ripping through NGCs (Blue Mountains)

In short order after dinner we were heading outside to prepare for observing. I immediately opened the roof of the GBO observatory and fired up the Celestron 14-inch telescope. First target: Jupiter!

With the Tele Vue Panoptic 27mm ocular in the C14.

8:56 PM. Viewed Jupiter. Hey, there are only 3 moons. Europa on one side; Ganymede and Callisto on the other.

With our guests, we viewed M57, Tim Horton star, and Jupiter.

Later, Ian D presented a list of interesting planetary nebula and other DSOs from somewhere so we started ripping through it. Easy peasy with TheSky6 and the Paramount ME...

NGC 6818 aka Little Gem. A planetary nebula. Lovely small triangle of faint field stars nearby.

6826 aka Blinking Planetary. A planetary nebula a star (mag 10.6) in the middle. [ed: aka Caldwell 15.]

6822 aka Barnard's Galaxy. Irregular. Hard to make out. Will need to look again. [ed: aka Caldwell 57.]

6905. Very nice planetary nebula. Very spherical. Lovely field stars.

Saturn Nebula aka 7009. Nice. [ed: aka Caldwell 55.]

7027. aka Magic Carpet! Very blue planetary nebula. Nearby star. Cone shape. Very small.

7184. Edge on galaxy. Very faint. Slightly canted bright core. Edge of field... [ed: huh?]

7331. Lovely spiral, canted. Beautiful bright centre. [ed: aka Caldwell 30.]

11:15 PM. Io emerged from shadow. Pop!

[ed: Confirmed in SkyTools3.]

7619. Two objects. A galaxy cluster! Should look again on a good night...

Blue Snowball, 7662. Very nice in the C14. [ed: aka Caldwell 22.]

11:50 PM. Titania. 14.44. 1 o'clock position. Uranus is less blue in the C14.

[ed: The 14.44 appears to be the magnitude number. That probably came from TheSky6. SkyTools3 shows mag 13.9, making it the brightest of all the moons.]

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All these objects were immediately noted in the life list. Blog entry came (much) later.