Hello Hubski. I did an outreach event under perfect skies and not freezing weather. It was an amazing, incredible, fantastic, awe-inspiring, radical evening. After each outreach event, I post an after-event write-up so that the facebook group has a record of what we saw, how many people, etc. Tonight was incredible and I cannot sleep I'm so excited we got at least one good evening this spring. Below, with names redacted, is my report.
One of the questions that people ask at these events: what can you actually SEE with all the light pollution here in the city? Tonight we pushed the limits of what I'd normally try for and amazed even myself.
First on this list? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius#Sirius_B Sirius B is the closest white dwarf star to the earth at a mere 9 light years. Normally an object like this is very easy to see, but the bright star Sirius is 10,000x brighter and washes out the dimmer star. Tonight, we saw Sirius B with our eyes. While aligning the telescope I notices a star next to Rigel that I did not remember seeing. The reason for not ever noting the double is that Rigel is something I look at while the sky is still bright and the dimmer companion is washed out by Rigel's brightness. But, with Rigel's companion visible and stable, I knew I had to go for Sirius B. I'm sort of obsessed with white dwarfs, and this is one that I try to see every year but always seem to miss it. I pointed the scope at Sirius, cranked up the power and looked. The white dwarf star was right where it was supposed to be; I had to gather witnesses to verify that the star was indeed visible in the eyepiece. I had to use my 14mm Explore Scientific eyepiece and a 3x Barlow lens, but it was there, hanging off the edge of a diffraction spike. Neat!
Next up, NGC 3115. This is an edge-on galaxy that is very near the current location of Jupiter in the sky. It was clearly there in the eyepiece although to get more than the 'fuzzy star' effect you needed averted vision. With NGC3115 so plainly visible I rotated around over the streetlights and got M81 and M82. I had to use the sign to block the streetlights from shining into the telescope, but there was a faint oval of light that was visible. No structure, no spiral arms but M81 was there and more than just the core of the galaxy. M82, visible as an elongated oval (the cigar shape of the "Cigar Galaxy!") was visible once I found it by nudging the telescope. So yes, you can see a galaxy from redacted, park very near downtown! And then, YYYYYY Kicked everything up a notch and star hopped to the Sombrero Galaxy, M104. It was very faint in the muck of the city lights, BUT IT WAS THERE. I'd also like to restate that YYYYYY star-hopped with his 10" dob with no GOTO, no motors, just him. This is an incredible feat and he deserves a shout out for it.
Then, the third amazing thing this evening, we saw, visually, NGC 2438... the planetary nebula in Messier 46! VISUALLY! FROM THE CITY! It was there, it was faint, and YYYYYY had to point it out to me, but man, once I saw it and figured out where it was, right next to a small trapezium of stars, a faint orb of cloud. If that was the night, that would have made this one of the best nights of the year... but there is more. This is an object we normally needed to go out of the city to be able to see at all.
Jupiter was in grand form. By 9PM the Great Red Spot was very visible in XXXXX's refactor telescope. He had the best view of Jupiter so far this year. Perfectly clean, bands, GRS, polar caps all perfectly visible even at a glance.By now we were winding down, but for a lark, I rolled back to Jupiter and pumped up the magnification as far as I could. I used a 6.7mm Explore Scientific Eyepiece and the same 3x Barlow as before. And for the first time in my own 14" telescope, I saw the disks of Jupiter's moons. Ganymede was very VERY clearly a disk. I could not see detail, but the disk was real and not an illusion due to the turbulent air. Europa, Io and Callisto were also very obviously disks; the color differences between them very apparent even to members of the public who had not looked through a telescope before. Io was orange, Europa a bright vibrant white, Ganymede an off white sort of grey.
Oh, yea, and we saw M42, as well. Big deal, right? M78, the other bright nebula in Orion, however was flat out not there. I verified that the star pattern was the correct one, but the cloud of nebula was just not present in the eyepiece. We also saw M3, a globular cluster.
An amazing night that turned into a mini star party. This is why I love this hobby and I was able to share that wonder with members of the public. Can't wait to do it again!