A Vesta Fiesta

The last few nights have been wonderful. We've had a record heat wave during the daytime but the nights have cooled off into the low 80's and with a light breeze and low humidity have been wonderful for viewing. Last night the milky way was gorgeous, and again tonight. I decided to try for Vesta since it is near opposition and bright. Capricorn was up nicely in the SE although it took a lot of back and forth with my pocket sky atlas and 7x50 binoculars to convince myself it was really Capricorn. By midnight, my eyes had become dark adapted enough to clearly make out the bat-wing shape of Capricornus without binoculars. Earlier, I had updated my asteroid elements and had plotted the position of Vesta with Ciel. Armed with that information and my pocket sky atlas I began to look for something that wasn't supposed to be there. Right now, the stars from Zet and 34 Cap to Eta Cap form a kind of upside down ice cream cone, with a single scoop formed from 33 and 35 on one side with three non-descript stars on the other. The apex of the cone is Zet Cap with one side formed by 27 and Phi Cap, and the other by Chi Cap and Vesta. The clincher was a small group of 4 stars in the atlas that look like an L, 7, or a checkmark. These are all mag 7 with no mag 5 or 6 stars nearby. Bright Vesta is right next to the middle star of the leg of the L (SAO190147), a mag 7 star that stands out nicely from brighter Vesta.
Vesta is the brightest asteroid and large with a diameter of 330 miles. The Dawn spacecraft began orbiting Vesta on July 16, 2011 and is sending back images. It will continue taking data around Vesta until July 2012 when it will leave orbit and head for the dwarf planet Ceres.

Hygeia verified

After a week of rain, lightning, and clouds of doom, we finally had a clear day today. Tonight was perfect with temp in the 70's, cloudless, moonless, and enough wind to keep the bugs away. It was a bit gusty at times but not bad. Saturn was particularly clear and well out of Leo now. I could clearly see Titan and Rhea and was so flabbergasted to see ANY moon of Saturn I didn't notice little Dione on the other side of Saturn. I'm not sure why I've never noticed Titan before except that perhaps it has always been hidden by Saturn's glare. It was very noticeable with my 10x ep. The goal of tonight though was to verify that I really did see Hygeia last Sunday. I looked at my former position and sure enough there was a missing 'star'. It was a bit harder to find this time since the power was off and CdC wasn't available. I used the finder in S&T and noticed that there seemed to be an extra 9th magnitude 'star' in the field near N28, a bright double between Alpha and Sigma Libra. It seemed to form an isosceles triangle with SAO183113 and SAO183119 with the former being the other base and the latter being the apex. CdC put it's position a bit further west but the orbital elements are a bit old.

Hygiea in Libra

Hygiea is a big black carbonaceous asteroid, currently in Libra. It's the fourth largest but has a very low albedo of 7% which means it only reflects 7 percent of the light from the sun. It currently in a favorable opposition and is about mag 9.2. I found it (I think) with my 8" dob just about 3° north of Sig Lib. At least there was a 9.2 mag object that shouldn't be near HR5620 according to CdC. If that is the case, Hygiea is a bit east of the position predicted by CdC, which is not unusual. In order to verify it, I'll have to take another look next time the sky is clear to see if anything has moved. That may take awhile. I think we've only had two clear nights this year! Today was a rare sunny day and we drove to St. Louis for some C1, C2 action with Daryl Lipscomb. Zigzags had 2 squares of C2 and three of C1 and Daryl called a fine dance.

Some ETX doubles in UMa

I can't believe it's been several months since my last observing session! Actually I've been out a couple of times since returning to Rolla in April. Once with the 8" dob to check out Saturn that is nice and high in the evening now, another time earlier this week to check out the four planets at dawn (I only saw two, Jupiter and Venus peeking through the murk before sunup), and once with my ETX70, only to find that the trip up from TX managed to break my focus knob 'fix' loose. I had to use some epoxy to re-glue the washer I used to patch the broken plastic. It worked nicely tonight and I re-acquainted myself with the procedure for entering custom objects. I selected a few binocular doubles from May's S&T. There was an almost half moon, clear, and about 78F, dry with no dew, and a bit windy. The moon cast enough light that the dimmer stars were washed out but I was able to see Polaris easily. I even managed to spot a dim 7.6 mag star between Mizar and its companion Alcor in UMa. A bright satellite passed by Mizar about 10:00pm. It was the first of three that were to pass through my FOV tonight. It's always nice to spot a satellite this way. D1 or Gamma and 11 UMi were the first stop after alignment. I thought they looked a lot like Mizar and Alcor. Next on my list was TT and 8 UMi. These are mag 6.8 stars that were barely visible in my 7x50's but clear in the ETX. I found this pair by GOTO Kocab. The pair I called D2 (lambda and 2 Draconis) looked blue and orange to me. The group I called D3 was a nice string of four stars that I thought all looked blue-white. The 'crouton' in UMa was too large for the ETX but I saw it easily in 7x50's. All in all, it was a pretty successful night.

M43 with a narrowband filter

I recently ordered an Orion narrowband filter which arrived during the waxing moon and clouds. Tonight was nice and clear so I had a chance to really try it out. I set up the ETX and centered M43 in Orion's sword and focused my 27mm EP. I next attached the filter and refocused. Voila! The sky was darker and the nebula was easier to see with higher contrast. The two bright stars embedded in the nebula were somewhat dimmed. Other than having to refocus the ETX which is a pain, the nebula filter looks like it will be very useful.

Jupiter and Uranus

A couple of nights ago I noticed Jupiter shining big and bright almost overhead and decided to try catching nearby Uranus in my 7x50's. It was a bit smokey but I was able to sketch the starfield just east of Jupiter and caught Uranus visible with averted vision. Tonight it was cold and clear and I caught Uranus and nearby mag 5 and 6 stars easily with direct vision. There was just a hint of blue to Uranus. Here is a sketch I made on 4 Dec 2010. Tonight's view was virtually the same except a bit brighter due to better seeing.

Pleiades and Jupiter

Today I worked out a process for editing my scanned astro-sketches using GIMP 2.6. I made a couple more sketches tonight, one of Jupiter and four moons, and another of M45, the Pleiades. It was a bit smokey and Jupiter was just about to set below the house so I didn't get a chance to observe very long, about 9:30 to 10:20. I've been wanting to sketch M45 and think I got a pretty good result. I'll process the sketches and post them later.