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I was as great night! I think the best since Nov 5, 2010, and maybe better than that.
I was at Keller with Jeff. We arrived 5 minutes apart, just after dark. I really wasn't intending on a mini-marathon, but I did end up seeing quite a few Messiers. It's been really long since I saw m42, and boy was is beautiful. My narrowband filter made it even better.
I did see M31, M32, M110, M3, M33, M78, M51, and M66. I did see a lot of what Scott saw, but NOT 77, 67, 97, 109, 48, nor 50. I left soon after Saturn got over the tree line. It was nice to see with the rings open a bit. It's probably the most open that I've ever seen them. I only spotted Titan though, and not any other moons. I think it was still too low perhaps.
I'm glad to hear you folks had a great Sat. night. As usual on a clear night, I was scheduled to tend bar.
Not tonight! I'm off to Wayne Dosch's house to break a long winter's fast on stargazing.
The Pleadies are very close to the Moon tonight.
Wish me luck. More later.
Well, I got out for 3 hours. I went to Wayne Dosch's place NE of Houston and he got to look through a telescope. I don't think he'd done that before even though he's had a real interest in science since he was a kid. Maybe a cheap refractor if anything.
I showed him the Moon and the Pleadies star cluster just before they disappeared behind the ridge to the west of his house. They were close enough to see together in the FOV of my 15X70 binoculars. Then it was a telescopic look at the Moon. He wondered what the big circular area near the terminator towards the upper half of the Moon was and I explained that it was the Sea of Serenity. Then I showed him roughly where Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility east of the craters Ritter and Sabine. He liked that. We also looked at the big craters of Aristotle and Eudoxus when he wondered about them.
M42-43 were up next because that darn ridge was getting ready to swallow them too. I explained that it was the nearest star forming region to our Solar System and was roughly 1500 light years away. Then it was binocular looks at Orions sword and belt. I showed him Collander 70, the many stars that surround the belt. His wife Colleen has a pair of binoculars and I think they are going to get used on the sky more. That's a good start.
Polar aligned on Polaris next the first of many double stars we looked at. Mizar A&B, Alcor and Mizar, Zeta Cancri and Gamma Leonis. We talked about the difference between binarys and optical doubles and explained common proper motion. Discussed the Ursa Major Moving Group.
We finished with a look at Arcturus, tried for M3, but by this time, the sky was gettiing murky and then vanished completely. I drove home in very thick fog.
Wayne liked it a lot. So did I. It was wonderful to be out there again.
Hello astronomy fans! I got out for 3 and a half hours tonight and got set up by 7 p.m. I spent most of a half hour looking for Jupiter/Mercury, but I had low clouds to the west. I got my scope set up and found my first Lunar II target, but went back to the binocs for just one more sweep.
I found Jupiter! I used my scope to nail down the planet and moons, ( the SEB is back, by the way ), but no Mercury. I swung my scope back to the Moon, looked to the west, and there was Mercury below and to the right of Jupiter! Hooray! Mercury showed a disc, but not much else besides chromatic aberration. Both planets were higher in the sky than I expected them to be. After 10 minutes, the clouds covered Mercury and 10 more after that Jupiter was gone. But hey, it was pretty cool to see them. The next three nights are supposed to be even better if the weather holds up and tomorrow night looks very good indeed. 8)
Back to the Moon. I nailed craters Alpatregnus, Beer and Feuillee, and Montes Recti, Teneriffe and Spitzbergen. I'm over half done with Lunar II.
I finished with looks at Arturus and Saturn. I viewed Saturn through moderate cloud cover, but the rings are opening up nicely. We are in for a glorious season for Saturn, and I had a Glorious Night For Astronomy! 🙂
Well, it was another great night, in fact even better than last night. I was set up by 7 p.m. and got my journal all caught up. I made a binocular sweep at 7:30 and spotted Mercury first! Then I moved just a little bit to the left and WOW!, there was Jupiter and Mercury fitting easily in the same binocular FOV. It was so cool! It took another 10 minutes to pick them up visually, but when I did it was great. I estimate that Mercury was 10 degrees above the horizon and Jupiter 12. Telesopically, Mercury shows a slightly gibbous disc and all four of the Galilean moons were to the east of Jupiter tonight. I watched them until they faded into the lights of Spring Grove and then turned my attention to the Moon. (I hope you imaging types worked your magic tonight, those two planets were thrilling.)
Another great night for Lunar II targets. I nailed craters Bullialdus, Bullialdus A&B, Kies and Kies Pi which is a lunar lava dome. They were all bunched together and it was great fun sketching those objects. Hesodius A was next up, it is a double walled crater near Hesodius and Pitatus. Crater Wolf which sits out in the middle of Mare Nubium finished the Lunar II agenda for the night. It is a badly eroded crater that reminds me of the letter "C".
Saturn finished the night. It's still a little low for really good viewing, but I think besides Titan to the east, I could see Iapetus way off to the west. There possibly could have been two more moons very close to Saturn on Titan's side, but they were averted vision only. Boy, it is wonderful to be back out there again. 4 hours tonight.
Well, I got out for five hours last night but it wasn't easy. I packed up and went and there wasn't much but some 1st and 2d mag. stars showing. Then it started clearing in the SW, so I spent the first hour looking at some old favorites, the Orion Nebula, M41 and used the binocs to view M45, Aldebaran, the Hyades and the Perseus Double cluster. I spotted a satellite going through the Hyades and followed it all the way to M34 in Perseus before it faded. I took a look at Algol and think that it might be going thru a periodic dimming, then picked up another satellite with a noticable golden color and followed that from Algol all the way to the NE horizon.
I got a great observation on asteroids 3 Juno and 20 Massalia in southern Leo. I'm going out tonight to see if they move, but am 90% sure I found them both from the chart in Astronomy magazine. They both do not fit in the same binoc FOV, but the two fields overlap.
Then it was back to the Herschel 400 hunt. I nailed 5 galaxies, all in Ursa Major. NGC's 4026, 4088 & 4085, 4102 and 4051. 4088 was the most obvious w/4085 in the same FOV. I also found NGC 4100 nearby, but that is not a H400. 4102 reminds me of the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini. I had a devil of a time finding 4051. It took me from 11:36 p.m. to 12:49 a.m. to find it. I finally had to go from Cor Caroli in Canes Venatici to Beta CV to a prominent two star asterism NE of that and extend out from there towards 65 Ursa Majoris. Then I found it on my second try on that route. It's nice and I'm glad I stuck with it.
This whole time the sky kept getting better, but a persistant cold eastern breeze kept at me and it was strong enough that I couldn't journal outside except at the telescope where I had to clamp down on the pages. It was pretty darn cold last night too and I had on all my winter gear and chemical heat pads for my hands. I finished with a long look at Saturn (was that tiny moon Enceladus tucked just off and below the west side of the ring?) and M3 and M51 w/NGC5195. (Love that 13mm Televu Ethos.) A tough but Glorious Night For Astronomy!
Great job Dean. I was out for 5 hours (well the scope was out, I was in) both Friday and Saturday nights. I had some overlap with Dean in Ursa Major with 4088 and its neighbors; 4088 has odd barred spiral arms. Both nights I was broadcasting video images through NightSkiesNetwork. On Friday I walked through the Virgo cluster stopping and pausing at some dozen faint galaxies in the Markanian chain. I then took requests from the NSN audience which swung us to M99, seeing brilliant spiral arms (aka Katherine's Wheel). Saw a little known but pretty planetary nebula NGC 1501 in Camelopardalis. Had good looks at M51/101, and then further requests from NSN took us to the Owl and nearby M108 galaxy. Looked at the structure in M63 (Sunflower) and M64 (Black Eye) galaxies.
Later in the night we looked at the galaxy cluster Hickman 68, which gave a view of 5 galaxies in one field – NGC 5350,3,4,5, and 8.
Around 3am M3 was up, and it was night to get a peak at summer's upcoming collection of globs. Ended with a shot at the Needle galaxy 4565. Had viewers from all over including Iowa, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Romania!I ordered a new adapter for the Mallicam on the Obsession 18 that allows more inward focus travel which lets me add the maximum adjustment of focal reducers to bring the f4.5 to an f2.5! This increases my field of view from 13 arcseconds to about 22. Very nice to get the entire M101 galaxy in the frame. Friday night was so nice here that despite the dob being out for 6 hours, there was no frost or moisture anywhere on the scope. It was tracking well and the skies were nearly as good as they get around here!
Wow, great reports guys.
Randy, is that 22 arcseconds or arcminutes? Your scope has a focal length of around 2050mm right? I'm curious as to the size of the Mallincam's chip?
According to a quick calculation based on my images of M101, and my scope/camera producing about 1 arcsecond per pixel, M101 is about 15 arcminutes across.
Mike
It was late when I posted, I got my arcminutes confused with my arcseconds. Yes, I'm speaking of arcseconds! The Obsession specs are 2060 focal length +/- 50mm so everyone's 18" scope is a little different. I also raised my primary a full inch to achieve the shortened focal length needed. I know some Obsession dob owners are struggling with their mallincam by posts on the Yahoo discussion group. The Mallincam chip is a 1/2 inch CCD 811 x 508 pixels.
According to my SkyMap Pro, M101 is about 27 x 28 arcminutes in size, so I guess it depends on how far one goes out on those faint, faint spiral arms.
Tonight, I just pulled out the Evo 30 for the 1st time this year. The collimation is spot on, which I know it should be, but there's always those anti-collimation gremlins that hang around dob's…
I was hoping that there would be some other astro-activity by the club. But after reading about Randy's two five hour sessions with the 30" outside and Randy inside, I think I could come down with a "John Henry" syndrome pretty quick. 😉
I'm doing my best though. I was out Sunday night which was much better than Sat. night. Clearer skies, less wind, and the temps a bit milder. I looked for Mercury, but could not see it. There was a bit of low scud along the western horizon, but I'm betting it is out of reach by now. I warmed up on M35 and NGC 2158 in Gemini, and then started in on the Herschel Hunt where I bagged six more galaxies. NGC's 2811 in Hydra (a little hard to find this small streak of light). Then 2974 in Sextans and this baby was even harder to see. If I hadn't been going after the H400 list, I'd have never seen this.
Hold on folks, it gets much worse… 😛
NGC's 3900 and 3912, Spiral Galaxies in Leo. I could see 3900 clearly, but where was 3912? It was supposed to be in the same FOV. I kept going off in different directions, but couldn't see it. Back to the star chart. Try south, Dean. There nearly a full degree away, with 3900 barely in the field, I saw a phantom. I moved the scope again. Again I saw just the faintest streak of light. Stared some more. Averted vision. Now I could just barely pick it up. I'm not bad at spotting photons, but this was crazy hard. I'd like to meet the sadist that put 3912 into the Herschel 400. >:(
The next two were easy to see, Thank God. NGC 4027 in Corvus, and then I got a really fun star hop to NGC 4030. I started at Spica and that brought back old memories of standing on the sidewalk across from our house with my little Jason refractor. Just learning the constellations and looking at the 1st mag. stars. From Spica to Saturn for a quick look and then on to Gamma Virginis. It was a "dog bone" at 82X, but when I slid in the 13mm Televu Ethos, it split cleanly, both a nice yellow-green. Star hopped to Eta Virginis and then further west to a prominent two star asterism. Just north of that 4030 was bracketed by two stars. Very pretty. 🙂
I got a great observation of Saturn and then took the time to gaze at M13 in Hercules. Epsilon Bootes was next up and my Ethos split that cleanly. So lovely. :-*
The damn cold eastern breeze was getting stronger, and I was in the process of packing up when I remembered that I hadn't checked on asteroids 3 Juno and 20 Massalia yet. I found them easily and was correct in my estimation of the two objects that I suspected the night before. Now both had strayed from the previous nights position and I had my first "two for one" asteroid observation. I was gratified to realize that my judgement of faint magnitudes is getting pretty good. 😉
4 and a half hours, 28 and a half y.t.d., and 1361 and a half total. A Glorious Night For Astronomy!
Looks iffy, but if the clouds hold out I might be broadcasting on the NightSkiesNetwork "randoeyes" by 8-9 pm. Have to sign in to the site now, due to spamming that occurred last year.
Hello astronomy fans! I got out there for 4 and a half hours last night and made some good progress. I started off with binocular looks at the various 1st mag. stars while waiting for full darkness to come on and got the urge to see if I could spot Sirius B in the twilight, and I could! I think it is easier then, because Sirius A is not so overwhelming.
Nine Herschel 400's last night. NGC's 4111, 4143, 4147, 4150, 4151, 4179, 4203, 4214 and 4245. NGC 4150 was a son-of-a-gun to find. 4143 was a nice object, as were 4179, 4203, and 4245. The best of the nine were NGC 4214 an irregular galaxy in Canes Venatici and NGC 4147 a globular cluster in Coma Berenices. 4214 is the biggest and brightest of the galaxies of last night and was very cool to look at even though it sits in a very faint star field. The globular I liked a lot because it was a great change of pace from a steady diet of galaxies! 4147 also sits in a curious star field of three 3 star asterisms to the north that are all very similar to each other.
Another observation on the asteroids 3 Juno and 20 Massalia followed and they continue to pull farther to the west from Sigma and Tau Leonis respectively.
Saturn finished up the night and did not disappoint. 5 moons! Titan and two others to the east and two more to the west. AGNFA! 🙂
Now the CSC is showing a possibility that it could clear off tonight.
Eagle Bluff is available and the parking lot lights could be off if we wish. I switched nightsat the Legion thinking Sat. was going to be better, so I will not be available.
This one will probably have to be called at the last minute. I'll pass the observing baton to Randy, Luka, Jeff and Kirk on this one.
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