My wife Amy went w/ me to my dark sky site last night. We left around 6:30pm and got home about 11, so it was a pretty productive night. On the way the moon was a fingernail just above the road in the sunset and was very nice to look at. We arrived just as it started getting dark and she was a little worried since you couldn't really see the Milky Way. I assured her that in an hour it'd be much brighter and went about setting up. We brought the XT10 and all of my regular gear (EP kit, table, drummers throne, etc). I really need to build an observing chair, but for now I'm pretty happy with what I've got. Anyway... it's crazy how hard the constellations are to find when the sky is full of stars.
I spent a decent time showing off the easier things I knew I could find with no problem (Ring Nebula, Hercules Cluster, Andromeda Galaxy w/ naked eye and telescope and the Double Cluster). It's crazy how much brighter all of the DSO's were, but that's what a dark site is all about.
New stuff we saw...
M22 - in Sagittarius was a nice globular cluster
M8 - Lagoon Nebula was perfect in 15mm (note to self... need a 2x barlow instead of 3x)
M33 Triangulum Galaxy - sort of between Andromeda and the Triangulum... man this thing is dim even out there! It's not much to see optically, but I saw it finally!
All in all we had a great time! I spent almost 2 hours w/ the telescope and Amy enjoyed the overall sky with tons of stars (and a few meteors).
Happy Birthday to Amy and happy Dark Sky night!
Astronomical Observances in Longview Texas
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Good Seeing (w/ the exception of neighbor lights)
So... I desperately need to build an astronomy blind. I've got the plans and know that it's mostly PVC pipe and tarps, but I need to actually do it. I checked the weather and had clear skies tonight. I get out there and it's nice and dark (for in town that is). Then right when I was checking out Jupiter my idiot neighbors decide to turn two flood lights on. I grumbled, went inside to get my hoodie and made some attempt to soldier on. Here's what I saw...
Andromeda's Galaxy - much brighter than usual. The galactic center looked almost like a fuzzy star for all it's brightness.
Double Cluster - looking nice in my 32mm and also looked at Stock 2 that had a line of bright stars pointing to it (from the Double Cluster).
Jupiter - with it's single stripe (currently) it looks sort of unreal, but I had good seeing and think I saw the spot. Hard to tell, but I definitely saw 4 of the moons.
Uranus - pale blue dot - the only reason I know it's not a star is at high enough magnification it appears as a circle. :)
Can't talk about the conquests without mentioning the failures. I need some GOTO I guess, but I spent about 15 minutes attempting to find M33 (Triangulum Galaxy), but couldn't.
Bright spot to end on - Pleiads appeared again so that marks my first year observing (since it was up when I started) :)
Andromeda's Galaxy - much brighter than usual. The galactic center looked almost like a fuzzy star for all it's brightness.
Double Cluster - looking nice in my 32mm and also looked at Stock 2 that had a line of bright stars pointing to it (from the Double Cluster).
Jupiter - with it's single stripe (currently) it looks sort of unreal, but I had good seeing and think I saw the spot. Hard to tell, but I definitely saw 4 of the moons.
Uranus - pale blue dot - the only reason I know it's not a star is at high enough magnification it appears as a circle. :)
Can't talk about the conquests without mentioning the failures. I need some GOTO I guess, but I spent about 15 minutes attempting to find M33 (Triangulum Galaxy), but couldn't.
Bright spot to end on - Pleiads appeared again so that marks my first year observing (since it was up when I started) :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)