2020-Nov-18-AM: Perhaps A Comet; Some Open Star Clusters.

 A few days ago I became aware of comet C/2020 M3 ATLAS, which was passing through Orion. I resolved that I would give it a try with my 6" f/8 Dobsonian some time.

The past few days have had excellent transparency, so I've been using most of them to get some observing done. Two days ago I first tried the comet, but couldn't confirm it. Tonight, I went out again, and I'm pretty sure I got it. Despite not intending to make a big deal of it, I stayed out nearly an hour, did some exploration and found some star clusters.

On November 16th, 12:30 AM, I went out to look for the comet, at the behest of my friend Adstri. We both observed the comet (separately, talking thru Discord), and compared notes. Adstri's skies are not significantly better than mine, but he does have better dark-vision than I do.

Adstri claimed to see it in a pair of binoculars, then he got his NexStar 4SE out and found it there as well. I'm skeptical of his claims. He described it:

A bit difficult in low mags

But yeah, nothing special really
Looks like a fuzzier, greener version of neptune

Comet in front of HD 35656, just above Bellatrix.

That's not what I'd expect from what I believe I've seen. First of all, while we were observing, the comet was directly in front of the star HD 35656. When I observed it, I could see the star, and I could make out the faintest hint of a coma/tail, but it was difficult to tell the difference between coma and scattered light from the star. I wasn't sure I'd seen it.

The next night I observed, but did not stay up late enough for the comet, and the night after that I was too tired to observe.

I brought the Dob out again tonight to look again. Consulting the Heavens Above star map, I found a curved asterism near where the comet was supposed to be. After studying the area for a while with both the 32mm Plossl & the 15mm Goldline, I came to the conclusion that I had maybe seen it.

It had the appearance of an incredibly faint hint of nebulosity in about the right place. If I saw it at all, it was right at the limit of what I could see with the amount of aperture, dark adaptation, light pollution, and stray light I had to work with.

After convincing myself I might have seen it, I went on to reward myself with views of some favorite objects--M42 and the Pleiades--before deciding to do a bit of exploration.

In the fall of 2017, I took an Observational Astronomy class. I like to think of it as a formal education in amateur astronomy. It's the qualification program for the Cline Observatory at GTCC, and it's so much fun I audited it again the next year.

In the 2017 observing class, and for some reason I can't find this in my log, we used the 24" CDK to observe the Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), which we rather liked. We may have shown it once or twice with the dobs since then, I'm not sure. I don't remember finding it myself since then.

In 2017, we were to have a Christmas party at our house. I really wanted to treat our guests to an observing session where we would use my old AstroMaster 114EQ to look for the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, and the Christmas Tree Cluster. I remember planning for this in advance, trying my best to figure out how to find the cluster with my AstroMaster. Despite having gone through the astronomy class I still didn't really understand equatorial mounts yet, and the mount on the 114EQ is too undersized. Don't even ask about the setting circles.

I tried it a few times but I just couldn't find it. It ended up being cloudy on christmas anyway, I believe.

Well I have a lot more experience and a much more user-friendly telescope now, so I decided to revisit this object. I found it on Stellarium.

While looking for the object I scanned around too much and ended up at NGC 2169 by mistake. While trying to identify it, I googled it and it matched up to what I saw. It's called the "37 Cluster" and it's very obvious why that is. Although at low power, it looks more like "31," and the 3 is more of a Σ.

The feet of Gemini are Alhena (2nd Mag; the northern foot) and Alzirr (3rd Mag; the southern foot). Go down from Alhena to Alzirr and turn 45 degrees towards Orion, and you'll just barely be able to see a 4th magnitude star (at least, limiting magnitude was about there tonight). This star is 15 Monocerotis or S Monocerotis. It is the brightest star in the cluster, making up the base of the tree.

The cluster wasn't exactly how I remembered (I may have been mixing it up in my head with a cluster we nicknamed "The Pizza Cluster," which I can not find in my logs either!) , but its name was nonetheless very obvious. It had the appearance of the outline of a christmas tree (or perhaps those air fresheners in cars) with a void in the middle and a sparkling of less clearly associated stars around it. Aside from a tiny bit of scattered light around 15 Mon, there was no hint of nebulosity from the surrounding Cone Nebula. The 6x30 finderscope does not show the cluster, it only shows the main star.

After that I looked on Stellarium for my next target. If you keep going along the line from Alzirr to the Christmas Tree, you'll come across the Rosette Nebula, which I had no chance of seeing. However, within the nebula is a star cluster bright and obvious enough to be visible as a fuzzy spot in the finderscope. It is a much less defined shape, and annoyingly the picture used on wikipedia looks subtly different from the cluster itself, so I was searching all around for other clusters it could have been until I decided to look again more closely at the wikipedia photo and convince myself that yes, it was in fact the same cluster. This cluster is the "Satellite Cluster," NGC 2244.

I was scouting out the next target for a few moments, but decided that three new objects was enough, and I called it a night. My hands were getting cold in the approx. 38 degree weather. Despite having Muk Luk glove/mittens on and a decent jacket, I still got cold. If I'm gonna be doing serious observing during the winter, I'm going to need a better solution to keep warm.

Here is a link to the imgur album containing (somewhat low quality, rushed photos of) the sketches I made on the 16th & 18th.

https://imgur.com/a/U9c9Bs6