[LVAS] Las Call For Observer's Challenge for September

[Rob]

Unfortunately, the weather has not been very cooperative with me 
regarding my observing sessions for the Observer's Challenge. This month 
was no different. Our club's outing to Cathedral Gorge on gave me 3 
hours of observing on Friday night and less than 2 on Saturday night. 
With teaching new members and catering to the public visitors each 
night, I was only able to spend about 15 minutes observing the Helix 
Nebula this month. I was able to capture a set of images taken at 56 
seconds on 18 September using the ST120, but didn't get a chance to 
adjust the settings on either night to see if I could pull more detail 
with my LX200. I'm also using a 28-second integration image that I 
captured on August 22 with the LX200. Anyway, here's what I was able to 
observe.


With the Mallincam, I was able to see the central star and the 
nebulosity of the Helix at the same time without problem. At the 
28-second integration, I was able to count 17 foreground and background 
stars within the boundary of the nebulosity. At 56-seconds, I was able 
to see 5 more stars in the darker center of the nebula and since at this 
integration, the ring was more extended, especially toward the northwest 
side of the nebula, some of the stars that appeared to be outside the 
nebula were actually within the periphery of the fainter outer ring. I 
was able to see the nebula curve out and up toward the 10th-mag star to 
the northwest, but couldn't quite see it rejoin the ring past that star. 
It looks as though the 10th-mag star sits in a gap in the nebula's ring. 
The 56-second image definitely brings out the existence of an inner and 
outer ring. The inner ring appears to be more uniformly round, whereas 
the outer ring appears to be blown out on opposite ends. Both the inner 
and outer rings appear to have some reddish or pink color while the 
interior of the nebula has the typical blue-green appearance associated 
with planetary nebulae. The 28-second integration with the LX200 closely 
approximates what I've been able to see when visually observing the 
Helix through my 10-inch Orion Intelliscope, minus the color in the 
Intelliscope.


At my estimated magnifications of 40x in the ST120 and 125x in LX200, I 
wasn't able to see the comet-like structures of the inner ring, but at 
one moment of excellent seeing, I thought I caught a glimpse of the 
faint galaxy located in the gap between the edge of broken outer ring 
and the 10-mag star to the northwest. Neither of my images captured the 
galaxy. Ah, something to look for again on a future hunt. Maybe an 
update next month, after our Death Valley outing.





Fred Rayworth wrote:
> All,
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> For any of you that have a contribution for the observer's challenge for September, which is the Helix Nebula, please submit it now. Would love to receive notes, photos, or drawings. Help us be part of a great opportunity to show off our observing skills.
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> Fred Rayworth
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