Kye's Star Farm

Jay Albert

January 7~8, 2005

When I got to Kye's Star Farm Friday afternoon, January 7th, Jim Kimball, John and Marie Clifton and Bob Zanger were already there with Kye. The sky had turned from clear to mostly cloudy with thin cirrus above some small, scattered cumulus. Conditions improved intermittently and we all had good views of Comet Macholz close to the Pleiades. It was also a good night for double stars and open clusters and I had a good view of Saturn. Fog rolled in about midnight.

We were joined by Jim Mayes and Dan Wickles on Saturday night. The initial conditions were similar to Friday's but with fewer clouds. The sky improved as it got darker and, except for about a half hour cloudy interval which ended about 9pm, we enjoyed better than magnitude 6 transparency until it clouded up again by 1:00am. Comet Macholz looked better than last night. I concentrated on highlights listed in January's Sky & Tel in the southern constellation Eridanus for most of the earlier part of the night. Transparency was so good that I was able to observe 14th magnitude galaxy NGC1247 which was too faint to be included in the Sky & Telescope list. A sketch of planetary nebula NGC 1535 in Eridanus is included with this report. After the sights in Eridanus, I viewed various galaxies and faint nebulae, including the Flame, Hubble's Variable Nebula, the Rosette and, prompted by Jim Kimball's imaging of the Horsehead Nebula, IC 434 in Orion. While I could easily see mottling within IC 434, I could not see the Horsehead visually. The image of that nebula on Jim's computer screen, however, was amazing.