A window of one night between my night support schedule for work and some poor weather in the forecast led to an observing session on the slopes of Mauna Loa on Friday night. I got to the site well before sunset and just appreciated the slow fading of the light on Maunakea. The banner photo for this article was taken after the sun set for me behind the slope of Mauna Loa, but while it was still illuminating Maunakea.
After dark, I spent quite a bit of time just appreciating the beautiful naked eye sky. The clouds were well below me in the saddle and Maunakea was silhouetted against the skyglow. Cars heading up and down the mountain traced a moving line of lights for the first part of the night and eventually quieted down.
I then got down to some observing with my SVX152 refractor. I went through an observing list from the February 2019 issue of Astronomy Magazine on "Observing Stellar Blowouts". It contained a handful of lesser known planetary nebulae. One seemed oddly low on the horizon until I remembered that this list was probably written for mid-northern latitudes and this object (NGC 7354 in Cepheus) would be circumpolar for many of Astronomy Magazine's readers. I caught it very low, less than 10 degrees above the horizon.
A few of these nebulae stood out as really nice. Here are slightly expanded versions of my notes taken during the night:
NGC 2371: A nice little double lobed planetary nebula in my Pentax 7XW eyepiece. Better without the UHC filter.
IC 418: Nice, bright, blue round planetary nebula in the 7XW. Central star is easily visible.
NGC 2438: A classic! Beautiful in the 7XW with the UHC filter. Round with dark center. The filter enhances the contrast of dark central region of the nebula.
I spent most of the rest of the night casually cruising through well known objects rising in the East, but I did bag one novelty: a naked eye asteroid.
While glancing at my star chart on my iPad (I use the Sky Safari app to plan my stargazing sessions and take notes), I saw that Vesta was magnitude 6.6 in Leo. I had truly dark skies with no haze, so I figured mag 6.6 should be within reach. After some study of the star patterns in Leo above Denebola and some time spent concentrating on the sky and sure enough, I could trace a line of stars on the chart right to a faintly visible "star" at the position of Vesta!