What did I observe at GSSP 2026 and OSP 2026?

[Akarsh Simha]

I'm not sure I feel like writing a full observing / star party report, although I might later decide to. I just wanted to share the list of objects I observed along with some short descriptions.

Here's the short summary of conditions: I arrived early at GSSP owing to being a volunteer now (I did learn to use a sledge hammer), late on Thursday night. I did not observe anything on Thursday night but interrupted Randy Pufahl and Charlie Wicks' observing programs, so I get negative points for that. Friday was the best night IMO, the transparency was okayish but the seeing was very good. Sunday was another good night, which started out with lots of clouds and haze, but the seeing was jaw-dropping in the suckerholes which became wider as the night progressed—it turned out to be my favorite night. Tuesday night had good transparency but so-so seeing. The rest were unusable. OSP had thunderstorms and unusable suckerholes on Wednesday night, I looked at the Lagoon Nebula and not much else. The thunderstorms set off new forest fires in the area, and Thursday night was smoky but usable—I made only one new observation of IC 4617, the galaxy near M13, but I had fun sharing views with some budding deep-sky observers, and Rob Brown and I had a lot of fun with his spectroscope design called Spectre which I finally learned how to use. The rest of OSP was unusable, but the telescope walkabout was very interesting as was looking over various telescope designs outside of the walkabout.

July 10th 2026

1. M57, with an orange fringe, central star, and IC 1296 nearby

2. IC 883, no clear tidal tail, but picked out a nearby chain of five galaxies nicknamed the "Gottlieb Chain" (comprising PGC 2045294, PGC 2045194, PGC 2045332, PGC 2045427, PGC 2045649)

3. Palomar 7 = IC 1276, in Gottlieb's scope and mine. Fully resolved at 486×.

4. NGC 5754 group: four NGC galaxies. Did not try the faint PGCs.

5. Arp 90: Amazing pair appeared really bright, consists of NGC 5929 and 5930.

6. Arp 91: Beautiful interacting pair of NGC 5953 and NGC 5954 with a tidal bridge. I likened it to a "Seal balancing a Ball". Maybe we can call it the Circus Seal Galaxy

7. NGC 6068 and NGC 6068A

8. UGC 10610 = VV 289 and its tidal tail

9. NGC 6712, IC 1295, K 4-8: Interestingly, even my scope fit NGC 6712 and IC 1295 in my widest 43 arcminute FOV! It was quite an amazing sight!

10. Abell PN 61

The moon rose by the time I was finishing up on PN Abell 61, but I continued doing some high–surface brightness observing

11. NGC 6766, a planetary nebula which I picked up from the Webb Society Bright Planetary Nebulae list

12. NGC 6802 a nice, very "chainy" open-cluster near the Coathanger

13. NGC 6819, another open cluster

July 12th 2026

The transparency was very poor and we were chasing large suckerholes between haze all night but the seeing was exceptional. Stars were tack sharp at 830x. We had a blast. It started out as a "public night" as I invited anyone on the field to look through my telescope. We looked at Veil Nebula, M27, M57, Swan Nebula, Lagoon Nebula, M13 and many such things. I was later joined by Alan Agrawal and Logan Brewer and we looked at a few "deeper" things like Seyfert's Sextet and Abell 2199 in Hercules, which were both looking pretty good. My favorite view of GSSP 2026 was the Lost in Space Galaxy NGC 6503 we looked at on this night. I did not log many of the objects I just shared with others, only logging the objects that were new to me.

1. NGC 3310 + SN2026sqf in Steve Gottlieb's 24"

2. NGC 7027, the Jewel Bug / Magic Carpet Nebula at 830× showed fantastic detail! Alan's pick

3. Bubble Nebula: finally, I was able to see a whole 180° of the arc of the Bubble, much more than I could see with the 18-inch.

4. UGC 10806, a peculiar galaxy and a couple neighbors like UGC 10816 and PGC 3094669. The UGC 10806 showed a knot "PGC 2790948"—it has a PGC number but the Legacy survey shows it as a part of the galaxy.

5. NGC 6503, the Lost in Space Galaxy, showed tremendous mottled detail in the thick dark lane. It was jaw-dropping at 580× with dark rifts "dripping" into the galaxy from the lane.

6. Abell 2256, a galaxy cluster about 700Mly away, where Alan and I picked out perhaps 6–7 galaxies

7. Campbell's Hydrogen Star. We also looked at it through Howard Banich's 30-inch scope on Thursday night at OSP. It looked a lot redder in Howard's scope, likely due to the silver coating.

July 14th 2026

NGC 7026, the Cheeseburger Nebula showed a nice dark cut at 580×. We also looked at it through Howard Banich's 30-inch scope on Thursday night at OSP.

IC 4304 group: I was going through my GSSP 2016 (note the year!) logs made with Steve's 24-inch, and found that we'd looked at this group. I looked at it again and made a sketch, although it was through a lot of airmass. 10 galaxies.

UGC 9315: Something that Gottlieb called me over to look at through his scope, nice pair of galaxies.

NGC 6028: This is a ring galaxy, and Alan Agrawal and I were able to manage glimpses of the ring, although it was not particularly looking like a detached ring but rather just as an outer halo.

NGC 6229: The third globular cluster in Hercules, I hadn't seen this one.

Arp 312: Fantastic compact group! Again, I picked this up from our GSSP 2016 observations. Five galaxies.

Abell 2162: I think Keith Rivich posted about this group on CloudyNights. Picked up 9 galaxies.

Arp 38: A spiral with a few high surface brightness knots which were seen in the 28-inch

Arp 81: Since it was part of my GSSP2026 list, many people were looking at it. The 28-inch showed me both the "knot" and the initial portion of the tidal tail as described on the GSSP program.

NGC 6422: A nice grouping of galaxies in Draco, picked out 10 galaxies

NGC 6470 and company: A very nice group kinda reminiscent of the box with some add-ons. 11 galaxies in the region.

Abell 3744: A nice group in Capricornus featured as DeepSkyForum Object of the Week by Paul Alsing. 9 galaxies.

I ended this 60-galaxy night as the sky was brightening on NGC 281 and its prominent Bok globule, an object from the GSSP2025 observing program.

For those of you not on Facebook, here are some photos by either me or Muriel stolen from Steve's and my feed on FB:

Wicks and Pufahl Telescope Works, Adin, CA. Clockwise from left: Russ Garber (back), John Hoey (sunglasses amd hair), Randy Pufahl, Debbie Searle-Alsing, Charlie Wicks (baseball cap), Akarsh Simha (cowboy hat, nose and hair), Steve Gottlieb.

Picture from the Oregon Smoke Party. Left to Right: Howard Banich, Rob Brown, Akarsh Simha, Muriel Dulieu Holzer, Lir Schobert. If you're wondering what Rob is holding, that's the Spectre, does not come with the recommended ladder.

Clear (and smoke-free) Skies,

Akarsh