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C'mon folks, don't leave me in suspense! How did Eagle Bluff go last night?
Is anyone headed there tonigh? I need to get my observing program organized, I'm sure not going to watch the Twins lose to the Yankees tonight.
If I don''t hear from anyone, it will be the Flatin Farm hayfield for me.
Well last night was great, and Randy mentioned he might be back. I got there right before dark. Right after setting up, I looked at Jupiter, and what do you know, Io was right on the limb. I summoned Randy to take a look, in case it disappeared. Randy pointed it that it would be a shadow transit! So we did see that. But it was tough as the atmosphere was fairly turbulent. It was very pleasant on the ground though. I didn't even need my jacket until after 10. I did some imaging and observing with my large binoculars. I was able to find he comet with them in less 30 seconds. There was a young man who used to live in Singapore who showed up named We(sp?). He was very curious about everything and looked at some our favorites with us. Also a naturalist formerly from Eagle bluff stopped by with her parents. Randy showed them Jupiter, Uranus, a couple of other favorites, and the Ring and Dumbell nebulae. Kirk was also there with his really nice Discovery truss dob. Julie and Chris showed up with Joseph and a camper. That kid has cuteness and enthusiasm in spades. Randy tried out my 38mm Titan 70 degree eyepiece in his telescope, and Kirk's 35mm Panoptic. Both did well, with the panoptic sharper at the edges. Those were some extra large exit pupils, but the secondary wasn't ever seen. There were a few meteors seen, and I missed all but one, about mag 2-3. None were very spectacular, and is was many many less than at the Star-B-Q. Randy was packing up when I left at 12:30, but with the early sunset, that was plenty of time. AGNFA.
Yes, had a great time last night.. Lot's of dust in the air made the sky glow a bit but still…
Just too nice.Dean, We'll put the Twins on the radio (and watch game 4 tomorrow). I'll be heading down tonight too!
Randy
Awesome! Eagle Bluff here I come. I should be there about 7-7:30.
Very happy you folks had a good session last night.
It was a very fun and unusual night at Eagle Bluff. First off the parking lot was so full of cars that it looked like we had drove into a parking lot at a Twins game. But the lights were off , and we got in about a half an hour when Boom! the lights came on. There was a scholarship fund raising event coming to an end and it took an hour before the folks all cleared out. We used the time to do some impromtue outreach and showed the public Jupiter with four moons close by the planet. One lady told me she had never taken much interest in "astrology" and thanked me for letting her look through my microscope. Others took a very keen interest and we may see some newcomers at a meeting soon.
Then the lights went off and we got down to business. I found 103P Hartley and just kept tracking that while I looked at other objects thru Randy's, Jeff's and Kirk's scopes. I got real good movement on the comet during the 4 hours I tracked it. I also got a good position on asteroid 6 Hebe.
Randy did a tour of planetary nebulas, (The Cat's Eye was incredible! M27 also) we tried out my 13mm Televu Ethos, and Luka's wide field 38mm eyepiece (I want one bad!) and I had 3 astronomical firsts last night. I saw NGC 604, an emission nebula in another galaxy (M33) thru Kirk's scope, quasar 3C 465 in Pegasus thru Randy's and ate freshly popped popcorn at 11 p.m. compliments of Randy and his handy trailer. That hit the spot! It was AGNFA!!
Friday night was great! Pretty soon Joe will know more constellations than I do. Morning sunrise was spectacular at Eagle Bluff.
Too bad we had a other commitments for Sunday morning or we would have been back out.
Hello astronomy fans! I got out for five hours tonight. I did a community education outreach for Spring Grove and five people showed up. I showed them the Moon, Polaris (all of them didn't know it was a double star, ) Epsilon Lyra, Beta Cygnus, the Alpha Persei Association, M45 the Pleadies, Jupiter, Uranus, and finally the Moon again. It was great, but they weren't dressed appropriately and left after two hours.
I stayed for three more and recorded observations on four Lunar II targets, asteroid 6 Hebe, and Comet 103P Hartley.
I also took a close look at Mira, (Omicron Ceti) and it has brightened to the point to where it is not orange red anymore, but now looks as a yellow star.
It was AGNFA!
Whoa!
I was going outside, a bit early for a change, for the usual morning routine, when BAM! I really bright meteor, streaking down the sky in the southwest, towards the south.
I would say it was magnitude -2, maybe brighter. A blueish-white, with a trail, and some chunky debris. It probably traversed about 30 degrees (3 fist widths?) in about a second or two.
05:40:19 (?) CDTTrying to plot it out in Stellarium, I would say it started around 47 Eri, and went to the bottom corner of Lepus (epsilon Lep?).
When I came back inside, I noticed the weather was on KTTC, with the camera going in the background. Unfortunately, if it was live, it was aimed too far to the east.
Tonight I set up the 80mm refractor on an alt-az mount just to poke around the sky since it's been a while. Turned on the red dot finder, lined up M33, and there it was in the eyepiece… immediately joined by a slow meteor tumbling by, leaving a pig-tail of sparkling debris. I've seen other meteors through the eyepiece before but they were all pretty fast. This one took about 0.25sec to cross the 2-degree FOV. The brightness seemed about double that of the bright stars in Triangulum — not very bright, but very pretty.
I listened for any sounds of bottle rockets that some neighbors might have launched, but everything was quiet. Is this type of meteor even possible?
Absolutely Roger. You have to take the fact that meteors travel at different speeds depending on what meteor stream the originate from. If you research the different meteor streams, many of them have different rates of mph or kph per hour.
Also, meteors that you see early in the evening are playing "catch up" (i.e. they are coming our part ot the Earth from behind our planet in its orbit.)
Once our part of the Earth turns towards the direction that it is going into, after midnight, then the effect is like driving a car into a snowstorm. The snowflakes smack into your windshield.
Hopefully this explains a little bit.
Thanks for the explanation, Dean! This meteor was moving toward the west at 22:01, so it would be on the "back side" of the earth's motion.
(At least I didn't think it was a UFO…
)EAGLE BLUFF tonight anyone? The CSC looks great, and Eagle Bluff only has an in-dorm crowd there tonight so the parking lot lights will be off.
We could have A Glorious Night For Astronomy!
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