DuPuis Nature Preserve

Jim Mayes

February 21, 2004

When I arrived at DuPuis, Dan and Bob were already there. Before the end of the session, James, Larry and Marshall completed the compliment of observers for the night.

The first item on my observing list was the comet T7. It was conveniently located near the southeast star of the Square of Pegasus. All I could see was the fuzzy nucleus but some that viewed it thought they could see a faint tail. Next was NGC1975, 1973, and 1977 in Orion. I was inspired to look for these by Fred’s picture of The Running Man Nebula. These objects make up the nebulosity that the dark Running Man is outlined against. NGC2440 in Puppis is a planetary nebula, magnitude 11.3, which at 100X appears as a very small bluish disk. Another planetary nebula, NGC3242, the Ghost of Jupiter in Hydra, was larger with the same blue color. NGC2539 I thought was an unremarkable collection of stars located in Puppis but probably better than most NGC open clusters. The rest of my observations were fuzzies in Leo. Near M105 is NGC3384. At magnitude 10, it is nearly as bright and large as its Messier neighbor. Also in the field is NGC3387, a magnitude 11.8 galaxy that was difficult to pick out, particularly as it was located in the east where light pollution is most evident. Other items were NGC3521, oval shaped with a bright center, and NGC2903, a bright elongated galaxy, and NGC3607. Near the latter were NGC3608 and a faint magnitude 11.9, NGC3599.

Around 10 o’clock dew started to become a problem. Everyone left about 11.