Flying off the handle

Monday night was another dark but damp night in mid Missouri and I finally had some luck with Ursa Major. Tonight's inspiration was Sue French's article "Flying off the handle" in June 2008 S&T p70. Naked eye visibility at my usual back yard observatory was good enough to see all of Bootes including the dim triangle near the dipper's handle. I finally started using a decent sketchpad, one of Judy's old pads, and it works just great. I also used a mini-cd as a circle template and that works good too. I even found the missing lens from my el-cheapo red dot and put it back together.
First order of business was to check out Mizar. I searched for it in my favorite catalog (Ciel) and discovered that Mizar is also an alias for Izar or Eps Boo. Never-the-less I looked at the other Mizar or Zeta UMa and was able to split it nicely at 47x in my 8" dob. Both Mizar and Alcor had quite a bit of a halo around them. The nearby 7.6 mag star and a group of 9th mag stars were also evident in the field.
Next I turned to Ferraro 6, and, while there were at least 16 stars in the 47x field, I thought there were only 13 that looked like a tree or tower pattern. It's also upside down so maybe it's a martini glass. Ha ha.

Last, I switched constellations, opened to a different article (Hewitt-White, May 2008, S&T p51), and finally snagged M3 and I do mean finally. This was not easy to find. It took several iterations and at least one remark that 'this has got to be easier to find'. 10 Boo was easy enough but 3 Boo gave me some trouble. I finally thought I saw a smudge in my finder scope, switched to the 25mm ep and voila! There it was! M3 at 120x was beautiful and looked like a spikey ball with tiny points of light scattered around. Very nice.

Napoleon's Hat

Finally got a bit of clear sky as a welcome change from storm clouds. It didn't last long but I went out for about an hour before the haze set in. It was very dewy and damp. Draco wasn't quite as bright as a few nights ago but it was all there as well as the little dipper. I did a bit of binocular observing before hauling out the dob. I could just make out the dim triangle of Bootes between Gamma Bootes and the handle of the Big Dipper. In my 7x50's I was able to distinguish Kappa and Iota clearly with averted vision. When I looked directly at the pair, Iota would often dissapear!
I checked out Picot 1 (Napoleon's Hat) near Arcturus in Bootes. It's an interesting asterism at 47x with my 8" dob. I also checked out Struve 1825, a double on the other side of Arcturus. I was able to split it ok at 120x. The primary is quite a bit brighter than the secondary and only 4.4" apart. Haze moved in about midnight and obscured all but the brightest stars of Bootes.
In memoriam: my el-cheapo red-dot sight bit the dust and fell apart. I'll have to get another as it was extremely useful. I'm reduced to sighting along the strip of wood I used as a mount for it!