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We didn't get as much time as we thought, 2 hours, 6:30-8:30. Clouds rolled in and the Moon came up an hour before I thought it would.
Still, we got a great look at Jupiter, 3 moons to the west and one to the east. I nabbed R Leporis for my carbon star observing program, still very red but not as pronounced as last year.
We had a wonderful time looking at the Orion Nebula. Steve got one of those nifty 8mm Explore Scientific eyepieces. You'd have to see it to believe it! Only a hundred bucks! WOW! I had a severe case of "eyepiece envy". Greg Bragg works for them and he would have loved being there last night. I hope we get to see him at Okie-Tex in September.
A short, but AGNFA!
WOW!! Have you seen the CSC for Monday night? Dark Blue Boxes all across the board!
Temperature is REALLY dark blue. I wonder what that means….
I was out in the driveway just before sunrise having a look at Venus in a crescent stage, and the last quarter moon. The seeing was o.k. but not great (I was able to get a "that's cool Dad," out of my kids.) I figured that the cold air that settled in overnight, plus viewing in early morning would have made for excellent viewing ???
So, any talk about a Messier marathon next weekend? It's been so quiet on this site lately, I thought maybe everyone had either picked up and moved to Arizona or sold their scopes on Ebay!Steve and I got out last night. We could see the Beehive quite well. Looked great in binoculars. Steve showed me the supernova in M82, but he said it appears to be fading. I could still see it with direct vision.
I showed Steve and Dale and Sue Scobie the "Diamond Ring" asterism that Polaris is part of, and then finished off the short night with the carbon star X Cancri. That was suprisingly easy to find. I cold even see it in my finderscope. It is bright, near maxima instead of minima and I thought that the mag. was about 6.5. Not a deep red, but a bright orange red. Pretty cool.
I don't know about next weekend. It is still predicted to be very cold. We'll see.
Kudos to ANYONE that gets out in temps like this. I now have one observing session for Dec. Jan. and Feb.
Quick look at the weather predictions for Friday/Saturday are not looking good. Not only is it cold, it'll be overcase and possible snow. If it does not get much better, we may go stand-by out to Keller. :-\ At near zero, even I wouln't make it long in Dean's Marines.
Hello astronomy fans! I have a HUGE weekend of astronomy planned….
both my ASTRONOMY and SKY&TELESCOPE magazines appeared in the mail today. HOORAY!! (Pssst! Check out the 70 inch portable dob in S&T's edition on page 68. I think Randy is going to want to update in the near future.) My little library is looking pretty good this weekend.
Now I won't feel so bad about missing our first shot at the March Messier Marathon. I sure hope Mr. Gorp, Julie, Astroboy and all the other astronomy afficianados will be at Eagle Bluff at the end of March for our second chance. The current RAC record stands at 82 for the MMM.
Just think… it will be 60 degrees, dry air, all the snow will be gone and nothing overhead but stars, stars, stars with the sound of classical music quietly playing in the background. It will be AGNFA!!!
Steve and I got out for 2 and a half hours of fabulous winter stargazing tonight. We knew that Io was supposed to come out of Jupiter's shadow at 7:31 so we set up at 6:30. The first thing we looked at was the Moon and to see if we could spot Purbach's Cross. I saw that we were about six hours too late for that, but the cross was in full sunlight and discernable, so I pointed that out to Stup and then noticed that a bright (4th or 5th mag.?) blue white star was heading towards the unlit side of the Moon. We spotted it at 7:02 and it disappeared at 7:16 p.m. The star we saw occulted was 119 Taurii, mag. 4.3
Then we switched to Jupiter and saw 3 moons to the east of the planet. We watched intently until 7:33 p.m. when Io started to become visible about a half a planet diameter away on the same side as the other moons. Totally cool! I think that was Steve's first time to see that and only the 4th or 5th for me. I took some time to journal these observations and while I was doing that, Steve saw the star reappear near Mare Crisium from behind the Moon.
After that he found NGC 2264 "The Christmas Tree Cluster" in Monoceros, I showed him the famous triple star Beta Monoceros, then bagged Y Canes Venaticorum for my carbon star search and called it a night. It was definately AGNFA!!
Are plans for the Messier Marathon still on for next weekend? Looks like we will be getting into some warmer weather by next weekend 😮
I just called Eagle Bluff and no one is scheduled to be there next weekend. We can have the parking lot lights off, so weather permitting, we are a GO.
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