M35? Of course. But NGC 2158 with a 66mm - that surprised me

Session: February 8, 2008 - I don't have notes, but I have one sterling memory from this session last Friday night which followed about an hour's frustration with the Cube - see this post.

The memory was of the distant open cluster NGC 2158 showing up to my shock as a wonderful little puff of angel dust near the lower left hand side of my field of view as I looked at M35 in the Astro-Tech 66. In my view I should not have been able to see it in such a small scope. I was using both the 8-24mm Hyperion zoom and the 3.5mm Hyperion with a 68-degree afov. One gave 50X and the other 114X. I liked it best at 50X.

This was one of those impromptu observing sessions where I had no plan and no notebook. All I was trying to do was establish how well the parallelogram bino mount (on a pier) handled the AT66. (The answer was well if you didn't go much above 50X. Above that it took too long to settle down. So it was fun to use with the zoom, but not an ultimate solution. )

In any event, M35 is one of my favorite targets and whenever I look at it, I always check on NGC 2158 which I can easily find because for me the most prominent feature of M35 is a cascade of a dozen or more stars near the core. How many stars I see in and around this cascade depends on how much aperture I'm using, but I always see at least 10 and they point right to NGC 2158 about 24 minutes away. There's a nice photo of the two here, though the photo, of course, makes NGC2158 seem like a much easier target than it is visually.

In any event, NGC 2158 seems to be one of those targets that fares well with less power. I caught it easily with averted vision - better than I have with some larger scopes. Of course in the 15-inch it's very easy and you can resolve it. But this issue of resolution made me think about just what it was I meant to accomplish when I went out to observe. I certainly can understand people wanting the best possible view they can get. And I can understand people wanting to track down faint objects they've never seen before. Me, I'm looking for the gestalt - the total experience. That doesn't require the best view - it requires a good enough view so that visually I have a real sense of what I am seeing.

In this case the experience for me is seeing M35, at a distance of about 2,800 light years, and then seeing NGC 2158 - roughly the same size - at about 15,000 light years. You also notice in the photo that NGC 2158 is distinctly yellow, an indication, i assume, of it's older age of about 1 billion years. That's old for a galactic cluster. M35, with more blue stars, is estimated to be about one tenth that age.

Bottom line - combining thoughts like these with the delightful experience of being out on a crisp winter night, adds up to something special to me. Beyond that, it's hard to explain why I am using a 66mm refractor when I'm sitting right next to a wonderful, 15-inch Obsession. I don't know if there is a perverse streak in me that just wants to prove I can do more with less, or whether I'm just crazy. But I really enjoyed this little impromptu, low-tech tour of familiar clusters which included stops at M37, 36, and 38, of course. It restored my sense of balance after a frustrating bout with some high tech equipment.