Perseid Shower etc

I haven't done much observing lately in our horribly light polluted subdivision but two things gave me some incentive.  First was the excellent essay in the July 2019 S&T by Christopher Cokinos on observing the moon. His situation of moving from a dark sky rural area to light polluted Tucson was similar to my own and I immediately connected. Second was the occasion of the Perseid meteor shower. I woke up this morning about 4:00am which isn't unusual but this time I slipped out back to my small spot that is free of direct street light.  It's still light enough to almost read by but it would have to do. I grabbed a patio chair and looked up. The moon was low in the west and not a bother and I could actually see several brighter stars. Within a half hour I had spotted three or four bright streaks coming roughly from the direction of Perseus over my right shoulder. I figured the limiting magnitude was about 3 since I could see 4 of the 5 bright stars of Cassiopeia but not mag 3.3 Epsilon Cas. Not too bad a finish for a night when earlier I had made a contact with NF5U in Dallas with 5w during the NAQCC sprint for August.
This short session was a far cry from a night earlier in the month when we were camped in Cap Rock Canyons State Park in Texas. On the night of Aug 1, 2019 my Sky Quality Meter registered 21.54 and I was able to see the beautiful Milky Way in all of its glory. This compares with 20.51 in Sydney MT 28 July 2019, 21.62 4 June 2019 at Frank's camp, 2 June 2019 UT camp 21.68, 31 May 2019 Santa Fe 21.38, and on 29 May was 21.26. Clovis NM 27 May 20.77, 25 May Lk Arrowhead SP TX 18.3. 22 May 2019 Red Rock Cyn OK 19.26. 4 May 2019 Lane Springs 21.38.

Going lower (frequency wise)

Friday July 27 2018 marked the arrival of my latest electromagnetic spectrum sensor. This was a bit lower in frequency than my optical instruments - a brand new Yaesu FT-991A amateur transceiver! This is sometimes called a 'shack in a box' and covers ham bands from 160m to 70cm. Earlier in the year I had finally succumbed to outside prodding and my own curiosity and took the amateur radio license exam - and passed with 100%. A few days later I received my new Technician Class license, KG5ZID. I jumped back into my SDR mode and quickly had the little receiver attached to wsjt-x.exe software in the PC and was receiving FT8 digital mode signals from all over. A ham-it-up upconverter for the amateur bands under 6m and a couple of home brew antennas (one for 6m and one for 2m) stuffed into the attic and I was off and running. K9ZVZ sold me an extra Wouxun KG-UVD1P hand held xcvr to round out the 'shack'. Fast forward to today when I came across an article in Feb 2018 QST on a new ham satellite - AO-91. This is basically an FM repeater in space that works on the 2m and 70cm bands. It receives on 435.250 and transmits on 145.960. I read the article while at the dentist office getting my old bridge repaired (ugh). When I got home I looked up AO-91 on Heavens Above and guess what? It happened to be rising low in the south and headed north! I grabbed my HT and went to the front porch, tuned the radio to the downlink, and bang! I heard ham chatter where there normally wasn't any!! I couldn't quite make out a complete call sign and the signals disappeared when the satellite pass was complete so I don't know where the stations were located but I am sure they were passing through AO-91.
So now I can add radio satellites and 2m to my 'viewing pleasure'. One thing about 2m is it isn't bothered by street lights!

Eps Cas unaided

We had some rain and a little snow yesterday but today was clear and sunny so I decided to give my light poluted observatory another shot. Tonight I was able to spot eps cas unaided. It wasn't easy and I had to use averted vision but there it was, a mag 3.3 unaided in south Texas. Unbelievable! I was going to try for some of Matt Wedel's objects in Cassiopeia but I stopped at IC1805 which wasn't even on the list. This is the Heart Nebula and I saw it as a faint cloudiness. To find it I started at eps cas and the 4-star Y shaped asterism about a degree NE of eps. About a half binoc field to the right brought me to mag 7.1 HD14010 and its brighter companion. Another field to the right took me to the faint cloudiness of IC1805 or at least that's what I told myself at the time. While looking for some sort of distinctive asterism that I could use as a waymark, I spotted an obviously Scorpio-looking group of 8 stars between mag 6 and 7 that turned out to be where the famous Double Cluster in Perseus is located. The double cluster isn't much in 10x50s and nothing at all like what I remembered in Colorado a few years ago but the asterism was nice. I was getting a bit chilly - it warmed up to low 60s but then dropped again after the sun went down - so I decided to close out with M31 again. I found it fairly quickly by using the bright triangle of Cas to point the way and once again M31 presented itself. It seemed somewhat brighter tonight and I was able to make out a small arc of three mag 7 - 7.6 stars nearby. Mag 5.3 32And was clearly visible in the field and is near the SW extent of M31 but I could only see the center portion of the galaxy.
That was enough for one night. I opened up the garage door, turn on the lights, packed up my observing chair and gear, and called it a night. Very nice.

Stars in the NE

It's been awhile. It is so blasted light polluted in my neighborhood of Mission Texas I get depressed whenever I step outside at night. Needless to say I don't step outside at night very often if I can help it. Tonight was an exception though. It has been very clear and not too warm so I thought I'd see what I could see. I had been inspired by an earlier episode of Startalk that featured an interview with a Hawaiian navigator (Nainoa Thompson) and the voyages of the Hokule'a. Mr Thompson navigates in open ocean for 1000s of miles the old way - without instruments of any sort.  After setting up my trusted reclining observing chair, my 10x50s and SkySafari in my lap, I waited to see what might reveal itself as I allowed my eyes to accomodate. It was 7:30 and about as dark as it was going to get in my driveway. Capella soon popped out low in the northeast. I watched for Mirfak and eventually was able to make it out above and to the left of Capella. Once I had Mirfak, or Alpha Persei, in my sights, I pulled up the binocs for a closer look. "Not bad for Texas" was my first thought. I was able to pick out nearby HR 1059, a dim magnitude 6 star, but not any of the magnitude 7 stars in the field of view. Undaunted, I searched for the Queen of Ethiopia about 20 more degrees to the north. I was able to eventually make out 4 of the 5 bright stars of Cassiopeia unaided. I wasn't able to see the 3.3 magnitude Segin although I did finally convince myself that I could occasionally glimpse it. Bright Vega and dimmer Deneb a bit farther to the West completed the night's arc across the sky from East to West looking North. A limiting naked eye visibility of magnitude 2 sure makes for a dull night sky but it is what it is and I tried to make the best of it. I finished off with a win by grabbing a glimpse of our neighboring galaxy. Andromeda was easy enough to find using the stars of Cassiopeia as pointers and surprisingly bright in my 7x50s. It was close to the zenith at 8:00 so at least there wasn't quite so much murk in the way. It was enough to cheer me up and at least the mosquitoes weren't hungry tonight!

The great Eclipse of 2017

Today was a day several years in the making. I remember a couple of years ago, Tom Heffron mentioned that there was going to be an eclipse in 2017 that was going to pass right over our house in MO. In the meantime, we ended up selling that house, moving to south Texas, and finding out that the path of totality was going to be about 70 miles north of our old place! I decided that no matter what, I was going to be somewhere on the path of totality come Aug 21, 2017. We had several choices, starting with cousin John Lee in Oregon, the Pat Rafferty in Idaho, Judy's cousin Val in Wyoming, the kids in Columbia MO, or dad in Paducah KY. We started summer out with a trip to KY, MO, Iowa (camping farmer), and MT (Kelly), then on to Swift Current SK and Westcan7 mega geocache event. After just about more fun than I could handle, we spent a month in the Townsend area, helping people move and geocaching as well as staying cool. When Aug 21 got close, I contacted Pat who invited us out to the ranch for a few days to watch with some other friends of theirs. We had a grand time catching up with the Raffertys and then came the big day. The weather was perfect - not a cloud in the sky. We got my ETX set up to track the event, cameras to document the affair, and loads of beer and wine to keep us hydrated. As totality approached, cameras clicked, eclipse glasses tried out, and a hush settled over the small crowd of 8. At the moment of totality there was a collective WOW. The nearby horses looked at us like we were nuts but otherwise went about their usual business of grazing. We spent another evening enjoying Bear Paw Ranch hospitality, then said our goodbys and headed south once again. We stopped off in WY, UT, and NM for more geocaching and sight seeing which was all great but just didn't quite measure up to those few moments of totality in August. What a sight!
By the way, there was nothing fancy about the picture. I took a number of shots through my ETX leading up to totality primarily to compare against that awesome annular eclipse from a few years ago in NM, but I decided to heed the advise of others who said to simply enjoy the view. At the last minute, after my WOWs were finished, I grabbed my nearby Canon POS, pointed it in the geneal direction of the sun, and snapped a picture using auto settings. As luck would have it, it turned out pretty good.

A New Handbox!

A few weeks ago I found a new Autostar I 497 handbox for sale on eBay for $99 and bought it. I still don't quite have it setup right but it's getting close and works well enough for now. The last week or so I've been trying out ASCOM and installed the software so that it works with CdC but still haven't tried it out with the new handbox. Tonight I finally decided to give the ETX and new 497 a whirl outside and spent about an hour and a half getting familiar with the sky again. I got the scope pointed at Polaris and leveled but when I tried an easy align it seemed to slew about twice as far in AZ as it needed to! I tried a one star align on Sirius and same thing, too far. I finally just gave up and manually pointed it at Sirius using my laser pointer as a finder. I was able to see an 8th mag star in the vicinity of Sirius and even picked up 4 or 5 of the brighter stars in M41against a dim glow of the other stars making up this open cluster. Next I slewed over to Jupiter which was rising in the east. It was high enough that I was able to get a good view and even got to try out my 'new' 4mm EP. It's almost parfocal with the 25mm and I was able to bring it into focus with a minimum of hassle. My 'fix' for the ETX's focuser seems to be holding and is a vast improvement over the previous state. Finally I ended up with M42 in Orion. The sky was pretty clear tonight and even with the light pollution I was able to pick up the familiar shape of the hunter. The scope was really getting kind of flakey by now and I was loosing my patience. I need to either lower the tripod or get a higher stool as I had to stand and bend over most of the time. Not the best for my back.
All in all, I'd call it a success. I need to find out the cause of the alignment problem and get that fixed and see if I can get the Autostar to cooperate a little better. It always wants to act like is in the initial state and presents me with the sun warning every time it's turned on.  Not good. I was happy with the performance of the 4mm EP though and satisfied with the limiting magnitude of 8 for this site. Not bad at all.

Vesta Revisited

I thought it had been a long time since my last post but it has only been since August - not that bad. My ETX handboxes still don't work and I still don't have a new scope and it is still way too light to do much around the house. That said, it's a new year, we have a new president as of noon today (ugh), and I read that my old friend Vesta is in the sky again. I haven't seen it in awhile. It was still low in Gemini at 8:00 pm when I first went out so I waited until 10:00 when it was a bit higher. Unfortunately I think the seeing got worse but it was still clear and I could make out Castor and Pollux unaided. Using my trusty 10x50s I was able to pick out stars down to about mag 6. I used Pollux and Phi Geminorum (mag 5) as pointers to hop over to Omega 1 and 2 in Cancer, a mag 6.3 wide double.  From there I looked about a third of the binoc field to the south and there it was, glowing dimly - Vesta! I could even occasionally make out the little string of three mag 7 stars just east of Vesta.It looks like I first saw this little planetoid back in 2008, a bit over 8 years ago, near the beginning of the Obama administration. I hope my observing is as good during the coming administration as it has been during the last two, but I'm not holding my breath.