Joe, "Thor's Helmet" is actually an emission nebula. I've never seen it that good before. I saw it last spring through the light pollution of Hurricane. It is best viewed through an OIII filter. We saw several good planetaries including "The Eskimo", "Blue Snowball", NGC 2440 (Hubble imaged this one), Abell 21 (The Medusa Nebula), NGC 1535, and NGC 1360. NGC 1360 is a rather large planetary in Fornax. The OIII really brings out the oval shaped blue-grey nebula. I also cranked up the magnification on the "Eskimo Nebula" to about 350X. The central star was easily visable at this power. We also saw the little planetary nebula NGC 2438 in M46. Later in the evening we viewed the Owl Nebula and M108 in Ursa Major. I also found "Hubble's Variable Nebula" in Monoceros. It is an interesting nebula that looks like a comet. Debbie

From: Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> Date: 2005/02/08 Tue AM 10:20:09 MST To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] OAS excursion to St. George

Just a quick thank-you to Dave Dunn and his partners from OAS for the open invitation to their St. George star party. I had a blast, up until the time when I wused out because of the cold. At least I found that Meade did repair my telescope, and I saw some interesting things. It was the first time I was able to look at the comet through my 'scope, and I found it to have a bright grainy center and a diffuse blobby surrounding, but no definite tail from this angle. Deb, who lives in the St. George vicinity, guided us to our site and showed some exciting views in her 15" dob, including one planetary I had never seen before, NGC2359, "Thor's Helmet." -- Thanks again, Joe

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