Behold, Comet 103P/Hartley 2

The cover of this month's S&T mentioned a visible comet was currently passing through Perseus so I decided to try to see it from our dark MO skies before leaving for the light polluted valley. I went out last night about 11:00 after we got back from Nashville and saw a dim grey blob about 25' in diameter about where S&T's chart said it should be. It was barely visible in my 7x50's but clear in my 8" dob. Tonight I went out about 8:30 with the moon still pretty high and about a quarter moon so the sky was pretty bright but cloudless and still. I was able to see 4th mag Eta Per unaided and most of the brighter stars of Perseus. The blob I saw last night was gone but seemed to be located between a pair of 7th mag stars near NGC 1444. A serpentine asterism of dim stars leading to a pair of stellar points that included 1444 along with Lam Per and 43 per were also in the field of my 7x50's. Current orbital elements for 103P/Hartley 2 placed it right on top of the stellar companion to NGC1444 but I didn't see any fuzzy blob there. The stellar companion was identified by CdC as HD 23800, a 7th mag star. If nothing else, I was able to figure out how to enter the orbital elements for a comet. The main 'trick' was to construct CdC's Perihelion T figure from several values in the orbital elements: 20101028.2598 comes from T 2010 Oct. 28.2598 TT. If all goes well, I'll try to continue to monitor Hartley 2 down in the valley. This one isn't as impressive as some in the past but comets are always cool!

M79 - the last and final

I couldn't sleep and it was nice and clear with no moon at 4:30 so I decided to go for it. Armed with my trusty 7x50's and 'distant suns' iPod app I slipped into my sweats and into the cold. There was Orion and Lupus, big and bright. I could see m79's companion HR1771, a mag 5 star, unaided. With my 7x50's I could make out a dim glow just to the north of it: M79! I quickly grabbed my 8" dob, noticed M79 clearly in the 9x50 raci, and bingo, there it was, a nice bright globular. M79 is only a few 1000 ly's away so it's one of the 3 brightest globulars in the Messier collection. I'm wondering why I never saw it before, particularly as it is so easy to find next to Orion. Maybe it's just dwarfed by all the goodies in Orion. I'll have to try for it again in the valley when it will be out at a much more opportune time of night. 4:30 is for the owls.

Two of the Final Three: M1 and M77

After our square dance Saturday night, the stars were nice and bright and there was no wind (finally) so I decided to try for M77. I've been watching for it during the past several nights as the moon has been waning. Tonight was the night. I decided to move my observatory to the south lawn in order to get around some trees that have been growing and obscuring the view from our deck. It worked out well. I put down our fiber mat that we use with the casita and that made a nice base to work on. Cetus was fairly bright although not as nice as in Colorado or the Mojave. I pointed the 8" red dot finder a little to the left of a line from 84 and Delta Cetus, fine tuned with the 9x50 raci and bingo, right on target. M77 was a faint fuzzy but clearly a galaxy. It's a barred spiral but I couldn't make out any particular structure. It was fairly large in my 27mm ep and the field stars matched CdC just fine. After admiring M77, I decided to go all the way and try for M1 in Taurus. I found Aldeberan and the 'V' of taurus ok but zet tau was behind a tree. I finally decided to move the scope a bit and get a clearer shot. I found Zet Tau which was visible unaided and set my red dot just above Zet Tau and then fine tuned with the raci by centering just to the left of the midpoint of a a line between Zet Tau and HR1831. Once again, I was right on target and the crab nebula presented itself as a nice size fuzzy that looked vaguely like a crab. Both of these were plenty bright for the 8" and I had no trouble viewing them. At times I was able to convince myself that I saw them in my 7x50 binocs but that might be a stretch. I finished off with a peek at the moons of Jupiter and saw three on one side and one on the other. I convinced myself that I was able to see the three in my 9x50 raci by blocking Jupiter's light with the cross hairs. Jupiter was quite bright and I could almost see a shadow cast by it's light. The Pleades was also beautiful as usual. Aldeberan was low and twinkling like crazy but a pretty red nevertheless. The Moon cooperated by staying below the horizon the whole time. I quit about 1:30 am. That leaves only one more Messier: M79, a globular just below Orion and will need to wait until later in the year. I'll see if I can find it with my ETX70.