Jupiter, Neptune, M11 and M26

What a night! We went square dancing in Laurie, had ice cream afterwards, came home and watched Taken (GREAT MOVIE), then went outside to snag Jupiter and Neptune in the same FOV, and both Messiers in Scutum: M11 and M26. What a haul. M26 was easy to find but kind of ho hum. It makes a nice 45 degree right triangle with eps and del sct and is almost as nice in the 9x50 as it is in my 25mm ep. M11 is another matter though. I pushed the 8" up to 120x and M11 was like a box of diamonds on velvet. Dozens of pinpoints twinkling away. Jupiter was well up by 2:00 (about 30 degrees) and I was able to easily see two bands and three moons. Neptune was less than a degree away in the 25mm ep looking like a small blue dot. The night was perfectly clear and cool at 63F. At 85% humidity it was a bit damp though. All in all it was one of those nights that wanted me to stay up all night and soak it up.

M10 and M12

Tonight was another clear, warm, wet night and I decided to subject my 8" to a wet bath outside. I spent part of the day making a new mount for my new daisy red-dot sight and it worked well. It's a vast improvement over the old wiggly sight. My left eye is gradually clearing up and I could finally see with both eyes! How nice to be able to actually read my charts in dim light again. I decided to try for a couple of Messier objects in Ophiuchus that I've been missing: M10 and M12. They were both fairly large and easy to find. I'm surprised I haven't seen them before. M10 looked interesting with lots of stars to set off the glow of the globular cluster. There was even a hint of Lord Rose's dark lane. After admiring these two I turned to some recent snags: M107, M80, and M9. As soon as I remembered where M107 was, the rest was easy and they are all three much nicer in the 8". I next went after the Butterfly cluster in Scorpius and it was positively beautiful tonight. All in all, an excess of dew aside, it was not a bad night. The sky was very transparent, fairly steady, and quite dark as the moon had gone away for the night.

M107 in the dew

Another clear hot night so I tried for M107 in Ophiuchus. It was just coming into view in the east past Scorpius at 10:00 so I hauled out the 8" and went out into the hot humid night. M107 is pretty dim so I had to hunt around a bit. It hides out near Zet Oph but the area is dim enough that it's hard to find anything in the 9x50. I did finally get a new Daisy red dot sight and that helped a lot. I was at least able to find Zet Oph! After hunting a bit I found M107 lurking near a right triangle formed by SAO159975 and 2 companions. It was between the triangle and a pretty pair formed by SAO159958 and its companion. M107 is fairly large at about 3'x3' but dim at magnitude 8.1. The night was so dewey, I and all my stuff was wringing wet in about 20 minutes. Not a pleasant night for gazing.

M3 through a bubble

It's been awhile since my last post but it has also been rather cloudy and wet here in midMO, plus I managed to develop a detached retina about two weeks ago. That's all fixed but I still have a bubble left over from the patch job that is slowly going away. In the meantime it makes stargazing a challange! I've been sneaking a peak at the variable R Corona Borialis. It has been rather elusive even in binoculars but tonight I was able to see it fairly well in my 7x50's. I also decided to try for M3 in Serpens Caput. It was high in the south at 10:00 and fairly easy to spot in binoculars. I just followed the chain of mag 5 stars East from 109 Virgo to 5 Ser and M5 is just northwest. It showed up nicely in my 8" although it was a bit more difficult to find since my red dot finder fell off as I was lugging the beast outside. It's time to get a REAL red dot finder.

Three more Coma galaxies

It is still clear with no moon tonight but there were some clouds earlier, it was dewy tonight, and rain is predicted for Saturday so I decided to make another night of it and see what I could do in the Virgo area with my 8". After fiddling around a bit, I went after M98, 99, and 100 in Coma by hopping along a line between Denebola and Eps Vir. About a field width of my 9x50 past Denebola I noticed a 5 star asterism that reminded me of the head of Scorpius. This makes a nice anchor for these three galaxies as all three are near one of the 5 stars: the two ends of the 'head' and the middle of the 'tail". M99 was the best of the three, being a largish blob near SAO100039. M98 is an elongated dim patch near 6 Com.
I finally gave up trying to read my paper charts and set up my laptop outside. That made it much easier to verify star fields but I still wasn't able to find any other objects. This is a rich area but I'll need to be better prepared to be able to find them with my dob. I doubt that they are bright enough to do well with the ETX-70 either.

Virgo cluster with the ETX70

Another clear night after getting back from Paducah and my Legion meeting so I decided to try the Virgo cluster with my ETX. My new leveling table worked great to level the ETX and get it aligned nicely. I was able to spot the xmas tree asterism easily and could barely make out M59 and M60. M68 showed pretty well but not 89 or 90. I sketched the field around M49 and verified it as a dim patch using averted vision. I was also able to verify M84 and M86 but had them reversed for some reason or other. Both were dim in the ETX and I had to use averted vision to see them. After deciding that galaxies aren't so great in the little ETX I went hunting with unaided eye. There is a nice open cluster about 2/3 of the way along a line between the tail of the big bear and the tail of the lion. This unaided eye visible group turned out to be part of Coma Berenices (12 and 13 Com). There was a cute 'snail' asterism looking at me when I examined the area in binocs.
At 11:18 pm it was 63 deg and falling fast. R Lyra was 4.5 using 44 and 47 at 11:28. Beta Lyr was 3.2 using 32 and 38 at 11:38 pm.
Next I fired up the 'guided tour' on the ETX to see what it could do. M4 is a nice globular cluster in Scorpio near a twinkly Jewel (Antares). I could also see M4 in binocs easily. M13 is bright but small with the ETX. It looked like a fuzzy star. M6 was behind a tree at this time but I thought I could see it in binocs. This turned out to be M7 and another above it was M6. I was not able to see the ring nebula in the ETX. It might have been out of the field though.
All in all this was a great night. It was fairly warm right up to the end at midnight, clear, and NO DEW.

Virgo cluster again

Tonight was very clear and cool so I decided to take the 8" out and see what I could find in Virgo again. I had tried previously without a lot of luck. There is a lot here but it's rather dim. I went out armed with my overall chart of 11 galaxies in Virgo (M49, 58, 59, 60, 84 86 87, 88, 89, 90, 91) to see what I could see. I found M59 and M60 right off the bat at the right angle of a triangle formed from the two most eastern stars of the Virgo 'V' or 'cup' (del and eps vir). They are near a small 'xmas tree' asterism composed of Rho and 27 Vir and a couple of other 7th magnitude stars. Both M59 and 60 were easily visible is my 25mm ep. It had been awhile since I used it so it took some time to get used to the orientation of my dob and I had the usual assortment of problems standing on my head to see through the red dot finder, tripping over the battery wire, etc. I found M58 near a diamond shaped asterism of mag 8-10 stars (SAO 100178 etc) to the west. M89 was another small fuzzy just west of a chain of six dim 10th mag stars in a W pattern. All four objects were easy to see but not a lot of detail without study. M90 whould have been on the other side of the 'W' but I didn't notice it. I need to revisit these when I'm not as tired. My Tycho 2 catalog is a good one to use for star fields in this area.
I continued my observation of Lyrae doubles Beta and R. Bet Lyr was brighter than R Lyra tonight. I estimated Beta at mag 4 using 32 and 43. R Lyr was 4.7 using 44 and 47 at 11:30 PM.