28 is 28 & Cleopatra had her beautiful eye on me!

HCG 28

A bitterly cold night that saw the mercury drop to the lowest level I have ever known or recorded -16?C. I wanted to get an early observation in before Moon rise; my primary objective was to add another Hickson group to my list. This I did successfully with very appropriately HCG 28, I say appropriate as this was the 28th that I have observed and sketched. Located in Eridanus there are 4 faint members in the group although my sketch actually includes a 5th galaxy which isn’t a member and is depicted as a faint star. All members have PGC listing the faintest & smallest (d) member is Mag 18, so serious stuff! The commanding member is a nice edge on PGC 15136 running N-S, see my sketch here
Quite how I came to observe the next object I’m not quite sure? I may have noticed it close by on my planetarium software, not that it matters, it was an interesting and valuable observation. Again in Eridanus, NGC 1535 is a lovely planetary nebula, named ‘Cleopatra’s eye’ by Greg Crinklaw aka ‘The Skyhound’ a name that appears to have stuck and grown in popularity. I had observed this planetary back in 2010 with the old 350mm F5 and older first generation Watec camera, but this was my first visit with the 505mm mirror. It did show an improvement, despite the lower focal length employed on this occasion, I used a barlow lens previously to increase image scale and try and pull out more detail, I had failed to resolve a faint star on the very northern edge of the nebula, the central star was easy and steady as were internal annular ring structures rather like those in the ‘Eskimo’ nebula.
Here is my old sketch with the 350mm and here is the latest with the 505mm. At the time of writing I have asked Sue French if she would be so kind as to help assist me on finding the outer stars mag.
Happy days, Dale

Do you want to know more about my interest in astronomy? If so take a look at my Website: www.chippingdaleobservatory.com

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NGC 1535
NGC 1535

One thought on “28 is 28 & Cleopatra had her beautiful eye on me!”

  1. Hello Dale,

    Most impressive work on a very cold night.
    The HGC’s are too faint for me to tackle but you will be able to get them all with your equipment. The planetary sketch is very impressive too.
    Great work.

    Frank 🙂

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