Cruising Cassiopeia

It was finally clear tonight although it was quite breezy so I pulled out my trusty lawn recliner and 10x50 Nikon binocs for a little observing.  I decided on Cassiopeia since I knew from previous experience that it was in about the right spot for my backyard observatory.  It was in good position along with Perseus and Capella.  It took awhile but I was finally able to make out all five stars in Cas unaided. I used them to find M33 in the 10x50s.  It was visible but barely. I was able to see a few mag 8 stars in Mellotte 20 around Alpha Perseus also in the 10x50s. The Pleiades was visible unaided and a nice sight in binocs.  The neighbor's security light kept blinking on and off and it was generally pretty bright out.  Disgusting.  I gave up about 9:20 and went in to finish watching Dinosaur13 on TV.  Also pretty disgusting. Two years in the pen for not filling out forms. It would be good to know what REALLY went on behind the scenes.

A Picnic in the Park

Today was family day in Bentsen Park and tonight was a special star party event.  Or so it was planned.  Unfortunately family day was scheduled on a full moon (bad), and the weather didn't cooperate either: cloudy (worse). But we had a decent crowd and were able to talk to the visitors about amateur astronomy equipment while the sky was still light and they could see the equipment. Later on the summer triangle peeked out from the clouds and I was able to align the Celestron. About all we could do is to center Altair and show the visitors what a small area they were looking at through the telescope by comparing the view with that on my iPad. The full moon was finally high enough about 7:30 to be visible above the treeline but then it quickly ducked behind some clouds, not to reappear the rest of the evening. The night wasn't a total loss though, the mosquitoes weren't bad, we saw a tarantula out hunting for bugs, and I got the scopes all checked out and ready for the next clear Saturday evening.  Maybe next time?

What a difference a day makes

I went out tonight to see if I could find this month's binocular highlights from S&T: ceres and vesta.  They are not far from Spica which was nice and bright near Mars last night.  Unlike last night which was clear and cool, tonight was hot and muggy with a storm moving in.  Spica was only occasionally visible, Mars not at all, and even Arcturus sometimes disappeared from view!  Last night was great and I put my new Nikon 10x50 to good use with M6, M7 and M8 all near Scorpius quite visible.  The 10x50's are a 'present' from the Helena Montana area geocachers.  They had an event last June 21 which we were able to make on our trip west this year.  We had a great time and I even won several door prizes, including the 10x50s!  Last night I decided that they were going to become my preferred binocular observing tool.  Tonight was a bust though.  I'll have to wait until the next clear night to try to find my two asteroids.  I hope I don't have to wait until the NASA satellite gets to Ceres next Spring!

Comet C/2012 K1

I decided to haul out the big gun tonight and go after that dim comet I tried to see in binoculars a couple of nights ago, C/2012 K1.  It had moved a bit but was still near the handle of the big dipper and high in the sky, almost too high for my 8" dob.  Rather than stand on my head to use the red dot finder, I used my green laser pointer instead and it worked beautifully. A quick point, fine tune with the 9x50 and bingo, right on target and definitely a comet.  I could see the coma nicely and it even sported what appeared to be a small tail.  I would say it compared well in brightness to the two nearby field stars which Sky Safari Pro showed as mag 11 and 12.  After admiring the last comet in my collection, I moved over slightly to take a look at M51, a nice spiral galaxy with a NGC neighbor.  I could convince myself that I saw a spiral but it really just looked like two foggy dim lights. Neither was visible in the 9x50 or my 7x50 binocs for that matter.
It was a nice night to be out but getting late and I was tired after an evening of square dancing in town.  Judy wasn't able to dance with her bum knee but I managed to find partners for most of the dances.  Fun time with Doug Mallory calling.  I'm glad to see he's doing a bit of workshop with the club.  Last night it was teacup chain and they did pretty good all in all.

Three Asteroids: Pallas, Vesta, and Ceres

In the April S&T (p49) I saw that Vesta and Ceres were both near opposition tonight.  The last few nights have been spectacularly clear although the sky has been a bit turbulent, so I've been wanting to haul out the 8" and see what I could see.  Tonight was another clear night but storms are predicted for the near future so I thought this had better be it before the moon comes back around for another visit.  Vesta was an old friend as I had spotted it by accident several years ago.  I've also seen Ceres on at least one other occasion, but tonight they were in the same FOV of my 9x50 finder so that was a big plus.  When I consulted my SkySafari Pro iPad app I noticed that (2) Pallas was also in the vicinity so I decided to try for all three in one night.  I wasn't disappointed.  Pallas was already high so I went after it first.  It was conveniently placed just West of Regulus in Leo and easy to find.  At mag 8.2 it was easily visible in my 9x50s.  Nearby Omicron Leonis was even visible unaided which made it even easier to find.  Next I went after my old friend Vesta and her neighbor Ceres.  Both were near bright Mars and easily visible Zeta Virginis in Virgo. Both were nice and bright and easy to see even in my 9x50 finder.  I polished off the night with a glimpse at good old familiar Jupiter (all four moons were easy to spot), and super bright Mars.  I saw two storm bands on Jupiter but have never been able to see any kind of marking on Mars.  Tonight was no exception.
It was a wonderful night to be out though, just warm enough to be comfortable with a cap and sweatshirt, a bit breezy but not bad, and very very dark.

Total Lunar Eclipse April 2014

Talk about a long dry spell.  This was a very bad year for astronomy in the valley.  It was cloudy nearly every Saturday when I was able to do outreach in the park!  One Saturday was possibly ok but we were on our way back from Padre Island running late so I called that one off.  We are back in Missouri now and the weather finally cooperated very well for a change.  It has been miserable wet and overcast the past several days but last night it cleared off perfectly by 9:00 or so and was just right (although quite cold) for the big total eclipse of the moon of the year.  I grabbed a couple hours of shuteye and set the alarm for 12:30.
At 00:52 (according to WWV) Spica was just to right (sw) of the Moon about 1.5 moon widths, not visible unaided but visible in 7x50 binocs. At 00:56 the partial has started on eastern limb. At 01:39 the moon was half lit and spica barely visible unaided. At 01:56 spica was clearly visible, moon looking reddish. At 02:31 the moon was fairly dark. It was hard to see features with either my 8" dob or 7x50s. I saw mars and saturn which were both nice. I had not seen either in quite awhile. Jupiter had set.  I took no timings. Temp was about 27F no wind.
From the images I took, Spica is much brighter than the full eclipse. Spica is magnitude 1.0. Spica appears in most of my pictures, but not in IMG_0950 which was shot at 1:46:40 according to the camera clock which is about 1min fast. This was just after midpoint of partial.  Midpoint of partial was my first shot at 1:36:57 by the camera. My last partial was shot at 2:01:40, first total shot was at 2:10:35.

Bloodmoon and Spica

The picture on the right shows the moon at total eclipse just after the beginning of totality at 02:14 CDT from my backyard observatory in Rolla Missouri. It was shot with a Canon Powershot SX150 IS on a tripod with self timer. Exposure time was 1/2s at f/5.6 60mm focal length ISO 80. Spica is clearly visible at lower right and appears to be illuminating the Moon!
I quit shortly after this picture was taken as it was just too darn cold. It was nice while it lasted though and the stars were brighter than I had seen them in a long time with the full moon out of the way.  My 'sign' (scorpius) was rising in the east and good old familiar Corvus was hanging low in the south. Ursa major was high overhead.

Sunspot AR1944

It was clear today so I hauled out the scope to checkout the buzz about sunspot activity. I got it all set up and aligned and found the sun without problem. The sun almost fills the 10mm eyepiece FOV and I was able to spot AR1944 pretty quickly. As the sun moved in and out of some high mr's tail clouds i was able to pick out 3 more groups: AR1946, 1948, and 1949. The AR numbers are assigned by Noaa sequentially per year to Active Regions (AR). Comparison with photos at spaceweather.com was very good. There was only one ar that I could not see. AR1944 is several times the size of Earth. The largest spot in it is twice Earth's size.