M101 was just about to go behind my house tonight but it was very clear and dark, if a bit dewey tonight so I thought I'd try for the supernova that popped up the other day in M101. I finally got it in the eyepiece; for such a big thing it was a bit hard to find and I practically had to fall off the deck to see it above the house. It has a low surface brightness and is barely visible in my 8" dob with a 27mm ep. I got it, switched to a 10mm and noticed several flickering pinpoints of light in the body of M101. I saw one particularly bright, relatively speaking, just a bit north of the galactic center. That could have been it but I wouldn't care to bet on it! M101 was a nice sight anyway and well worth looking for again.
I next swung around to check out Vesta, with the 8" this time. I've been watching in binoculars, and at mag 6, Vesta is easy to pick out. It's getting close to Psi Cap. There is a little three star hockey stick between Psi and Omega Cap that is visible in my 7x50's and Vesta makes the 4th corner of a box with those three. It is noticeably brighter than the elbow of the stick diagonally opposite Vesta, not quite as bright as the end closer to Omega and brighter than the end closer to Psi. That puts it at about mag 6. I checked it out with my 27mm ep but Vesta really shown forth when I popped in the 10mm. It was smack in the middle of a pentagon of five 10th mag stars! Very pretty. One of the stars was a bit brighter and is in my CdC catalog identified as 9.98 mag SAO189710. Vesta is about the same angular distance from it as TYC6926-00302-1 is from its companion: about 2.5 arc minutes. If the sky stays clear, it'll be fun to watch it get closer to Psi Cap. It should be out of the pentagon in a few hours but I don't think I'll be up to watch. I'm kind of tired after dancing for 5 hours and walking all over tower grove park today!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment