Surfing Sagitarius

Last night was so good I thought I'd try for a repeat tonight and see what I could find in Sagitarius besides Jupiter. It's a little lower in the sky and a bit hazier than Ophiuchus but there's so much there it's hard not to find something to look at. I tried for M17, Hewitt-White's 'Too Many Names Nebula', using my 7x50's to get a feel for the suggested star-hop. I easily found the 5.4 mag star with a nearby smudge and so tried it with my trusty 8" dob. Bingo, right on, and there she was, swimming prettily in her stellar lake. With my 25mm ep the swan shape was very clear with no filter. I could even occasionally make out the 'wing' shapes. I was also able to catch M22 and M28 globulars, nice but small, M16, M18, and huge M8. All in all it was a good if short and somewhat humid night.

Ophiuchus Globulars

Finally, a nice dark clear night after two months of cloudy semi-daylight in the sub-arctic north. We just got back from a long trip to Alaska, and, while it was interesting, it wasn't exactly an astronomer's dream! I WAS able to finally see one of Jupiter's moons in my trusty 7x50's on our 'ranch' in Montana. I decided to make up for lost time by trying for M10, M12, and M14 featured in the August S&T. These showed up nicely in my 9x50 finder but M14 was a bit harder than M10 and M12. Four of Jupiter's moons: Ganymede, Io, Europa, and Callisto were pretty pinpoints, Europa just peeking out from the edge of double striped Jupiter, and Ganymede&Io were bunched up together on the opposite side from Europa and Callisto.

Flying off the handle

Monday night was another dark but damp night in mid Missouri and I finally had some luck with Ursa Major. Tonight's inspiration was Sue French's article "Flying off the handle" in June 2008 S&T p70. Naked eye visibility at my usual back yard observatory was good enough to see all of Bootes including the dim triangle near the dipper's handle. I finally started using a decent sketchpad, one of Judy's old pads, and it works just great. I also used a mini-cd as a circle template and that works good too. I even found the missing lens from my el-cheapo red dot and put it back together.
First order of business was to check out Mizar. I searched for it in my favorite catalog (Ciel) and discovered that Mizar is also an alias for Izar or Eps Boo. Never-the-less I looked at the other Mizar or Zeta UMa and was able to split it nicely at 47x in my 8" dob. Both Mizar and Alcor had quite a bit of a halo around them. The nearby 7.6 mag star and a group of 9th mag stars were also evident in the field.
Next I turned to Ferraro 6, and, while there were at least 16 stars in the 47x field, I thought there were only 13 that looked like a tree or tower pattern. It's also upside down so maybe it's a martini glass. Ha ha.

Last, I switched constellations, opened to a different article (Hewitt-White, May 2008, S&T p51), and finally snagged M3 and I do mean finally. This was not easy to find. It took several iterations and at least one remark that 'this has got to be easier to find'. 10 Boo was easy enough but 3 Boo gave me some trouble. I finally thought I saw a smudge in my finder scope, switched to the 25mm ep and voila! There it was! M3 at 120x was beautiful and looked like a spikey ball with tiny points of light scattered around. Very nice.

Napoleon's Hat

Finally got a bit of clear sky as a welcome change from storm clouds. It didn't last long but I went out for about an hour before the haze set in. It was very dewy and damp. Draco wasn't quite as bright as a few nights ago but it was all there as well as the little dipper. I did a bit of binocular observing before hauling out the dob. I could just make out the dim triangle of Bootes between Gamma Bootes and the handle of the Big Dipper. In my 7x50's I was able to distinguish Kappa and Iota clearly with averted vision. When I looked directly at the pair, Iota would often dissapear!
I checked out Picot 1 (Napoleon's Hat) near Arcturus in Bootes. It's an interesting asterism at 47x with my 8" dob. I also checked out Struve 1825, a double on the other side of Arcturus. I was able to split it ok at 120x. The primary is quite a bit brighter than the secondary and only 4.4" apart. Haze moved in about midnight and obscured all but the brightest stars of Bootes.
In memoriam: my el-cheapo red-dot sight bit the dust and fell apart. I'll have to get another as it was extremely useful. I'm reduced to sighting along the strip of wood I used as a mount for it!

Missed Mars in the Beehive

Got home too late to see Mars in the Beehive cluster but the seeing wasn't bad even with a nearly full moon. I was able to see a 7.4 mag star near M51 in my 7x50's and even make out a dim M51 with averted vision. If the weather holds tomorrow night it should be good to haul out the 8".

Revisiting 7 Iris

At last, a clear night. The clouds parted finally and tonight was clear but a bit hazy and the moon is back so it wasn't a good night for deep sky stuff. I was barely able to make out the four bright stars of Corvus and had a harder time finding M104 tonight but find it I did. The missing 'star' turned out to be the one above the group of three in my sketch of May 4. It's long gone and now about a degree NW of M104. There are two groups of two tenth mag stars just at the edge of the field of my 25mm ep. These four and a fifth 10th mag star make a nice arc along the edge of the FOV. I found 7 Iris on the other side of the 'bottom' group of two. 10th mag TYC5531-01038-1
is to the southwest of Iris. Limiting unaided magnitude tonight was about 3. With my 8" dob it was about 11.

A virgo galaxy

I decided to go ahead and post one of my unadulterated hand-sketches of a Virgo galaxy I haven't been able to identify. This was done on 5-5-08 about 10:00 pm CDT from my Rolla home under slightly hazy skies. I was mainly trying out a new el-cheapo red-dot finder I made. I used a $4.95 Chinese gunsight I picked up a Academy Sports in the RGV back in February. The mirror cut out way too much light so I took it apart (with a razor saw no less) and de-coated the mirror with a bit of Comet cleanser. It works a whole lot better now but the red x is still a bit too bright. One of these days I'll get around to making an external 3v supply for the thing with a resistor to cut the current to the led. In the meantime, it works well and makes it much easier to locate objects. Now if I point it at a visible star I can pretty well guarantee it'll be in the 9x finder. What I did on the evening of May 5th was to point my 8" dob at a spot midway between β leo and ε vir . I immediately found an eliptical blob in my 25mm ep and sketched the starfield. Unfortunately I haven't been able to identify the location! I decided to call my red-dot finder a success and resolved to be more careful about identifying my objects in the future.