Thursday, May 22, 2008
Missed Mars in the Beehive
Got home too late to see Mars in the Beehive cluster but the seeing wasn't bad even with a nearly full moon. I was able to see a 7.4 mag star near M51 in my 7x50's and even make out a dim M51 with averted vision. If the weather holds tomorrow night it should be good to haul out the 8".
Monday, May 12, 2008
Revisiting 7 Iris
At last, a clear night. The clouds parted finally and tonight was clear but a bit hazy and the moon is back so it wasn't a good night for deep sky stuff. I was barely able to make out the four bright stars of Corvus and had a harder time finding M104 tonight but find it I did. The missing 'star' turned out to be the one above the group of three in my sketch of May 4. It's long gone and now about a degree NW of M104. There are two groups of two tenth mag stars just at the edge of the field of my 25mm ep. These four and a fifth 10th mag star make a nice arc along the edge of the FOV. I found 7 Iris on the other side of the 'bottom' group of two. 10th mag TYC5531-01038-1
is to the southwest of Iris. Limiting unaided magnitude tonight was about 3. With my 8" dob it was about 11.
is to the southwest of Iris. Limiting unaided magnitude tonight was about 3. With my 8" dob it was about 11.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
A virgo galaxy
I decided to go ahead and post one of my unadulterated hand-sketches of a Virgo galaxy I haven't been able to identify. This was done on 5-5-08 about 10:00 pm CDT from my Rolla home under slightly hazy skies. I was mainly trying out a new el-cheapo red-dot finder I made. I used a $4.95 Chinese gunsight I picked up a Academy Sports in the RGV back in February. The mirror cut out way too much light so I took it apart (with a razor saw no less) and de-coated the mirror with a bit of Comet cleanser. It works a whole lot better now but the red x is still a bit too bright. One of these days I'll get around to making an external 3v supply for the thing with a resistor to cut the current to the led. In the meantime, it works well and makes it much easier to locate objects. Now if I point it at a visible star I can pretty well guarantee it'll be in the 9x finder. What I did on the evening of May 5th was to point my 8" dob at a spot midway between β leo and ε vir . I immediately found an eliptical blob in my 25mm ep and sketched the starfield. Unfortunately I haven't been able to identify the location! I decided to call my red-dot finder a success and resolved to be more careful about identifying my objects in the future.
M104 and Iris?
This is my first attempt at posting a sketch. I did this the evening of 4 May 2008 in my usual fashion: with whatever pencil/pen was handy on the back of a piece of scratch paper, usually one of my charts printed from Ciel. I've decided this isn't the best appr
oach. At any rate, this was done from my rural Rolla Missouri location under dark, no moon or clouds, sky about 10:00 pm CDT using my 8" Orion XT dob with a 25mm ep. I scanned it using Microsoft photo editor at 75 dpi grey scale, used Paint to erase all the bleedthru's from the back of my scratch paper and replaced my miserable hand-drawn circle with a machine drawn one. I actually had a compass drawn circle of decent size handy but it was too faint to see. At least my hand-drawn one was a decent enough size. My previous sketches were squeezed into little postage stamp miniatures.
My motivation for posting this turned out to be a bit of serendipity. I was reading some of the new posts at cloudynights and ran across a sketch of M104 with a note that the asteroid Iris was in the FOV. I checked it out with Ciel and, sure enough, there was Iris. Then I remembered, or thought I remembered, that I had seen M104 recently. Turned out it was the same night but several hours later as the cloudynights poster was in Europe. I checked my sketch and there is was! I'm still not possitive which one is Iris, possibly either the top one in the group of three to the east of M104 or the one above that. I need to revisit M104 when the clouds part and see which one if any moved. There are a few 10th mag stars in the sketch including the group of three but I may have missed mag 10 Iris. It should be to the NNW of M104 about 15' by tonight (5-8).
M104 was fairly dim but I was able to make out the dark lane a bit below center using my 10mm ep. I estimated its size at about 3' which is less than half the 8' given by Ciel. Perhaps I wasn't seeing the dimmer edges. There was at least one brighter speck in the center of M104.
May 4 was a good clear night with no wind and not too cold. I was able to snag M68, M59, M60, and NGC4647 as well as M104. M68 had a bit of texture with several bright specks in my 10mm. I used a black t-shirt as a hood to block out some stray light from my neighbor's yard light about 0.25 mi away. M59 and M60 both fit nicely in the field of my 25mm. NGC4647 was visible as a second bright patch just to the west of M60 in my 10mm. M60 had just a hint of some bright specks in the center with some dark texture.
oach. At any rate, this was done from my rural Rolla Missouri location under dark, no moon or clouds, sky about 10:00 pm CDT using my 8" Orion XT dob with a 25mm ep. I scanned it using Microsoft photo editor at 75 dpi grey scale, used Paint to erase all the bleedthru's from the back of my scratch paper and replaced my miserable hand-drawn circle with a machine drawn one. I actually had a compass drawn circle of decent size handy but it was too faint to see. At least my hand-drawn one was a decent enough size. My previous sketches were squeezed into little postage stamp miniatures.My motivation for posting this turned out to be a bit of serendipity. I was reading some of the new posts at cloudynights and ran across a sketch of M104 with a note that the asteroid Iris was in the FOV. I checked it out with Ciel and, sure enough, there was Iris. Then I remembered, or thought I remembered, that I had seen M104 recently. Turned out it was the same night but several hours later as the cloudynights poster was in Europe. I checked my sketch and there is was! I'm still not possitive which one is Iris, possibly either the top one in the group of three to the east of M104 or the one above that. I need to revisit M104 when the clouds part and see which one if any moved. There are a few 10th mag stars in the sketch including the group of three but I may have missed mag 10 Iris. It should be to the NNW of M104 about 15' by tonight (5-8).
M104 was fairly dim but I was able to make out the dark lane a bit below center using my 10mm ep. I estimated its size at about 3' which is less than half the 8' given by Ciel. Perhaps I wasn't seeing the dimmer edges. There was at least one brighter speck in the center of M104.
May 4 was a good clear night with no wind and not too cold. I was able to snag M68, M59, M60, and NGC4647 as well as M104. M68 had a bit of texture with several bright specks in my 10mm. I used a black t-shirt as a hood to block out some stray light from my neighbor's yard light about 0.25 mi away. M59 and M60 both fit nicely in the field of my 25mm. NGC4647 was visible as a second bright patch just to the west of M60 in my 10mm. M60 had just a hint of some bright specks in the center with some dark texture.
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