A Nova in Sagitarius

I've been trying to remember to get up early on a clear morning to see if I could see the new nova in the south. Today was the day.  Judy couldn't sleep so she went outside, noticed it was clear, and woke me up about 6:30. I grabbed my 10x50s and headed south to the fence where I just might get some relief from the depressingly large number of streetlights in our neighborhood, not to mention the added bonus of a yardlight every couple of yards, LED accent lights, rope lights, and every other form of light polution known to mankind! I was able to see Scorpius high in the south, much higher than it is up north at this time, and I knew that Sagitarius was following along close behind.  I couldn't see much unaided though so I pulled out my trusty 10x50s.  There it was, a pattern that was familiar: the teapot.  I looked for the lid and THERE IT WAS! There was a new fourth 'star' where there has always been only three before. I wasn't able to do a very good comparison but there was definitely a bright star not shown on my star chart. When I got home I estimated that it was about the same brightness as HD166023 a bit further west and out of my field of view. That would put the nova at about magnitude 5 or 6. If it is still clear in the morning, and if I'm able to get up again, I'll try a bit earlier from a darker location and see if I can't get a better estimate of brightness, but for now this will have to do.  I believe this is my first viewing of a nova! The image is a screen shot of the field around the nova as seen through my 10x50s assuming a seven degree FOV. The white arrow points to the location of the nova which I penciled in on the screenshot.

Venus and the Moon (and Mars, and the Sun finally)

Moon/Venus Conjunction

As bad as the seeing was last night (non-existent) it was superb tonight.  The sun finally broke through the cloud bank about noon and it got steadily better the rest of the day. Tonight was perfect except for a horde of pesky mosquitoes that have been taking advantage of all the rain and warm weather we've had lately. I missed the Mars/Moon conjunction last night because of the clouds but the Moon/Venus duet really put on a show tonight. I was able to capture a nice image of the pair framed by the neighbor's palm tree across the street. Mars was also in view, barely. I was able to make it out in my 10x50s after it got a bit darker.  I also used my new Nexus 7 tablet and Google Sky Map to help find Mars.  I've come to really like the new tool.  I've not use the 'point and shoot' feature of Sky Safari Pro, preferring to use manual mode instead, but I've been using Sky Map auto mode quite a bit ever since discovering that the compass and magnets don't go well together! I discovered that while geocaching a few days ago with it. The compass feature of c:geo was leading me all over the place until I realized that the cover had a magnet to turn the Nexus on and off by opening the cover. After removing the case, all was well, and the operation of Sky Map also improved! I also noticed that Jupiter is now high overhead, leading Leo to the west. I had originally intended setting up the scope for an evening of viewing but decided against it after providing dinner to some hungry mosquitoes.

March's Star Party - in the rain!

Who would be silly enough to show up for a star party in the pouring rain?  Those thoughts went through my head today as a fairly steady rain poured down all day long. A small clearing in the clouds appeared late this afternoon but quickly closed up toward sundown. The answer to my question came in the form of Judy and me and about ten others! I anticipated a stellar no-show and added about twice as much material including slides on the signs of the zodiac and why the sun's not in Leo in August anymore, Dawn at Ceres, CME's on the sun, and finding your way around in the sky. A crash of OpenOffice that occured before the show even started resulted in several slides 'disappearing' but otherwise it all went without a hitch, except no stars. There were several good questions and everyone seemed to enjoy going outside to see if we could catch at least a glimpse of something. There were no 9 year olds at this event so I basically skipped 'birthday stars' but will include them later. It was a kind of blah way to end the season's star parties as we will be heading back north soon, to darker skies hopefully, but it was fun anyway.