As its name suggests, Comet C/2013 US10 was discovered on Halloween in 2013 by the Catalina Sky Survey, a project based near Tuscon, Arizona that uses two large telescopes to photograph the sky looking for comets and asteroids that may come near Earth. It is believed that this is the first and only time the comet has ever visited our planet, and it will never do so again, as gravitational perturbations in its orbit from the planets will cause it to be ejected from our solar system.
This is the first time I had a chance to view this comet. It's already past opposition, so I'm glad I was able to spot it before it got away. My best view was with my Luminos 82° 15mm eyepiece (100X). The comet showed a stellar core with a wide fuzzy nebulosity surrounding it. The overall shape was indistinct due to background LP in this region of the sky. I wasn't able to make out either tail.
I spent several minutes trying (unsuccessfully) to track down a few galaxies. I couldn't even see M81 and M82 tonight. Well, that eliminated about 3/4 of the objects on my observing list, so I started looking for other targets a bit more forgiving of the windy urban conditions.
This planetary nebula was discovered in 1891 by the Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming while working at Harvard. When it was later catalogued into the Index Catalog, its discovery was attributed to her colleague, Professor Edward Charles Pickering, because his name was more widely recognized. This was a common practice at the time, but she did get recognition for her discoveries in later years.
This is fairly bright planetary nebula. At 100X, it looks like a slightly out-of-focus star. Adding my 2.5X Barlow (250X), it begins to take on shape. I detected a bright central star with a wide fuzzy ring around it. No details could be seen, but with the ring going almost all the way to the core, it had a unique appearance.
I then played around in Orion for awhile, looking at some old favorites and trying to gauge the sky conditions. Of course, that meant a look at the ghostly beauty of M42, the Great Orion Nebula. But tonight, rather than concentrating on the nebula itself, I spent some time looking at a small cluster of stars within it, the Trapezium.
The Trapezium cluster was discovered on February 4, 1617 by Galileo Galilei. He noted the three brightest members (A, C, D), but was unable to detect the Great Orion Nebula itself with his small instrument. The fourth star (B) was discovered by several others in 1673, and together, they form the Trapezium shape whereby the cluster gets its name. By 1888, eight members of the cluster had been identified, and they are now believed to be a part of the larger Orion Nebula Cluster, which contains over 2000 stars.
Using my barlowed 15mm, I was able to get six Trapezium stars to show themselves fairly regularly. Number 6 would fade out of view occasionally when the wind picked up speed.
In 1785, this open cluster was discovered by William Herschel, using an 18.7" f/13 speculum telescope. He described it as "e;a very compressed cluster of extremely small stars, irregular form, 5 or 6 arcminutes in diameter."e;
This cluster is indeed very small. At 100X, averted vision was required to make out individual stars. Using the Barlow, it becomes a bit larger and the triangular shape became more apparent. It was still difficult to see a lot of stars without averted vision, but I could make out around 20 or so.