On Tue, 7 Sep 2010, Debbie wrote:
According to Stephen James O'Meara, the sky has to be really clear to bag IC 1613. I'm going to try it next month at the Kolob Fingers section of ZNP. I marked it on Sky Atlas 2000 since it is not on chart #10. The Cave Nebula was a hard one but is more for imagers than visual observers. The Bubble Nebula is best seen with an OIII filter. I found Pac Man Nebula this weekend and it too benefits from an OIII filter.
I am very stupid about my Sky Atlas. I always leave it at home, despite the fact that the charts in O'Meara's Caldwell book leave something to be desired (they don't show enough context). So a good ten minutes of my time was spent figuring out which star in Pisces was epsilon! Meanwhile, that Atlas is at home. The Bubble and the Crescent in Cygnus I used an O-III on, but only to check after I had thought I detected them without. Now, I definitely didn't pick out the Bubble itself, but some of the extent of the nebulosity was there. Even though I was at a dark site, I used a UHC to see the Cave. Again, I didn't see the cave feature, but saw about a 1-2 degree sliver of nebulosity. IC 1613 -- I have made two very concerted efforts. Both times I thought I saw the same thing. I absolutely pinpointed the field, and stood at the eyepiece each time for 15-20 minutes tapping the tube, breathing rhythmically, and moving the center of my FOV around. I checked the direction I thought I saw nebulosity against a photo and they agreed, so I count it as attained. I still have my doubts, and will probably revisit it each time I'm out. I think that I may have just caught a couple of 12-13th magnitude stars nearby that fooled me... ---- Rev. Michael A. van Opstall Department of Mathematics, University of Utah Office: JWB 313 opstall@math.utah.edu