There were about a half-dozen of us that braved the
cold Saturday night in Rush Valley ("Pit-n-pole") for
fairly good skies (good enough, since any late Winter
/ early Spring opportunities are rare it seems) and
good company.
It was a productive night for me -- I managed to
observe 21 more objects on my Herschel-400 list,
getting all of the open clusters in Canis Major and
Monoceros, including the cone and rosette nebulas, 4
galaxies in Leo, and one in Cancer.
The "problem" with finding open clusters in Monoceros
is like trying to find needles in a haystack -- most
of it is rich milky-way starfields that make it
difficult to tell where a cluster begins and where it
ends. Thank goodness for setting circles! A couple
of noteworthy clusters to look for are NGC 2506 in
Monoceros, 2204 in Canis Major (looks like the
constellation Perseus in miniature), and NGC 2360 in
Canis Major, a real beauty in a very rich starfield
that fills the eyepiece, visible even in my 9x60
finderscope.
One highlight of the evening was having Tyler Allred
along with his Tak-90 and CCD camera imaging the cone
nebula (NGC 2264); the result was impressive (I'm
encouraging him to join the list and post that and
some of his other very nice images in the gallery).
Dew/Frost pretty much shut us all down about 11:30. I
suspect we will try again this coming Saturday, if the
weather cooperates.
Rich
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