, but it’s still spectacular in its own right. Within the glow of many stars I detected a dark patch near the center. There are also a few conspicuous red stars in the field. 869 is filled with many dim stars particularly in the center. Follow a chain of stars from NGC 869 and you’ll arrive at the open cluster Stock 2. This clusters members make a stick figure shape of a muscleman with arms upraised. This cluster looked great in the 25x100 binoculars.

Next up was IC 1805, the Heart cluster. The designation IC 1805 refers to both an open cluster and an emission nebula. The cluster was a loose grouping of 50 plus stars at 50x. An oblong circle of stars sits in the middle of the field. The brightest star in the circlet is the double star Stein 368. At 35x and an NPB filter I detected subtle nebulosity surrounding the open cluster. I could catch glimpses of dark patches as well. NGC 896 is a detached portion of IC 1805, and was easy to see with direct vision. I tried OIII and UHC filters, but the NPB worked best. NGC 1027 is a mag 6.7 open cluster in Cassiopeia. I observed a magnitude 7 star surrounded by a group of dimmer stars. More dim stars trailed off to the left. Markarian 6 is another open cluster in Cassiopeia and gave me a bit of trouble identifying. Sue French described it as arrow shaped, but I just saw a group of four faint stars. Two dimmer stars flanked the last star in the line. I made a quick sketch and compared to online images and found I had indeed found Markarian 6.

screen capture from sky Safari

The last object in the essay was M76, the Little Dumbell. This is a very small object, and a UHC filter helped a lot. I could see two lobes with a dark patch in the middle. The southwest lobe is NGC 650, and the northeastern lobe is NGC 651.

As I was finishing my observations in Cassiopeia, around 7:30, clouds started moving in from the west. This was in the weather prediction, and although the clouds almost obscured the entire sky at one point, they cleared out by 8:00.

I moved over to the southern sky and worked through the article ‘Perambulations in Puppis.’ M46 was first up, an open cluster. This magnitude 6.1 cluster was round, dense, with many dim stars. It filled half the field of a 24 panoptic. NGC 2438 is a small planetary, like a mini ring nebula, on the northern edge of M46. A UHC filter worked well on this planetary. M47 is an eyepiece field away from M46. This large, loose cluster has many more bright stars then M46, with many little groupings of three stars. In the center of the cluster are two bright stars of equal brightness. With M47 on the eastern edge of the field NGC 2423 is just about centered. This open cluster, at magnitude 6.7 is smaller than M47 with many dimmer stars.

Melotte 71 is a small, round, dim cluster with many small faint stars. Two brighter stars are on one edge. Sue French described this magnitude 7.1 cluster as ‘diamonds crushed into a fine powder.’ The planetary nebula NGC 2440 was very interesting. At magnitude 9.4 and 133x it appeared as small and round, with a dimmer halo surrounding the whole. I observed this nebula in 1999 with a 12.5” dob and noted that it was bi-polar. I think this object deserves a closer look with a larger telescope. Here’s a link to an image by Hubble. APOD: 2007 February 15 - Planetary Nebula NGC 2440

The last essay I worked on was ‘What A Crab!’ I read that and immediately thought of the Crab nebula, but of course it was referring to objects in the constellation Cancer. The objects listed were mostly double stars, of which Iota Cancri was a pretty yellow and blue pair. Gamma and Delta Cancri are also doubles as is ADS 6921. M67 is an open cluster and was a pretty, fairly sparse cluster with dim stars and an irregular shape. I noticed a dark patch near the center.

The crown jewel in Cancer is M44, NGC 2632, the Beehive nebula. The three degree field of view in the 25x100 binoculars was filled with stars.

By this time it was almost midnight and the moon was starting to rise. 

I was setup to spend the night, but everyone else was planning on packing up and leaving, so I decided to make the drive back home as well. One of the nice things about driving home late is the lack of traffic, and the opportunity to see wildlife on the drive down to the highway. This trip I didn’t see a mountain lion, but I did see its cousin, a bobcat, dash across the road. Another great night at Henry Coe!

Richard

[Peter Natscher]

Nice Open Cluster sketch, Richard!  Markarian 6 looks also like a fine refractor object.  I'll have to take a look with my 5" or 6" refractors.

[Richard Navarrete]

Thanks, Peter. The cluster was nice in the 8” dob as well, but yeah, a nice refractor would be awesome.

Richard

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[Steve Gottlieb]

My 18” showed several more stars, but nothing very impressive.  Stock 7 is an alternate name —

Stock 7 is a distinctive N-S string with ~15 stars in total. It includes two doubles on the south end (STF 264 = 8.6/9.8 at 17" and STF 265 = 10/11 pair at 17") along with three additional mag 8.5-9.5 stars in the string to the north.  The southwestern loop of IC 1805 (the "Heart Nebula") passes right through this group of stars!

Steve

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