Night of the Omega

I have been waiting to head back to Solstice Canyon Park in Malibu ever since the last trip there. The main reasons have been to try and see some old southern sky friends such as the good old globby Omega Centauri and radio source/hamburger galaxy NGC 5128 Centaurus A. Got the chance to catch them last Friday night. Terry also happened to be back from his European trip and was itching to try out his Bushnell Ares truss dob on his Orion VersaGo mount. So away we went.

The first stop of the night was of course the above mentioned. Terry got there earlier than I did so he got the first shot at it. We were observing from a small elevated spot inside the park (not my usual next to the car spot).  We both spotted Omega in our scopes (I had with me my Celestron/Vixen C6 6" f/5 on Vixen PortaMount...this setup is much lighter than the C6 on EQ/alt-az mount so it might become my "grab and go" Malibu scope). It looked like a pale ghost of its glory from way up north! Through both our scopes, Omega was barely resolved and appeared faint even. In fact Omega did not look much better than the views I got from back home in my light polluted skies in Malaysia! I guess being this far down, we had to contend with the marine layer and maybe some low level wispy clouds. Best views were at low to intermediate power. While in the region, we also took a sneak peek at Centaurus A, NGC 5128. It was visible, but there was no trace of its dark dust lane. This is so prominent, even in the C6 from southern skies. Oh well at least I can say that I have seen it from way up here in Malibu!

I then went through the "usual suspects", M83 (Hydra), M104 (Sombrero-Corvus), M65/66 (the galaxy pair seemed brighter tonight for some strange reason!), M95/96 (Leo), M94, M81/82 (Ursa Major-same as M65/66, appearing a little brighter), M101 (Ursa Major-looked better tonight in the C6), NGC 4565, M64 (Black Eye Galaxy), M53 (Coma Berenices), the Virgo-Coma Cluster and looked at a few objects that I had previously missed or forgot to look at, such as M63 (Sunflower galaxy) and M106 in Canes Venatici (both bright with some mottling visible in M63); the Corvus Planetary NGC 4361 (nice with the NPB filter in place); NGC 2903 in Leo (another bright galaxy) and NGC 6543 (Cat's Eye Nebula). After looking at M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra and NGC 6302, the bug nebula in Scorpius later in the night, I was reminded of why I like looking at planetaries. They are just so varied and wonderful, plus they have a high enough surface brightness to render good views at high powers.

Finished off the night with some good old fashion southern sky viewing, perusing the rich starfields close to the heart of our home galaxy. Starting with M4 (nice bar of stars resolved), M80 in Scorpius and then moving onto M8 and M20, the Lagoon and Trifid nebula, onto M17, the swan nebula and finally M16, the eagle nebula. All looked fantabulous with the NPB filter in place with heaps of nebulosity, swirls and dark lanes. Oh and yes did also look at M13. The skies were kinda moist and did not support high magnification. My scope maxed out at 125x with the 6mm TV Radian, with the stars looking blobby. You can't win all the time.......till my next trip there.....