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Hi Dean, I don't remember if I saw M33 or not. I know Andromeda was getting low, so M33 would have been pretty low as well and probably hard to pick out in the soup. Possible Mike pulled it in with that 16 inch.
I have M79 on my list. I could have sworn that we looked at M6/M7, but without documentation and no one coming forth to say they saw M33, I think we are going to have to live with 79 Messiers this time around. After M8, we looked at M20 the Trifid Nebula, M21 open cluster in Sagittarius, M24 the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud and M11 the Wild Duck Cluster in Scutum. That was at 5:16 a.m.
That is still a record. 79 it is.
Mike Rowlands caught M74 and M33 early in the night. I would like to claim him as an honorary RAC member, then the total for the Messier Marathon would stand at 81.
Steve Remick and I got out tonight for four hours and even though CSC predicted a mediocre night, we saw some amazing stuff.
Purbach's Cross was visible on the Moon tonight! We watched it off and on for three hours. I didn't expect to see it. 😮
Venus is a small cresent and dropping rapidly. The transit is now not far away. ;D
Saturn had 5 moons visible tonight, but the most amazing thing was that two satellites passed through the FOV just below the planet. They were of equal brightness (mag. eight), and moved through the sky like they were flying in tandem. I followed them from Saturn all the way into Corvus. They were no more than 1 arc minute of separation apart, and I have to say that I have absolutely never seen anything like it. ???
Then to top it off, Steve and I saw an irridium flare just off the Big Dippers' bowl at 11:29:45. Mag. -2 for sure. Amazing! AGNFA!
After I read your post, I had to go back to some pictures I took last night. I was experimenting with my Celestron 80mm GoTo, and with this Orion iphone eyepiece adapter. I took some pictures of the moon with a 10mm Plossol, and a moon filter and skyglow filter (to minimize the overexposure I was getting on the iphone). I took a few shots, and then this morning after reading your post about Purbach's cross, I went back to the photos to take a look. Sure enough, there it is.
Attached are the raw, unretouched single photos of the moon taken through an iphone and small refractor.
How fortuitous!
Attachments:
Steve Remick and I got out for three and a half hours last night. His wife Liz and later our neighbor Dale Scobie came out later. We looked at the Moon of course, (I printed off the Lunar 100 and got him started on that) and we looked at Mars and Saturn. Saturn was spectacular, 5 moons, Cassini's Division and planet shadow on the rings.
We looked at lots of double stars last night. Polaris, Gamma Leonis, Alcor and Mizar A&B, Beta Cygnus and Epsilon Lyra. M29 and M13 got a look, too. We talked a lot of astronomy.
No Venus. Just think, astronomy fans, we are only two days from the transit! COOL!! ;D
Since I don't know where people will look, I'll put this here too as it is kind of neat.
Wow.. looks like we're in a period where the ISS is going over Rochester in the evening, even some in the morning.
But.. wow. Just stumbled on it. Looking at the ISS pass as it is now listed now for today, June 8, it looks like the ISS will pass right by Saturn! That should mean if we put a scope on Saturn, we can probably see the ISS as it passes by! Wow! I'll have to try and get out there and take a look. Hopefully no clouds tonight. The pass will start a little after 9:30 tonight.
the path
Jeff
I think we'll head out to Keller tonight. It won't get really dark until 10 or later, but the moon won't rise until after midnight, about all I can handle anyway. 🙂 Perhaps see you there?
Jeff
Hey Jeff, I'm heading out to the Flatin Farm hayfield. I got to see the ISS pass by Jupiter within the same FOV on August 6th, 2008 because of a "head's up" by you. 8)
If I can catch the ISS pass by Saturn in the same way, you will achieve Demi-god status in the RAC pantheon, in my book.
Let's hope for the best! ;D
Plan on having company, at least two of us. Viewing from 10-12 should just about wear out my batteries (at least for tonight). Time to start packing. . .
I got out last night for 3 and a half hours. Steve Remick and DuWayne Oakes (Dugan) joined in to see the pass of the ISS right on schedule like Jeff posted. However, the pass was too high at the Flatin Farm hayfield to see both the space station and Saturn. Steve, with his wonderful 8" Orion Dobsonian (the best starter scope on the market) did catch Saturn in his finderscope a few times and saw it very briefly
once through the big FOV.We went after M51 and NGC 5195. I coached him onto how to find that and he realized that some galaxies look stellar, but with a bit of nebulousity around them. Tonight he is going down to the FFH to try to pick up M97, the Owl Nebula and M108 in Ursa Major. I hope to pick up the last 6 for the Herschel 400.
I finished the night by getting my "challenge" object for the Globular Clusters program, NGC 5053. There was a lot of careful starhopping there, but I found it and had to use averted vision to really see it. I could see it intermittenly using direct vision but it would always disappear after a second or two. For any of you with an 8" scope, this is a very difficult but doable object. If it was not for M53 nearby, it would be a VERY hard object to find.
Let me know if you saw the ISS and Saturn!
I think we'll be heading to Keller again tonight.
Hi Dean, no just like you, ISS was just out of view. I should have had a wider field eyepiece in, but decided I wanted a closer view. Somewhat of a mistake. I was watching and it looked like the ISS would go above Saturn, so I moved Saturn a little closer to the edge, but not close enough. I did just see a hint of the brightness at the edge of the eyepiece when the ISS went by. Just needed to have a little wider FOV, which I could have done. 😛
We had a good group last night. Jerome and Jan, Chris and Julie, Gerarda and I were there. Rebecca dropped in for a little visit. Chris was comparing eyepieces and checking out a few things. I pulled in a few Messiers, Saturn, and Mars that we all took at look at. M3, M5, M13, M27, M57, M104, M51, Albireo.
Hey Jeff, you gave it a good try. You can't do anything more than that. 🙂
I gave astronomy a super good outreach event by going to my great nieces wedding tonight. I had my little Vixen out for some solar observing right at sunset. (I probably had a dozen people look at that), but when I put it on Saturn, I had over a hundred people look at that.
I was steady busy from 9:30 to 12:30. It was crazy busy. "Wow" "This is totally AWESOME" "No way, this can't be real" "Can you put your hand in front of the scope so I know that this is really Saturn and not a picture?" ???
I didn't finish the Herschel 400 tonight, but this outreach event was pretty cool. 🙂
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