M53 and M64 nailed

Another dark night and two more Messier objects nabbed. This time I found a nice globular cluster and the Blackeye Galaxy in Coma Berenices. M53 was easy as it is quite close to alpha com. A little 'flyswatter' asterism helps to pin it down. The cluster was a fairly bright fuzzball in my 25mm ep. Occasional pinpoints could be seen in it. M64 was a bit harder but not too bad. One hop to find 35 39 and 40 com and M64 is in between 35 and a group of three 7th mag stars including SAO 82591. Its an elongated fuzzball in my 25mm ep with a hint of a dark spot just off center. It was a nice dark night and fairly warm for a change with a clear view of Virgo off in the ESE. My neighbor's yard light is pretty annoying though.
Last night was cold but clear and I was able to nab M101, a large irregular nebulus galaxy in Ursa Major. Saturn was high over the house and heat waves made it hard to see anything there. Only saw two of its moons.

Back in Rolla

Got back to Rolla tuesday evening after a week on the road via Guadalupe State Park in Texas Hill country, Gunbarrel City, Natchez Trace, Mary Ann's, and home. It's been raining since then but cleared off awhile tonight so I checked out the dob in some pretty dark skies. Even with an almost quarter moon the seeing was pretty good. I used Sirius to measure my finder's fov. It took 10 min 40 sec for sirius to drift from center to edge which comes to about 5 degrees. The 25mm was shorter at 144 sec for half field or about 1 degree. This is what I've been estimating it at. While looking at Sirius, I checked out M41 again. The background seemed almost solid with dim stars and the visible ones were quite colorful. While I was admiring it, a satellite zipped through the field. How neat! I then tried for M81 and 82 in Ursa Major. No cigar although I was close. I'm still not feeling well and clouds were moving in so I gave it up for the night. It was just enough to whet my appetite!

El-cheapo Red dot sight

Today I purchased a VB93007 'red dot sight' from Academy for $4.95. Instead of a dot it is a small red cross. I'll have to figure out a way to mount it as it normally mounts on a rifle's scope mount. Academy didn't have a Daisy red dot but they did have a variety of others. The price was right on this one. I'll have to cobble up something tonight since the sky is clear and the seeing ought to be fairly decent for a change.
Well, it got dark and I tried it out on a bright star or two. The red cross is much too bright even on the dim setting. The glass has some sort of coating that blocks enough light so that only the brightest stars like Sirius are visible in the finder. I may need to either abandon its use or find some way to dim the red cross.
At 10:00 Sirius and M41 peeked out from behind our neighbor's palm tree and I was able to find M41 after looking around a bit. It was actually visible in the RACI and looked quite pretty in the 25mm EP. Lots of blue and red stars and well worth a revisit later. I was surprised that my new altitude scale measured M41's altitude to half a degree. Not bad!
On the moon, I was able to find L29 easy enough. A large E/W linear feature near the terminus at lunation 6 .4 days. Rima Hyginnus was only about half visible. Tomorrow should be much better. I didn't have my virtual atlas handy so finding other L100 features was difficult. I need to set up the laptop or find a good hardcopy lunar atlas that I can keep at the scope.
Seeing wasn't as good tonight as the other night and I could only reliably see Saturn's largest moon: Titan. Iapetus was dim but usually visible. Rhea and Tethys both appeared briefly when the sky cleared a bit. There must have been some thin clouds that weren't visible to the unaided eye.

More moon

I wanted to try for the moons of Saturn but Saturn was still pretty low in the haze this evening. The sky was cloudless but there was a lot of crap in the air from the last few days of wind. Even the moon was pretty hazy but I was able to see most if not all of the Lunar 100 list for day 4. The lunation was 4.3 days actually. Proclus was actually kind of hard to find. It took awhile as usual to orient myself to the atlas view. I eventually was able to see at least three and maybe four of the rays from Proclus. Later with the 2x barlow I noticed that Proclus IS pentagon shaped. Messier and Messier A were easier. I was able to see Messier B and either D or E as well as the ray going kind of SE from Messier A. It actually looked like two rays but the center lane may have been a shadow. Taruntius and its companion Cameron were easy to detect. It looked like a kind of double ring with a smooth central peak. Rima Jansen was more difficult. I was in the right area but it may have been too early to see it. Maybe tomorrow? The Cauchy region was interesting. The cauchy crater was easy enough to find and with the 2x barlow on the 10mm ep the nearby domes were prominent. There was a long dark streak nearby. This wasn't identified on the atlas but was visible.
After the moon dropped below 45 deg alt, the turbulence and haze got to be too much and I switched to Aldeberan in Taurus which was too high to see from my doorway observatory but was easy to find just outside. It looked like it was just about to split at 200x but the turbulence was too much to resolve anything. There was a much dimmer star in the field but I didn't bother to identify it. I looked briefly in the east for Saturn but there appeared to be too much haze in that direction.

Through the window screen

This evening was not very promising: cloudy and very windy. It cleared off and the wind died after dark though and the moon was only three days old and pretty in the west out our sunroom door so I thought I'd try pointing the scope out the window. The 10mm ep was no good but there was a pretty good view through the 25mm. Severe diffraction patterns visible through the screen. I managed to find Langrenus crater and Petraveus though. Vallus Rheita and Watt were also easy to see as well as several others sketched in my notebook. When the moon dipped below the window, I opened the door and pointed the scope through the doorway. Much better viewing with no screen to look through but the atmosphere was still pretty turbulent. Things kept coming and going out of focus. Metius had an interesting little 'tail of light' and there were three little 'bumps' in Mare Crisium, one of which looked like a sperm. I couldn't identify it on the VMA though.
I backed off a bit with the 25mm ep and looked at the starfield around the moon. SAO 92787 at mag 8.2 was dim but easy enough to see. It looked about 30' from the moon to the SE. Since the moon was moving that way, I thought I'd wait until it was occulted by the moon. It did about 9:31 pm. Ceil predicted it to occur at 9:29:30. The dimmest star was a mag 8.45 near reddish SAO 92774 to the N of the moon. I nudged the scope up toward the smudge of M45 and was treated to a nice view of the Pleades.
All in all this was not a bad way to stargaze! It got me out of the wind and I had a good place to rest my laptop with the VMA handy. I even tried turning on the overhead light but there was just too much ambient light with it on.

Mercury and the Moon

The skies were clear on Wednesday for another day, although not quite as clear as Tuesday morning. I hauled out the 8" Orion and got a shot of the moon and mercury. Venus was in the finder but too far away for the 25mm eyepiece. Jupiter and it's moons was also a nice sight this morning as well. The time was about 6:30 am and the skies were clear with just a bit of haze on the horizon. Mercury wasn't quite as visible to the unaided eye as it was yesterday. I took pictures and will upload a couple when the server starts behaving.

Picture perfect planets

We finally had a nice clear morning sky at 6:00 this morning and I was able to catch Venus, Mercury, the Moon in its waning days, and Jupiter all in one fell swoop. This was one of the best views I've had of Mercury and the sky was clear pretty much to the horizon (or at least my neighbor's rooftop!). It was picture perfect but I didn't take a picture. Didn't even haul out the scope. Maybe in the morning if the skies stay clear. Venus was about 5 deg alt, mercury about a degree from Venus, Moon about 10 degrees from Mercury, and Jupiter maybe 30-40 degrees from the Moon (I didn't measure it).