tried for final Messiers (Blue Mountains)

1:22 AM, Monday, February 18, 2013. Said goodnight to Trevor as he nestled into the igloo. The Moon was setting. I expected it would be gone in 30 minutes. I noted bright Jupiter above. There were very few clouds. I had the Paramount up and running.

1:28 AM. Viewed Saturn with Tony. It was lovely to see again. I noted 4 moons, to the "right," perhaps? Maybe more, below, and above. It was still rather low in the sky... Had a bit of colour, Was shimmering. It would be good to view later, when higher.

Tony helped me put on the large dew cap. He prepared the Tele Vue 'scope.

1:34. I grabbed the weather data from the Davis station: humidity, 90%; pressure 1024.5 mbar; temperature, -15.2 degrees C; there was no wind.

1:43. Asked Tony what he wanted to look at. He usually has a suggestion to offer, quickly. But he was a little unfamiliar with the sky, this time of year. We reviewed the software's presentation of the evening sky. We considered objects on the same side of the meridian. Settled on Messier 5. It was pleasing in the big 'scope, with individual stars resolved. While he had forgotten his glasses by the house, Tony could see streamers of stars with averted vision.

1:48. Aiming toward the cluster of Messier clusters between Virgo and Leo, I made a pit stop at Porrima. I saw a very tight touching pair of stars, with the 55mm eyepiece. I think Tony could not split the light gold stars.

I put the 10mm in the TV101 to begin some wide field viewing.

2:15. I could not identify the galaxy we were viewing. It was a thin edge-on galaxy, quite large in the 55mm eyepiece, with a bright core, and then a bright mid-section. Tony enjoyed the view.

I didn't think it was M90. It didn't seem to be the correct orientation. And the field stars didn't seem to match. It also looked a bit like M88. But it's tilted the other way...

The pointing accuracy of the Paramount is still off. And in this part of the sky, with galaxies everywhere, it was very difficult to know where one was. I kept stumbling across other faint fuzzies as I panned around.

There was something round, above (or north) of it, about 1.5 fields away (again, still using the 55mm). It looked to be a small face-on galaxy. There was some mottling in the disc. Not uniform. Fairly faint.

Clouds were moving in...

Tony called it quits.

2:40. I was unsuccessful at tagging the galaxies. I could not seem to create a matching view in TheSky 6 software. The clouds now were covering much of the sky. The transparency was dropping off. As the Clear Sky Chart had predicted. I was done.

2:59. Finally closed the roof of the observatory. That was after messing with it. The motor did not want to start up, once again. Made a mental note to advise the supervisors...

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Did a sketch of the edge-on galaxy during breakfast.

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Did some sleuthing in SkyTools.

We had viewed NGC 4216 in Virgo. A spiral galaxy, nearly edge-on, at magnitude 11.0. It is about 8 arcminutes by 2. It is near an L-shape of stars. It matches the sketch I made (from memory).

Above, about one field away, was NGC 4212 in Coma Berenices. 45' away.

Another spiral galaxy. Face-on at mag 11.8.