summary of March 13 observing session

Thank you to those who turned out. We saw an impressive list of objects this month starting with M42-the Orion Nebula. This is the closest, large star forming region at a distance of 1,300 lightyears (lyr). It looks spectacular in the telescope! Our second object was NGC2392-the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini. This is a planetary nebula much like our own Sun will form in 5 billion years. Our next sight was NGC 2683-the UFO Galaxy in Lynx. This is a nearly edge-on spiral galaxy with an active nucleus. It lies 16 million lyr away. Our fourth object was another planetary nebula, NGC 2438. In order to see this, we needed to use an OIII filter. Next was Mars. The sixth object was another spiral galaxy, M66 in Leo. The seventh object was NGC 3158, an elliptical galaxy in Leo. This galaxy is 300 million lyr away and is currently the most distant object our class has seen. The light we saw left that galaxy 300 million years ago! Next, we moved to Ursa Major to view a number of its objects. The first object in Ursa Major we saw was M81-Bode's Galaxy. Next, we viewed M82-the Cigar Galaxy which is interacting with M81. Our last object in Ursa Major was M97-the Owl Nebula, a planetary nebula. Leaving Ursa Major, we visited NGC 3242-another planetary nebula known as The Ghost of Jupiter. It is a bright blue when seen through the telescope. Our final target of the evening was Saturn. Even though its rings are nearly edge-on to our line of sight right now, we could still see them. A bonus was seeing two of its moons, Titan and Iapetus.