:-D
Of course I love the North American nebula and Gamma Cygnus regions up north as these dont' get very high down under. There is some really cool stuff in the Gum nebula complex that's verrrry interesting on CCD. While the Veil nebula is great, the Vela SNR is wild with detail. When the bulk of our Milky Way is high overhead, the signal strength is amazing. I dang near burned away M8 and M20 in a 2 hour H-alpha exposure, but pulled in faint outer details I've only seen on Schmidt plates. Some of the nebula in the tail of Scorpius which scrapes the horizon here is very complex and interesting - more so than IC1396 or 1805/1848. Another great region is near NGC 6188.
There is nothing like the LMC nebula regions up north, unless you count the NGC's in M33. You have to remind yourself that these are extra-galatic nebula.
You can get a real flavor of the southern targets from Loke Tan's StarryScapes web site.
I'll post a few pics tonight.
-- jg
-----Original Message-----
From: David Kingsley <kingsley@No-Spam>
Sent: Apr 17, 2005 2:10 AM
To: The Astronomy Connection <sf-bay-tac@No-Spam>
Subject: Re: [TAC] Best of N/S
Richard Crisp wrote:
>I am not so sure but it seems to me that IC1396 has to be one of the
>more interesting star forming regions and we have it in the northern
>sky.....
>
>Likewise the pair IC1805/IC1848 have a tremendous appearance too, in
>my opinion of course.
I agree with you for images, but don't thinks these are bright enough
to rival the Southern showpieces visually at the eyepiece. It would
be interesting to talk more with you and John Gleason about North
versus Southern best of class objects from the standpoint of what
can be captured on film or CCD.
Bob Jardine wrote
>Did you leave out Planetary Nebulae by mistake, or was it deliberate?
>
At the risk of saving Rashad some travel money, I will admit that I
didn't see any planetary nebula that rivaled the best of the Northern
Hemisphere visually. (M27 and M57). However I'll also note that
both of these Northern hemisphere showpieces are plainly visible from
31 degrees south as well. That's what's so painful about the
distribution of objects in the sky. Most of the Northern best, you
could still see from mid latitudes in the South. In contrast, most
of the Southern sky bests are completely lost to mid latitude
Northern observers.
>
>Also you neglected (or maybe resisted) this one:
>
>Best Constellations. Ah, well, maybe I should leave that soapbox for
its rightful owner-- although I agree with his views
As Bob notes, although I loved the Southern objects, I hated most of
the Southern constellations. With the exception of the Southern
Cross, Jo Bob's Supremely Elegant Triangle, and maybe Ara the Alter,
most of the southern constellations don't look like anything. Many
are made of dim crummy stars that don't stand out as natural
groupings. What's worse, even the bright stars in the Carina, Vela,
and Centaurus, and Lupus region have been carved up by very weird
boundaries that seem to violate most of the natural groupings that
fall together by the naked eye. Try tracing the boundary of
Centaurus some time, which loops all around Crux, mingles with Carina
on one end, and trades stars back and forth with Lupus at the other.
I lived for a while in Boston, and the Southern constellations look
like they were gerrymandered by politicians designing crazy political
districts.
If you can look past the crazy constellations however, the objects
themselves are showcases.
--David Kingsley
Received on Tue Apr 19 17:28:38 2005