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Eagle Bluff on Saturday? Would that still work Dean? Anything going on then, Girl Scouts still there?
Local observing tonight? I'll probably head to Keller tonight if no Eagle Bluff.
Jeff
I'm not sure if I'll be able to go to Eagle bluff either night, but Keller might be possible tonight, I'll post again if I do go.
Windier than I thought out there. Making me favor Eagle Bluff for tomorrow. Or course, flip side, no telling what tomorrow will bring. 🙂
Jeff
Nogo for me tonight, but I'd like to see what tomorrow night brings at EB…and someone has to save Rebecca!
Got cloudy here. Doesn't look that good right now. I guess it will clear later tonight, but don't know when.
So is it Eagle Bluff tonight? Anything going on there Dean? Girl Scouts still there?
It looks like the clouds started to clear up here in Rochester a little after 10:30 last night. Didn't expect all those clouds to come in and last quite that long last night.
Jeff
Still planning on going down to EB. Their office is closed so I left a message with Jeff B to hopefully call me back sometime soon to confirm the parking lot is available.
We will be heading down to Eagle Bluff then, unless hear something in the next couple of hours. See you all there.
Jeff
Have a great time everybody. I have to tend bar at the Legion.
We finally have enough work in the forestry world to where I don't have to worry about the future anymore, but I still have to play "catch-up" for the lean times we just went through.
Have Randy take a look at the Eskimo tonight (NGC 2392). I would love to see what that looks like through 'Mr. Big'.
From the North Woods I had nice 8×42 looks at Orion Nebula, the double cluster in Perseus, th Pleiades, the Behive and finished up with the Andromeda Galaxy around 11pm. Or so I thought. I got back out for a bit around 2:30 – 3:00am when Lyra was well over three tree line. Dumbbell may have been below the horizon, but I searched fruitlessly for
It when I started believing I could make out one of Cygnus' wings above the trees. I had to run up the road to try and find an advantageous tree line, which was OK because I was dressed for a quick look and it was getting chilly. I also looked for three ring nebula but will need to check the charts because seeing was deteriorating a touch and everything was a little fuzzy.We had Jeff and Gerarda, Barb, and myself at Eagle Bluff last night. Darn near perfect conditions most of the night. Barb was knocking off some Orion and Canus Major Messiers. Jeff had his new 'Aperture' Dob out there and it was performing well. Apparently I bumped my Evo mirror around alot on the way down so my collimation was quite good for sharp views. Of course my laser collimator runs out of battery power, so I had to accept somewhat fuzzy views. (But I emptied out Home Depot's 357 watch batteries supply this morning).
The parking lot was bare and the EB staff was kind enough to snuff the lights out for us around 7pm. About 8pm a youth minister strolled out asking if he could bring his teenagers up from the campfire for a little sky show. Twenty minutes later 26 youngins plus their parents showed up so Jeff, Barb, and I gave them a nice 1/2 hour show, touring the winter constellations and deepsky objects. As usual, most had never looked through a telescope before. M42 and Jupiter were wow'ers for them. There was a group shriek as a long bright meteor split the Orion constellation, with a long lasting 15 degree tail!
I did get the Spirograph Nebula, IC 418, in Lupus, but again my optical allignment wasn't good enough to get great detail. Near 9pm, I believe, the northern night sky began to light up and sure enough the aurora borealis was making its entrance into the night. It rose approximately 20 degrees high and probably lasted 30+ minutes before it shrunk down to the horizon again. See the 2nd photo of Travis Novitsky today on SpaceWeather.com's site which reproduces what we saw. Jeff had Mars locked in at the end of the evening, but it just was too small, bright, and boiling to ascertain much detail.
Overall, it was a pretty sweet night for mid-February. No dust, no skeeters, just a little frost at the end. I'll take another one of these anytime.
Hello astronomy fans! I got out for 3 hours tonight. I went out to Matthew Myrah's where they were having a suprise 40th birthday party for him and his 70 year old father in law from Norway. Matthew's wife Katrina had her whole family over from Norway. It was clear skies so I set up my stuff at 6 p.m. but they were so busy I was ignored for the first hour and a half.
It couldn't have been better. I was scanning the Moon for crater Baco which is in pretty confusing territory. I don't think it is visible yet. Since that part of the Moon is confusing, I went back to crater Petavius and "crater-hopped" my way towards it, and on the way ran into Valles Rheita which is on my Lunar II list and hadn't bagged it yet. I got it tonight, though. It is a pretty cool feature, 500 kilometers long and Rukl describes it as the longest valley in the southeastern part of the Moon. It was in deep shadows at Lunar sunrise, so it was very striking.
The Moon and Venus were visible in the same binocular FOV. Jupiter showed all 4 Galilean moons, two on each side of the planet. Venus is still slightly gibbous. During the last hour and a half, the folks showed up just as the clouds rolled in. I went from clear pocket to pocket and showed them the Moon, Venus and Jupiter, and some of them got to see the Orion Nebula, the Perseus Double Cluster, Mars, the Pleadies and of course had to use my laser pointer for the little kids who just loved that. It was fun listening to little Teodor look through the scope and quizzing his Dad in Norwegian. He would ask questions, Nicholas would ask me to explain something and then would translate my answers back to Teodor in Norsk. Matthew's daughter Stine is really sharp on astronomy and asked questions that would grace any star party. It was AGNFA!
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