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Doesn't look so good for viewing this weekend. 🙁 May be a good time to go trolling for deals and info on the forums. $$ ;D $$
Mr Gorp, you were looking for other eyepieces. The Explore Scientific 68 degree eyepieces are now on sale until the end of May. Don't know how good they are. You can check out those Cloudy Nights forums and see what they say. ;D
Hello astronomy fans! Clouds got you down? Is there a dirty mirror bugging you? Crummy eyepieces? :'(
Have no fear. The Universe is on ALL DAY LONG on the History Channel!!! Hooray! ;D
Hello astronomy fans! I got out for 4 hours last night, and what a beautiful night it was. Clear, dry, fairly warm and no wind. Venus is really looking great with a nice slim cresent and noticably bigger in the FOV.
I started in on the Herschel 400 after that and bagged six. NGC's 4261, 4273, 4281, 4303, 4216 & 4365. The stand out objects were the first 3 which can be seen in the same FOV. There are actually 4 in that FOV, but NGC 4270 is not on the Herschel 400 list. Also NGC 4303, better known as Messier 61 is a really nice galaxy to look at and even shows hints of spiral structure. NGC 4216 looks like a smaller version of NGC 4565 in Coma Berenices, a fine little edge on spiral.
Then the Moon rose at 1217. I thought about getting one more H-400, but how many times does a person get to watch the Moon rise in their lives? I looked at it until it cleared the horizon in my binocs and then just stared at the wonderful spring sky for a while until at 12:43:30 a brilliant 1st mag. meteor tore through eastern Ophiuchus and Scorpius. White, duration 1 second, a bit of a trail. 8)
I finished with looks at the Moon in my telescope and a binocular look at the Coma Berenices star cluster. AGNFA!! (I'm going out again tonight!) 😉
I got out again, so BOTH Wednesday and Thursday were AGNFA. Setup at 8 p.m. My buddy Steve Remick came on out and I got to see his 8" Orion Dobsonian come out of the box, get put together and saw first light. Once I helped him get his finderscope aligned, we looked at Venus, Mars and Saturn. He was like a kid on Christmas morning. We also saw 2 circumpolar satellites cross at 10:14 p.m. The one heading south brightened briefly to mag. -4, then faded to 5th mag. 8) He gets up real early, though, and pulled the pin at 10:30 p.m.
Then I hopped back on the Herschel hunt and bagged 10 of them. I took Jay McLaren's advice and once I found an object, "just stay in the same area and see if there are others around it". It paid off on 3 observations with multiples. (Thank you, Jay! 🙂 The NGC's last night were 4371, 4429, 4435, 4438, 4459, 4473, 4477 4442,4526 & 4535. The best of the bunch was the triple group of 4459, 4473 & 4477. 4442 was also very pretty, an elliptical galaxy in a FOV filled with chains of stars. The finale was 4526 along with 4535 which is big, but a GHOST! I'd like to see that one in Randy's big hitter.
The Moon rose at 1:05 a.m. I watched that for quite a while, but no Rimae Tresnecker and passed on Byrgius A at Lunar midday for now. The wind, which had been insistent all night, was getting stronger. Saturday night WILL be clear, and I'll finish off Lunar II on that night. If the Good Lord keeps giving us this nice stretch of astronomy weather, I'll finish off both Lunar II and the Herschel 400 this spring. 31 to go on the H400. What a thrill!
Good job Dean, only 31 to go! I'll have to at least get out to Keller tomorrow since it will be clear. 🙂
Jeff
Starting to look pretty good out there. I think Dean may have to take up a new career in weather forecasting. 🙂
I'll be heading out to Keller tonight. Anyone gets a chance, head on out there.
Jeff
Thanks for the kind words, Jeff. I hope you had a good night. 🙂
I had one too, although I had to wait until 11 p.m. to go out. My daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters are here from Florida and I needed to wait until they went to bed to get out there. I still got in 5 hours, knocked off 9 more H400's and recorded Byrgius A at Lunar midday after the Moon came up. Rimae Triesneker is in shadow, so I still have 1 more to go on Lunar II.
The Herschel 400's were NGC's 4478, 4527, 4536, 4636, 4546, 4689, 4548, 4550 & 4570. The best of the bunch was NGC 4527 and 4536. They are both edge on spiral galaxies seen in the same FOV of bright lovely stars. One of the very best of the Herschel 400's and definately worth a look. 8)
22 to go. I hope to be a single digit midget very soon. AGNFA! ;D
Hello astronomy fans! I got out again for four and a half hours last night with my son-in-law Kermit. We looked at a lot of a lot of different objects and I even got four more Herschel 400's. We looked at Venus, Saturn and Mars to begin with. He liked the Venus cresent and really liked Saturn. Mars is becoming more ho-hum every night. Then he wanted to see what the Herschel hunt was all about and I kept him busy with the binocs while I hunted down a Herschel. I recorded NGC's 4631, 4654, 4607 & 4699. The best was 4631 which is a big edge on spiral galaxy, one of the very best of the Herschel 400 and a candidate for "why didn't this make the Messier list?" NGC 4654 is also worth a look. Ony 18 to go.
The other stuff we looked at was Cor Caroli, M57, M13, M4 & Antares, M27 (which Kermit found in the binocs by his lonesome), M52 in Casseopia, M8 the Lagoon Nebula, M20 the Trifid Nebula, M24 the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, & Beta Cygni in Cygnus.
The Moon rose at 2:20 a.m. and we watched that to finish the night off. We had a great time. AGNFA!
Wondering who is planning to head up to Cherry Grove for the MN Astronomical League RAC star party?
Since the weather looks good for Friday, does that mean there will not be a Saturday repeat (greater chance of thunderstorms).
Love to go, but I have an early commitment Saturday morning.
Could somebody please check and see if there is something unusual going on in NGC 4900? There is either a bright foreground star or a supernova going on in that galaxy. It is 1 degree SE of Delta Virginis.
Only 11 to go. I would post more, but I'm desparately tired.
If the RAC/MAS goes off Friday night, have fun. God bless.
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