Geminids

Tonight was my first bona fide meteor shower. I don't know that I'd call it a shower as much as a trickle since I only saw about 13 spread out longer than 3 or 4 minutes each. I have a feeling the light pollution near my house was the main culprit, so I'm not overly downtrodden. I'd have liked to see fireballs streaking through the sky, but I saw 13 of them and that's worth mentioning. It doesn't help that it's midnight on a school night and 36° F outside. Sitting on a fold out sunbathing chair trying to stay warm isn't what I would call fun, but it was nice listening to the rustle of leaves and watching Orion climb in the night sky. It's enjoyable to revisit constellations I first learned a year ago and see how different they look now that I've been paying closer attention.

First Star Party

Tonight Harrison and I are heading to Lindale to participate in our first star party. It's only a couple of hours and we're only taking his scope (70mm refractor), but I'm looking forward to seeing how the Astro Society of East Texas conducts themselves. So far they seem like a great bunch of folks and I'm mostly just hoping to listen and learn. Once I get more comfortable w/ them I'll bring out the big scope, but it's too much of a hassle on top of me not really knowing what to expect out there.

New Telescope

My brother James basically gave me his astronomy stuff for super cheap, so now I'm the owner of a Meade ETX 90 w/ a nice eyepiece kit (much more complete than what I had). It's sad in a way because he gave me all of it, but that also means he can upgrade next time across the board. In any case here's what I'm learning so far.

My first scope was a Goto - this is a Goto. They have their advantages and disadvantages...

Alignment still eludes me, but I'm getting closer. Getting it polar aligned the other night worked pretty well and it sure was nice having Jupiter stay in the view rather than sneak out.

Batteries suck - soon as I can afford it I'm getting an AC adapter so I can stop worrying about messing with them. I'm always worried that I'll run out of juice and be dead in the water.

All in all the optics are really nice, but I do notice some strangeness near the edges that isn't apparent in my 10"

The eyepieces (Meade 4000 series) are much nicer than I realized and I need to back off on the TV's and enjoy these. The truth is... I can't see the difference being such a beginner, so why complain?

Still haven't gotten to the observe stage w/ this scope - still learning it's curve.

Anyway - I'm glad to have it, but I need some patience while I work out the technique for using it effectively. Then I'll work on taking some pics :)

Dark Sky Site w/ Amy

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!

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) :)

Zenith viewing w/ a dob :(

For all it's aperture, there's not much fun to be had attempting to view at the Zenith with a dobsonian mount. Lots of moving around the scope to get the spot that works, but I did see what I was after.

Albireo - Double star in Cygnus was a very pretty orange and blue/green set. They are cherished by telescope folks and I can see why. The contrast is beautiful.

Dumbbell Nebula - once again my hopes are slightly out of alignment w/ reality. Nice round blur, but no color that I could discern. It's fairly large at least and made me want to visit my dark site to see what it "really" looks like. In any case I think I'm going to have to break down and get an astro-photography rig before much longer ($$ willing).

Jupiter - big and bright, but the seeing wasn't too great as it swam in and out of focus.

Uranus - tonight I found it without any help :) nice blue dot passing through my eyepiece

Neptune

I just spent an 1.5 hours looking for one target. Neptune is so small in my telescope that I had to spend about 15 minutes looking at it to make sure it was a planet. It was a circle, but not a very big one. It definitely had a blue tint to it (similar to this picture someone made w/ a 10" SCT and stacking multiple images. I wish I'd taken it, but this gives you a pretty decent idea of what I saw.



Right now it's located between Aquarius and Capricorn, but it's not a straight shot from anywhere in particular, so I had to really stretch my star-hopping abilities to get to it. Anyway... I'm beat down and proud to say I've seen every planet (now that Pluto has been demoted). I'm proud and think I've justified my hobby to some degree :)