Observing report - March 31, 2014

Tonight I sat out on my front porch with Neptune, the 8" Meade, to see what I could see. I brought out my laptop to see how much that would help. I had a fairly ambitious observing list, but in the end spent most of the night tracking down NGC 3115 (Caldwell 53, woot!), based on nothing more than Stellarium suggesting it to me.

It took me an hour, but I finally tracked it down. It's interesting to see how much Stellarium and SkyChart help. The Magellan handset lets me point to things as needed, but verifying that there's something there is another challenge entirely. Being able to see where I am, verify what I'm looking at by starhopping, helps a lot.

So in the end? A faint fuzzy; slightly elongated, maybe some hint of a core. Not much, but what do you expect from a light-polluted front porch? This sketch matched what I saw nicely, while this page just left me aghast that I'd missed so much.