The Sky is my Oyster

Naked-eye planets

2011-05-09T07:44:00.003+10:00

There's been a bit of stuff even in mainstream media about four planets being visible in the morning sky at the moment. I didn't think I had a chance of seeing them, because Melbourne has well and truly turned on winter. However, we were up at 6am this morning for a different reason, and there was one big break in the clouds:

Venus, very bright white;

Mercury, faint but not as faint as I expected up to the right of Venus;

Jupiter, looking faintly yellow and about as bright as Venus;

and Mars, definitely red, just above the tops of the houses.

This has made my week! I can't believe I've now seen Mercury with my own eyes; and it was a seriously beautiful sight as a whole.

ASV Messier Night

2011-03-06T11:25:00.010+11:00

This weekend we went to the annual Messier Night held by the Astronomical Society of Victoria, at their dark site a bit out of Melbourne. We arrived mid-afternoon; staked out a spot, and set up our enormous (brand new) tent in the camping area. We set up the PST in the observation field; there was another solar scope somewhere else, which I didn't have a look through. We had a number of people come past to have a look, and they were pretty impressed, which was of course gratifying. The sun was looking awesome: one sunspot by itself, and a 'little' clump of solar spots in the other hemisphere. There were some cool prominences going on too, one in particular that was quite feathery. I didn't actually get much of a look, but that's ok. Hopefully the clouds will stay away in Melbourne a bit more, so I can get it out here.

We set up Copernicus and Keppler before having some food; both got some comments from other astronomers out setting up. People were mostly curious about why our lovely 128mm Tak was in the observational field rather than the photographic.

The night itself was well organised. The site is great - a bunkhouse and toilets, and they had a Lions Club out there with food and drinks - and they had a number of people giving short talks about different aspects of astronomy, as well as someone later in the night giving a talk about what was visible. I hadn't expected that there would be so many people for whom this was a completely new experience; the ASV must have advertised the night outside of the Society itself. It was a good idea, I think: I heard someone very excited about being able to borrow one of the ASV's scopes when they got home. As a consequence of this, though, there were a lot of people wanting to have a look through the various telescopes that were set up. Happily, I had no plan for the night other than find Saturn, and use the Argo to go a tour of the Messier objects.

Early on I had a look at the Pleiades - which just never looks good through a scope - and the Hyades, which I like; it forms quite a distinct triangle. I tried to split Procyon on discovering that it was a double (I was trying to figure out the stars on Canis Minor), but the atmosphere was pretty turbulent, and I have no idea what the mags of the stars are. It finally got dark enough that M42 looked awesome, which was of course a delight.

I had a look at a few Messiers - so many of the open clusters are just dull, and I didn't spend much time on them. Saw M78, that lovely little nebula in Orion, with two associated stars. Then Saturn was high enough above the trees to make it worth having a look - at least if it's something new - and I think, over the night, maybe 40 or 50 people had a look at it. There were some people who had never ever looked at a planet through a scope, and they were seriously impressed. It was a lot of fun, actually; I really enjoy helping people appreciate the night sky. Over the rest of the night I also showed some people Omega Centauri and 47Tuc, impressive of course, and then I finished with M42 - of course - and showed a few people that, too, which they all enjoyed.

It didn't get as cold as I had feared, so the freezer suits never made an appearance (happily!). I made it to 1am comfortably, but from there I started to fade, so packed Keppler away and just had a look through Copernicus. Early on I had looked at the Tarantula Nebula through J's new 20mm Nagler, and it looked spectacular; so did 47Tuc, and an amazing planetary nebula with a hole in the middle. Later in the night it was dark enough to see the Horsehead Nebula, and I think this time that I really did see it, which is thrilling. The Flame Nebula was more interesting, though. Also, the Sombrero Galaxy: seriously, seriously cool. The dust lane was clearly visible... it may be one of the most interesting galaxies I've seen, actually. Just before bed we had a look at the Spindle Galaxy - which I didn't look at long enough to see the elongated ends - and the Ghost of Jupiter, which was just mush. Finished on Omega Centuari, which was an adequate substitute for Orion. I guess.

In the tent by around 2am.

Saturn: oh yes we did

2011-01-08T10:54:00.004+11:00

Get up at oh-dark-early, that is (4.45am), to check out Saturn and try to spot the new storm that was spotted a few days ago.

Apparently, it looks like this:

(photo courtesy of galaxypix)

Quite remarkable, no? Anyway, we'd set up last night, so it was painless when we got up, and Saturn was in quite a good position over the house. Sadly, the seeing wasn't fantastic; it came in and out, which made focusing a bit of a pain. The rings were very obvious, and I think I could see the shadow of the rings on the planet (or it might have been a dark cloud band). We looked for ten minutes; J claims he could see a bright spot near the limb, when the seeing came good briefly. We came inside to get away from a couple of annoying mozzies for ten minutes, giving the planet time to revolve a bit and give us a better chance of seeing the storm. The seeing was no better when we went back. Again, J thought he saw the brighter spot once or twice; me, I don't think so. I could imagine that I saw it, but I think it was wishful thinking. Anyway, we were done in by sunrise (!!); Venus was behind a tree so we didn't bother trying to see it through the scope. It was incredibly bright though.

Reflections

2011-01-04T16:37:00.003+11:00

When we were planning our astronomy holiday as part of Christmas/New Year, we decided to go to two dark places, over six nights, because we figured we'd get to observe maybe half that time. Seemed reasonable.

In the end, we observed every night, for a total of probably 16 hours. On the sixth night we came inside before midnight for the first time. Each night we were out by 10pm, doing alignments etc. That's a lot of time observing.

I'm the sort of person who has the unfortunate habit of putting pressure on herself. Seeing clear skies, and knowing we'd transported all of that gear, I felt like I absolutely had to get out there and make the most of it. I felt guilty at the very idea of wasting all that precious dark time. This was not a good thing! - especially when, by the last day or two, I was really quite tired; despite sleeping in most mornings, it still takes it out of me, to be up so late so many nights in a row.

One of my other problems is that I both wasn't quite prepared enough, nor quite as easy-going as I would like to have been. See, not only do I think I should be out there looking at the sky, I think I should be actively using it: this, in my head, means looking at as many things as possible, especially new things. Because... what's the point otherwise? Sure I could just look at Orion all night, but isn't that a waste of time?? And then when I wasn't as prepared as I 'should' have been, I got frustrated at 'wasting' time and opportunities.

A wise friend pointed out to us, halfway through this epic, that he likes to think about astronomy as similar to gastronomy: a small amount, savoured, rather than stuffing yourself silly. I like this a lot in theory; it's just going to take me a while to get my ahead around to accepting it as being 'allowed'.

I've come away from our adventure with some things to think about, then. I realise that I have to give some thought to what I actually want to get out of my astro hobby. Am I looking to tick off as many doubles as possible, seeing all the globular clusters, being able to navigate my way around the whole sky... or am I doing it because I enjoy looking at the majesty that is the night sky? Seems there's an obvious answer there, really. I've also learnt that I should just put on more clothes when I need to rather than pretending I'm not that cold (stoooopid), and that maybe observing for 6 nights in a row - especially when it's just me and J, with no one else either to suggest interesting objects to view or break up what does get a bit monotonous - is probably not a brilliant idea. But that's ok; learning is a good thing. As long as I do learn it.

Last night of astroholiday

2011-01-04T16:20:00.005+11:00

The wind did not let up for our last night of our astroholiday, but we went out anyway. J had earlier set up the PST for a bit of solar viewing - and in order to do that, put the double plate on the Losmandy mount. Since it was on there anyway, we decided to try the double up: the 128 and the 90mm. Put the 10mm eyepiece in the 128 and 21mm in the other, with the idea that this would give quite a different view of various objects. It was good in theory, I think, and certainly did give different views. However, it was quite heavy, and seemed to have a bit of trouble moving via the hand controls; this was probably partly to do with the wind, but may als mean we didn't have it quite balanced right.

Anyway, I naturally started out with Jupiter, and it was actually good enough seeing that I put the 6mm in Keppler, and magnified it with the 5mm even. A couple of dark bands were obvious.

I decided to continue my little Messier marathon from last night, since I knew I'd missed a few by looking when they had gone behind the house. I caught M78 - which is a neat splodge of nebulosity with two stars seemingly embedded in it; and M37, which in the 10mm was large, faint, with many distinct stars; in the 21mm, more of a grey smudge, although some individual points were still distinct. M36 looked similar, with a shape I'm claiming as like a starfish. I missed M74, M38, and M34 by not being quick enough! So I went to some others: M48 is still a boring open cluster, but M79 is endearing itself by being such a cute little globular.

I was getting a bit put out by the wind by this stage, so J dragged me over to Copernicus and showed me the Grus quartet (which was actually a triplet at this stage, because it wasn't quite dark enough for the whole show), which is always cool: seeing three or four galaxies apparently so close together is breathtaking. He also showed me NGC246, which he is quite in love with: it's a planetary nebula, with three bright points within/to the side; I'm not sure whether they're physically associated with it or not.

We decided to call it an earlier night than normal, so to finish up I dialled up the Popular Deep Sky Objects tour and had a quick spin. I tried for the Witchhead Nebula, knowing it was going to be too big to see the whole thing in one eyepiece (3 degrees!), but hoping I would at least be able to see some nebulosity. I am dubious, although J claims it was obviously greyer in some sections. 47Tuc - such a bright core, so striking an object! - and, of course, the Orion Nebula finished the night off.

Sun sketch

2011-01-04T15:58:00.003+11:00

Carted the PST around the place, and it wasn't until our second last day on proper holidays that we remembered to get it out! J set it up on the double mount we bought for the Losmandy; he set it up fairly early, and I wandered out for a look three times over the day - and it managed to track fairly well for the whole day, too.

I even did a sketch:
Done at about 2pm, over a few minutes. It's a composite from a couple of different tunings. Most excitingly, as I went from one tuning where some of those sunspots were more obvious back to where I could also see the prominences (on the limb) - that one on the righthand side suddenly appeared!

And then there was wind

2011-01-03T11:07:00.005+11:00

Even more wind last night. Still, at least it kept the possibility of mozzies at bay.

Tragically, I discovered that I could my thumbs all the way through the thumbs of my gloves... very sad. Especially since it got awfully cold.

Anyway, I decided to do a mini Messier marathon for this session, since that required no planning on my part and hey, it's the Messier catalogue! I did try looking at Jupiter first of course, but again it was mush; the seeing was atrocious in the west, and again the wind was not playing nice.

M79: lovely little globular cluster. A couple of bright stars to the side, better with averted vision. Quite irregular.
M77: itty little galaxy. Better in Copernicus with the 10mm, but still no details obvious.
M42 and 43: a favourite, of course. I looked at the Trapezium, and am convinced that I could see three additional faint stars in between the main bright ones. I tried putting the 6mm in, but the wind made focussing a nightmare.
M41: in Copernicus with the 21mm, very bright and interesting; numerous yellow and bright white stars. With the 35mm, boring. In Keppler, the 10mm gave a chaotic and somewhat overwhelming view of the cluster; the 21mm made it more coherent, and showed off the lovely yellow stars in the centre.
M50: chaotic in the 10mm, boring through the 21mm.
M47: a nice enough little cluster with a somewhat interesting arrangement; I liked the line of bright stars through the middle.
M46: could not be seen in the same field of view as M47 through Keppler; good case in point of how awesome Ptolemy is, for wide views. A bit boring, overall, although exciting to see the planetary nebula off to the side (NGC2438).
M45: in Copernicus, it was a group of bright dots with what is apparently nebulosity, but it just looked like haze around individual stars to me. The Pleiades is, I think, best naked eye.
M93: boring... looks a bit like an anvil. Or maybe a teapot.
M48: chaotic in the 10mm; 21mm made it look like the outline of something I couldn't quite figure out.
M67: looks a bit like a comma. Possibly some nebulosity?
M44: some trouble finding this as the Argo thought it was upside down... impossible int he 10mm, and no shape in the 21mm - just looked like a bunch of visual double and triples. Again, more interesting naked eye, where it was a pronounced smudge.
M1: large grey smudge in Copernicus; ditto in Keppler, bigger of course in the 10mm. Not very crabby-looking.
M35: an open cluster; boring except for the fact that it has a little companion that looks like a globular but is actually a really tight little cluster.

And that is when tragedy struck! Well, when I say tragedy, I mean that M36, 37 and 38 were all behind the house AND that the RA encoder died! J gallantly resuscitated it thanks to his trusty Allan key set. At this point it was after midnight and getting awfully cold, so there was no way I was going to re-align. Thus, to bed.

The next night, in the Grampians

2011-01-03T10:56:00.005+11:00

To be honest, it felt like a bit of a dud night. I was using Keppler (Tak128), and it was quite windy so it was a little harder to manage than little Ptolemy would have been. Also, I had chosen some dud objects to try and chase: that is, they were smaller and/or dimmer than I realised, so they were hard to find and/or actually see. Le sigh.

Jupiter looked very average. This was largely to do with the wind; it was hard to get a steady view. Basically pointless with the 6mm eyepiece; 10mm was a bit better, with a few bands of cloud visible. I then tried to find a few things but got frustrated, so J hauled me over to Copernicus to show me some galaxies. First, though, IC418: a groovy little planetary nebula, which looked amazing through the 4mm: that's 450x magnification, J assures me, which sounds like a lot. Galaxies: NGC253 (a large grey smudge of a galaxy, brighter at the centre with a couple of very bright spots, which may actually not be physically associated with it? also possibly a dust lane); NGC288, NGC247, NGC300, and NGC7793 (variations on Grey Smudge, some larger than others). Could not see the dwarf galaxy in Sculptor.

To finish the night I went back to Keppler. I looked at the Large Magellanic Cloud (the detail continues to amaze); Omega Centauri (huge, but I think 47Tuc is still my favourite); M79 (a great little globular); M78 (nebula, not that bright); and, naturally, M42. Which was a happy way to finish the night.

New Year's Eve

2011-01-01T11:18:00.007+11:00

We left the Little Desert and traveled over to the Grampians, for a change of scene during the day but still dark skies for observing. It was an horrendously hot day, which cooled off only gradually; and to make matters worse, it was incredibly windy - gusts up to 90kph in our area apparently. This made seeing decidedly sub-optimal; while I was still stooging around trying to get a good view of Jupiter, J announced that there was basically no point in me looking for double stars, because resolving them was going to be a pain in the butt. Tragedy! What was I going to do instead?!

Well, I had planned on looking at interesting things and doubles in Canis Major, so I did check out the open cluster NGC2362; it looked all right with averted vision, with quite a bright centre. I also tried looking at the open cluster + emission nebula of NGC2264, but the nebulosity was so faint through Ptolemy (90mm) that I might as well have been making it up.

I didn't have anything else planned, and was feeling a little weary to be honest (two nights of bed at 3am, and a 40C day, will apparently do that to you). So I decided to let J do all the work and just get the advantage of looking through the 16" Dob. He had a plan for looking at some galaxies in Fornax and Colomba, so that's what I did too. We saw:
* NGC1808, a long faint but obvious galaxy, with a bright centre;
* NGC1851, a tendrilly yet compact globular cluster;
* NGC2090 and NGC2188, both faint smears;
* NGC1792, a bigger grey smudge with a couple of bright spots visible;
* a group of five - maybe six - galaxies all visible within the same field of view (1 degree).

In between looking at those, I did end up going back and playing with Ptolemy. Firstly, I set the Argo to Identify, and played around finding stars: I now know Procyon, Castor and Pollux, and confirmed that Aldebaran is indeed that star in Taurus. Plus, I know where the constellation Lepus is (ish). Secondly, I decided to see what Messiers I could find. Most I had already seen before - M93 (boring open cluster); M46 and M47 (awesome to see in the same field of view, nice contrast with one tight and one loose open cluster); M50 (almost unviewable through the 35mm, being too small/dim). But I did get two new ones to tick off: M48 (small and dim open cluster), and M67 (another open cluster that I do like; it looks like someone took a bite out of the side). I was going to look for more but then my Argo's batteries died! Oh the humanity.

By this stage it was midnight, so we took a final tour of some old faves - 47Tuc, which looked INCREDIBLE and as fake as ever; the Tarantula Nebula, which I choose to think of as resembling a flower; and, of course, M42, whose nebulosity just looked brilliant through the Dob. I had to get a bigger eyepiece to get a better view of it!

The Little Desert, Night Two

2010-12-31T15:06:00.002+11:00

Not quite as good this second night. There were a few reasons for this:
1. Mozzies.
2. It stayed hot all night - maybe 23C by 2.30 - so the mozzies stayed around too.
3. More mozzies. They were trying to eat me through my clothes.
4. People. There were a few more people at the Lodge, so there were a few more lights on. Also, I actually knew one of the people! He and his friends came out at about 10pm to have a look, we showed them some of the usual suspects... and then he hung around til midnight. I wanted to have a look at the stuff I'd planned, but it wasn't that interesting, so I didn't feel like I could while he was there....
5. Mozzies.
6. Trying a new telescope. Um. Yes. Have I mentioned our new telescope? It's a Tak FS128 (5") which J picked up through his usual cunning ways. I've called it Keppler... and he's huge, in comparison with Ptolemy (90mm). Coming to grips with the different fields of view in the eyepieces, etc, took some doing, and I'm still not there yet.

What did I look at? Well, we started with Jupiter - of course - and it was by far THE most amazing and awesome view of Jupiter I have ever had, enough to almost make me want to sketch it. The main dark band was blindingly obvious, there was detail to the north and the south, and - perhaps most amazingly to me - the moons clearly appeared to be of slightly different shape and colour. Ganymede was obviously bigger and redder. I was totally blown away - as were the people we showed it to a bit later. We also showed them M42 and 43 - of course! - and it too looked stunning through the 128. In fact I looked at it several times over the night, and it just got better and bigger every time.

To get my mojo back a bit, after my acquaintance left, I took some time to just look up. Keppler has a box disconcertingly like a coffin, which it turns out makes an excellent bench, so I just lay back on it (the ground was awfully sandy) and stared up. Orion was pretty close to the zenith (we were pushing midnight by this stage), and the view was just delightful. I also had a chance to look at a few things through J's Dobsonian, probably my favourite of which was an awesome planetary nebula, NGC1360, with a bright core and a discrete cloud around it. I tried dialling up planetary nebulae to 'tour' on Keppler but it was a bit of a bust with the lights on in the distance.

Anyway, I decided to have a go at some doubles. Using the list of doubles in Orion from vol 1 of The Night Sky Observer's Guide, I had a look at and split: E627; E630; 17-rho Ori (a lovely double, orange and blueish); 19-beta Ori; E664; h2259 (although only the 3.6/10.8 mag stars, not the other companions); h697 (the triple); E697; E701; h2268; E114; E790; E816; 60 Ori and E877. Which, yes, was possibly a stupid number of doubles to look at it one night, but I did stop when I was bored. Additionally, I was practising with the Argo, because I found all of these by pushing the telescope around until the read-out on the Argo was the correct RA and Dec. There was a few times when it wasn't quite right, but overall it was a good way to start getting a handle on using the mount as well as the Argo - and getting myself more used to directions.

We stayed up until just after 2, determined to see Saturn. However, we were flagging fast, so when it was just above the horizon and mushy as all get-out (not coming clear at all, and looking like a weird bulging object as a result), we threw in the towel. Still, it was a good night overall (despite the mozzies), and we're hoping for a few more like it - this time in the Grampians.

The Little Desert, Night One

2010-12-30T20:21:00.014+11:00

While it's not exactly a desert, when I say we came here because it's a dark part of Victoria, it is seriously a dark part of Victoria.

My main aim on this first night was to play with my new Argo - a Christmas present - and get used to my Losmandy mount. While I grew to love my industrial green Tak P2Z, it is awfully nice not to have to remember to disengage the tracking and then re-engage.... Anyway, I aligned it pretty easily, and then had a look at Jupiter (of course). Since it's so easy with the Argo I also found Uranus - and even though it wasn't very dark, it was an obviously blue little disk.

I decided to start off by having a go at one of their tour functions, and chose Non-Stellar Objects within 30 degrees of Sirius and a lower limit of mag 8 - since I'll admit that it wasn't exactly pitch-black yet, but I was impatient. First off was M41, a bright open cluster, which looked great. The next few objects were also open clusters, and although they can be interesting enough the joy soon waned: I looked at NGC2345, M50, M47, and M46, skipped a number of NGC clusters, and then gave up and moved on to trying to find triple stars, again using the tour function. This too I fairly quickly gave up on; for my part, it was probably not quite dark enough to be trying to split triples, but it was frustrating in general because the Argo didn't supply mags for all of the stars, nor their separations, so I wasn't sure if I found them or not. And thus I moved on to the 'Bright Nebulae' tour.

First, the Rosette Nebula, around NGC2244. In Ptolemy (90mm refractor), the nebulosity was very faint indeed. However, I badgered J into finding it in Copernicus (16" Dob), complete with brand new filters, and WOW! It looked awesome - we couldn't fit the whole thing into the field of view in the 21mm. It was matched, and bettered in my scope, by M42 and 43, of course - I really do love this time of year - they just looked incredible. Every time I look at the nebula there it just looks brilliant.

I was interrupted at this point in my tour my J's excitement at having found the Horsehead Nebula. He got a H-beta filter specifically for finding this, and was over the moon at spotting it. I'm not as patient as him, so while I could see the band of nebulosity and just pick the 'divot' that marks the famous horse's head, I couldn't make out any detail. The Flame Nebula, however, was waaay more interesting, looking quite a lot like a maple leaf. He also showed me M1, the Crab Nebula - a large, faint, not very crabby smudge - and, a bit later, several faint galaxies around Fornax, including the awesome 'Zorro', NGC1365.

I looked at a few more bright nebulae - NGC2175, M78, NGC1975 (drowned out by M42), and a couple of others that I couldn't really pick - before going back to my old fave, double stars. As with the list of triple stars, I was a bit frustrated by the lack of information provided in the Argo about magnitudes and separation distances for the double stars. I ended up grabbing my Cambridge Double Star Atlas, and looking them up in it to see if it was worth my energy - but some of the ones listed on the Argo weren't listed in the Atlas... I know there are double star catalogues available to download, so I will to investigate those. Anyway, I saw E816 (a separation of 4.4"!! Very proud); Ori60; E838; E877; OE73; Ori68; and E766 (I really should figure out how to do Greek letters, since the E is meant to be sigma...). In doing so I also stumbled on an awesome little planetary, NGC2438, and a totally lovely open cluster, NGC2169.

To finish up the night I tried the non-stellar objects tour again, this time in the incredibly rich area around Carina. I skipped most of the open clusters, but looked at Omega Centauri (always breathtaking, and stupidly detailed); NGC2808 (another globular, this one quite faint); the Gem Cluster and Jewel Box (open clusters I will make an exception for); Centaurus A (a faint galaxy with what appears to be a split in the middle); and the seriously cool Ghost of Jupiter (another planetary nebula - I love it).

We packed it in around 2.15, with the moon rising: a crescent, it was so yellow it looked like a banana. If we'd hung around a bit longer we could have looked at Saturn, but my goodness it got cold. From complaining about the heat in the day, we ended up as rugged up as we've ever been while observing. Can't wait for tonight.

Transits

2010-12-22T22:30:00.002+11:00

We've dragged the telescope out twice in the last week or so, but only briefly. We haven't really had much summer, yet, so it's been quite cloudy and quite cool at night! Anyway, this may be my favourite celestial time of year: Jupiter still visible for a while in the West, and Orion visible at a really decent time in the East. Whee!

Both times we've had a look at Jupiter we've spied shadow transits, which I think is pretty amazing given they were both haphazard viewing opportunities. The first time it was Europa, and tonight it was little Io. Tonight in particular the shadow was a really dark circle on the disc of Jupiter - very obvious indeed.

Also today, the nights officially start getting longer again! Gone are the days when I was just all about the sunshine, baby. Now - ah, now, I get to be totally conflicted. Fun!

My first sun sketches

2010-10-19T21:14:00.002+11:00

These are my first attempts at sketching the sun.

The prominences are certainly out of proportion. Obviously because I wasn't using black paper, I struggled to convey the lighter areas on the surface; I chose just to represent them as lighter, squiggly lines.

Both were drawn while viewing through my 10mm Ethos, on a PST. The first was done at about 12.15pm today (19 Oct 2010), while the second was at about 5.50pm.

When will I ever sleep?

2010-10-16T17:44:00.004+11:00

There are a couple of reasons why buying a solar scope at the moment would be silly. In the very short term, it's raining crazycakes at the moment here. In the medium term, we're at solar minimum, so it's not the most interesting time to be viewing.

Um. Yeh.

Photo nicked from Meade website.

Isn't it pretty? The eyepiece it came with is a bit crap, so we swapped in the 10mm when we had a brief break in the clouds, and also had a go with the 6mm.

I looked at the sun! Without my eyeball getting boiled!

We saw three small sunspots. There were two large prominences on the top left limb (I'm not entirely sure which way around the scope is yet), and on the direct opposite limb there were five (maybe six?) small prominences. I saw two... well, they looked like tears on the surface; I'm not entirely up on my nomenclature yet, either. It was very, very cool.

It has occurred to me that getting a PST at this point in the solar cycle is actually excellent. It's interesting right now, and it's only going to get better from here.

But seriously: when will sleep? Observing all day, observing all night... oh yeh, when it's cloudy. And at dawn and dusk.

The Warrumbungles #2

2010-10-15T13:48:00.001+11:00

While we observed for a shorter time on the second night, I actually saw more through my scope, because I didn't have to hang around trying to figure out where Capricornus was. Mostly, I looked for doubles, but I also got J to find some Messiers in Capricornus that I was having difficulty with: M72 and M73. M72 is a faint globular, and M73 is a group of four stars that I don't entirely understand why they made it as a Messier object. Guess it's not my place to question it.

Three doubles in Capricorn made a nice little view in my 10mm (2 degree field of view): rho and omicron Cap (I think; still getting to grips with the Greek letters...), and pi Cap was there as well but with a very small split I didn't figure out which one it was. Omicron is two white-blue stars of similar magnitude. Rho has a bright yellow primary, a fainter yellow companion, and I'm not sure if I could see the third star in the triple - I should have been able to, but I don't think I actually figured out which one it was.

Sigma has a bright yellow primary and a much fainter companion, which I found by star-hopping from the above field of view.

Other doubles in Cap:

S763 - about the same mag; one maybe more red than the other?

h5220 - very faint, both of them, with possible another double nearby that wasn't listed in my atlas?

h5226 - both quite faint; not actually positive I caught this one, but the position seemed about right.

I think I caught the triple of beta Cap: one bright yellow, one fainter blue, and a very faint third. Nice pattern, with the yellow in the middle and the other to either side, kinda forming an elbow.

The Warrumbungles, #1

2010-10-15T13:03:00.002+11:00

When we left Lostock and the Ice in Space camp, we headed west to Coonabarabran. The point was to visit the Australian Astronomical Observatory, and maybe get some viewing in. The AAO is cool to see - I especially liked the world's-largest solar system replica: the dome of the AAO is the sun, and the rest of the planets are spaced out, at appropriate distances (over 100km), along the main routes into town. The visitor's centre is a bit... um... tired.

We stayed at the Warrumbungle Mountain Motel, which is for sale if you're interested. I think our motel room was bigger than our house. And we were the only ones there the first night, so when the clouds finally cleared - hurrah! - we dragged the scopes out onto their golf course (!) and settled in for a couple of hours. We'd even been sensible and prepared a thermos of tea in advance.

The moon was out at as a little crescent, which was really lovely to see - especially as it got darker and the whole disk was lit up by earth-shine. It formed a picturesque triangle with Venus and Mars, both naked-eye visible; Mars was very red to the naked eye, and in my 6mm, although it was a bit hazy. Jupiter, on the other hand, was looking spectacular; I could clearly see a white band of cloud in a roughly similar position to the dark band in the opposite hemisphere. And, excitingly, we saw Neptune! - definitely through J's scope, and I think through mine. Hard to see through J's, for me, because it was near the zenith - so I was on tiptoes to reach the eyepiece.

J had a good night of chasing Messiers and galaxies. I had a good look at NGC247 and 253, both of which were (to me) surprisingly large, and bright, although they did both still look basically like cigars.

I was pleased to be able to hunt down a couple of doubles in Capricornus, and M30, a globular cluster which looked bizarrely like a molar. The first double I spied was epsilon Cap, with a bright white primary and a very faint companion. The second was an absolute highlight: alpha 1-2 CAP, so called because alpha 1 and 2 are a binary (I'm pretty sure), both beautiful yellow stars, and they both have a separate companion. I found one companion, but not the other - it's only 7" away from its primary, and it wasn't great seeing, so that's not a huge surprise.

I finished up the night hunting down M4, near Antares, because the rest of the sky got cloudy... that was around 10.30pm. I'm very proud that I now know Capricornus.

The Lagoon

2010-10-15T12:34:00.005+11:00

Slight drift issue, but otherwise quite pleased. Up near Thredbo; 5 seconds at ISO 3200

Lostock: three potential nights of all-out viewing...

2010-10-15T09:17:00.009+11:00

Ice in Space Astro Camp: three nights, at a remote Scout camp, with ~100 keen amateur astronomers+hangers-on. What could possibly go wrong?

Thursday night: some sucker holes!... but cloudy. Also, rain.

Friday night: cloudy.

Saturday: the sun was out enough that a dude had his solar scope out, and we wandered over to be bothersome and have a squizz. I saw prominences! And the surface of the sun! Without my eyeball boiling!! ... I might be in love...

For all that it was annoying that we didn't get to observe every night, the camp was awesome. There was a lot of telescope-ogling, and deep discussions about eye pieces. Our cat's perch chairs drew a lot of comment, as did J's scope. The fact that we both have scopes and I wasn't there under sufferance also attracted notice, which I thought was a bit sad; the number of times I basically got asked if I was happy to be there, and then I pointed to my scope and said I got mine first.... There were a few other women there with scopes, but it was by and large a male gathering. It was neat to see a few blokes there with their kids, though, having left mum at home.

Anyway, we did observe on Saturday. Sitting at dinner, we kept sticking our heads out to look at the sky - hopefully noting the holes in the clouds - with the constant refrain being "I've seen it come good from worse...". At one point I realised I could see Jupiter, and I ditched whoever I was talking to and hared it back to our camp. I figured I would at least have a look at it, if nothing else. I caught Venus - lovely little crescent - and Jupiter, and then, all of a sudden, looked up: it was clear! The clouds were almost entirely gone! And wow, the whole camp... changed. Red lights zipping around the place, people excitedly discussing their favourite objects, arguing about collimation: it was cool. We had a little crowd in our area, what with two SDMs next to each other. I got a little frazzled because I couldn't figure out the constellations - I only know Scorpius and Sagittarius in the spring sky! But a couple of people showed me some interesting things, which was really nice of them.

I saw the globulars NGC6388, NGC6397, and NGC6723; BrsO-14 in Corona Australis, a binary with two small white stars; B86 and its accompanying dark nebula - don't think I've ever consciously seen a dark nebula before (the Coalsack doesn't count...); M27 - the Dumbbell Nebula! and possibly Barnard's dwarf galaxy. When I discovered that we could see Pegasus, I checked out the binary that is Matar, which has a bright yellow primary and a faint white secondary. Also through my scope I saw a few other random globular clusters, the Pleiades, M79, and we managed to stay up late enough (bed at 2am!) to see the glory that is Orion (I've missed him!).

Someone set up binoculars near us, through which I finally saw the Andromeda Galaxy. It was... a disappointment, frankly. I couldn't see it naked-eye, probably partly because it just doesn't get that high even in NSW, and through the binos it was just a blob. Still: furthest-away object you can (theoretically!) see naked-eye, and closest galaxy to our own. Nice to cross off the list :)

I also got to have a look through Rod's 20" scope, which he set up next to ours. It required a ladder to get to the eyepiece, and a trailer to bring it to the camp. I saw NGC1365 - a galaxy -which is apparently one of Rod's favourites, and was indeed spectacular. The Saturn Nebula is a weird green colour and does indeed look like Saturn, and 47Tuc was breathtaking. My favourite, though, was being able to see three out of four galaxies known as the Grus Quartet - the other one was just outside the field of view.

All in all, it was a seriously awesome night of viewing, and was a great way to finish the camp.

On top of a mountain

2010-10-15T08:49:00.010+11:00

We've just got home from an almost entirely astronomical holiday through NSW, precipitated by the annual Ice in Space Astronomy Camp. We went to the Deep Space Complex at Tidbinbilla, and came home via the Australian Astronomical Observatory at Siding Spring and the radio telescope at Parkes. We also managed to observe for four nights out of ten, which probably isn't a bad hit rate!

Our first stop was at a lovely B&B between Thredbo and Jindabyne. It was kinda clear the first night, but we hadn't set up the scope so we decided to be lazy. The last night, however, was glorious (how glorious? LMC and SMC very clear to the naked eye) - and we'd found a great spot for observing just up the road from our accomm, very flat and away from the few house lights in the area. Paul, the manager of the B&B, had mentioned he's been thinking of trying to organise astronomy groups, so we dragged him out and showed him some of the sights, and talked to him about telescopes a bit too.

It wasn't a night for working through a plan, not least because we only set up my scope so J and I had to share. So we had a look at Jupiter, who was brilliant, and then J managed to find Uranus! Which Paul didn't think was that impressive - just a blue smudge - but I was wildly pleased.

We had a look at some Messier objects, largely to show off: M8 (Lagoon Nebula), M16 (Eagle Nebula), M17 (Omega Nebula), M20 (Trifid Nebula), M22, M23, M24 (Star Cloud), M25, M54, M69, and M70! - and NGC6652 because it was in the neighbourhood, as well as 47 Tuc. I am still not that enamoured of open clusters for their own sakes - many just don't seem to have outstanding features, for my money - but I adore globular clusters. I don't really know why; I think it's that looking at them for a while, you can start to pick out detail - slowly but surely. I love all of the nebulae we saw, and the Star Cloud blew me away: I was looking through the eye-piece as J star-hopped via the Rigel, and it just suddenly appeared. Awesome.

We also had a go at photographing the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulas, and I will upload some of those when I find the camera amongst the end-of-holiday detritus.

An experiment

2010-10-01T20:22:00.006+10:00

That's the Lagoon Nebula (M8), from our backyard: iso 800, 30 seconds. Check out that colour!!

A little Jupiter: iso 800, 1/800 second. Bit sad you can't see any moons... longer exposure, and darker skies, required.

The Jewel Box - a lovely little cluster near the Southern Cross: iso 800, 5 seconds. Not quite in focus, but you can still make out some colour.

Cr316: J's favourite little cluster, in Scorpio. Iso 800, 5 seconds.

Spring apparently means clear nights!

2010-09-26T20:32:00.008+10:00

Well, this is Melbourne, so when I say 'clear nights' I really mean 'one clear night amongst the many murky ones.' Nonetheless: today it hit 20C for the first time in many months, there were lovely clear blue skies for most of the day - I sat outside and read! - and it stayed clear for the evening.

We started off looking at Venus, which was a delightful thin crescent. Then, waiting for the sky to darken at least a little, over to Alpha Centauri; split beautifully.

It didn't ever really properly darken tonight; probably we didn't leave it quite late enough. Anyway, Antares (the anti-Ares, ie Mars; cool!) was a lovely reddish colour, and I discovered that beta Scorpius, aka Graffias, is a double: a pair of whiteish-blue stars. Another of the Scorpius stars is also a double, but I did not split it - although it did look quite bulbous, so perhaps I was close.

Close to Scorpius is M7, which I managed to find all by myself - at exactly the same time that J found it through Copernicus, which was quite funny. It's a lovely open cluster, with a nice scatter of stars. Close to it is M6, but I did not manage to find it, which made me a little grumpy. To make up for it J pointed me towards Cr316, which I'd been thinking of finding anyway. It too is an open cluster, but (optically at least) much tighter than M7. Through the 35mm lens, it was quite spectacular.

Testing out just how good my eyes are, and how light the sky was, I next looked at the star G Scorpius, because next to it is a globular cluster, 6441: very faint from here, and you'd just assume it was a smudge if you weren't looking for it. In fact, my next target - M22 - I didn't even see even though I was looking for it. I got - ahem - a little petulant; J had a look to see where I was at... and it was there, in the eyepiece, I just hadn't noticed. Too faint!! - it's another globular cluster.

Really, all of this was a prelude to the main event, which was Jupiter. In order to get the earliest view possible, J decided he needed to do some gardening: bits of a climbing rose were waving about too high. Up a ladder, with secateurs, with only a red headlamp for light... awesome. Anyway, it was a totally classic view of Jupiter tonight. All four Galilean moons lined up, nicely spaced out. Jupiter itself still looking kinda weird with only one dark belt of clouds.

It was a great night's viewing, in all, and not even too cold. Also, not many insects! I'd like to observe in conditions like this all year rounf!

A cautionary tale

2010-09-17T18:36:00.000+10:00

We were outside, last night, at 6.30pm. It was a mostly clear sky, and the moon looked awesome. While I fussed over dinner, J set up the 'scope, and reported that Venus was a lovely crescent - and that the moon was going to look awesome too.

He then came inside, to help me with dinner, because some clouds were scudding over.

Approximately five minutes later came a sound that generally I love, but - 10 seconds after it started - I realised was something of a problem at that particular moment. It was the sound of rain.

Fortunately, J had put the cover over the 'scope's element, because it was a bit dewey. We hurtled outside and frantically brought it in, rather worried that the rain was going to get heavier. It didn't, but it was enough to put a dampener on everything (boom boom), and of course the clouds stayed put, after that.

That, my friends, is one of the perils of observing in Melbourne.

The moon just never gets old

2010-09-12T20:44:00.003+10:00

I hope I never ever get bored by the moon. Because tonight, we took the scope out for all of ten minutes, just too look at the moon, and you know what? It was awesome.

It's still a little crescent at the moment - although not a wafer-thin as it was on Friday, and don't I wish we hadn't been driving to Ballarat that night! Still, it's only a few percent full; Mare Crisium was looking pretty awesome, and the crater Atlas was right on the terminator looking awesome. I love that bit of the moon, maybe because I look at it all the time when the moon is new. I also had a look at Mare Fecunditatis; the southern half of the moon is somewhere I'm really not as familiar with, maybe because it's more chaotic than the north. I got totally lost around the very southern section, so I gave up.

I love the moon. I just love it.

Clear skies are here again

2010-09-07T21:53:00.006+10:00

It's been a while. Tonight, for the first time in a while, we had both clear skies and the energy to do something with them. Here's hoping Melbourne gives more of the same! - after the rain that's forecast for the end of this week, in any case.

Anyway, given the skies and the fact that even when the sun was barely down I had a good view of crescent Venus, I messaged some friends just down the road that they should bring their kids over for a look - I'd been meaning to do so for ages. They promptly arrived with two in tow, the eldest being sensible and staying home, feeling sick. We trooped out the back and had a good look at Venus, and Mars - just a blob these days - and had a chat about planets. Then, because the stars were coming out and they were enthusiastic, J decided to show off and show them the Jewel Box; I met that with Alpha Centauri, which split beautifully and particularly excited the youngest. All of which was very pleasing.

We went back out a few hours later, because it amazingly remained clear. Sagittarius and Scorpio are back to being high in the sky - it's like seeing old friends! It wasn't particularly dark, but J hopped around some clusters in the two - M4, M6, and M7; M20 and M21 - the Triffid, looking pretty awesome even with the light pollution. Right when we thought we were ready to pack it in, J had a last look all round the sky. And there, my friends, at -2.5 mag, was dear old Jupiter! I can't tell you how ridiculously exciting it was to see it hanging there so brilliant. Io, Europa and Callisto were nice and obvious, as was the one dark band of clouds that it has left. J thought he might have caught sight of the Red Spot, but I am unconvinced. I stared at that disk for quite a while before achey eyes drove me inside.

Planets for kids

2010-08-06T19:37:00.003+10:00

A friend came over this evening, with his two sons. They were a bit bored, and I'd just noticed that Venus was incredibly bright, so I thought I'd take them out to see the planets. I found Venus - looking gibbous - and then what I thought was going to be Mars, but turned out to be Saturn, and a moon. (J found Mars later - I hadn't tracked far enough, because my rigel is dead.)

They weren't really as impressed as I had expected? hoped? grown used to? I don't know whether this was because it's Friday night and they were a bit hyper, or whether they're just totally disinterested, or what. They seemed more interested in fiddling with the focus, to make the blob of light get bigger or smaller! Which is interesting enough, I guess, when you're under 10.

It got me thinking about why I expect children to be interested in astronomy, or at least hope they will be. I don't remember when I first got interested in astronomy. I know I'd never looked through a telescope before about the age of 15; I was dead keen on the planets etc well before that, though. It seems trite and a bit like an excuse to say that kids these days have access to things ranging from awesome docos about the planets, including footage from the Cassini missions and so on, right through to simulations on computers - so why should they be interested in seeing things 'for real' when in some ways, that doesn't compare to what they've seen through other means? There are going to be some people who infinitely prefer the computer versions, or the up-close versions on docos, and I guess I have to accept that that's ok; I'd much rather see Mt Everest on the screen than in real life, at least up close. But I do hope that seeing 'mediated' versions will inspire at least a few kids to want to see things personally, because realising that you can see the rings of Saturn and the Galilean moons of Jupiter with your own eyes is a most amazing experience. And not just for the astronomy of it.

Their dad was way keen, though - had never seen Saturn in a telescope, and said he hadn't realised you could. So that was gratifying.

I Aintn't Dead

2010-07-29T09:13:00.002+10:00

Despite the lack of posting, there's nothing wrong with either us or the telescopes! It's just winter, and bad skies, and too much being tired.

We did get out last Friday and observe the very-nearly-full moon for a while, nearly burning our retinas in the process. I knew it was bright - very bright - but it wasn't until I looked away and realised that the yard looked quite different depending on which eye I used that I realised HOW bright! (With the observing eye, the place looked very dark; with the non-observing eye, it looked like all the lights were on.)

I've been running in the morning and noticing that we've had some spectacularly clear mornings, with Jupiter way up high, so we're hoping that we can try and get in some morning observations in the next little while. That requires a bit of jigging with the bike riding and running schedule, but it might be doable....

Sketch from Mansfield

2010-05-17T17:43:00.003+10:00

I don't know how he managed it, since I was shivering too much to be able to hold a pencil...

Mansfield nights #2

2010-05-16T15:56:00.002+10:00

Saturday

While we were setting the scopes up - before it got dark - Venus came out from behind the clouds, so I saw it for the first time up close! It was a bit fuzzy because of the clouds (which went away when it got dark), but it was both definitely not a star (too disk-like) and also not round (think a gibbous moon). Exciting indeed.

I was determined to get through my list, so that's what I went straight into. There was a little crowd of three doubles that I thought I'd tick off quickly, because they were close, but in the end I had trouble figuring which ones were which, which meant difficulty figuring out which direction to go in next. Didn't help that one was only 2 arcseconds of separation, so I probably say it and didn't realise. That was R227; I did however split Q Centaurus, and Rmk18. Go me. Happily, I also managed to find and split DUN128, chi Centaurus, and iota Lupus. And, accidentally, I found and split h4651 as well, and tau Lupus (1) also.

My big, smug-making achievement of the evening was finding the galaxy Centaurus A... admittedly, this was easier because it basically forms a straight line with Hadar and omega Centauri, and because it was so dark that it was naked-eye visible, but whatever! I still saw it through my scope!

Saturn, this time, had four moons basically trailing behind it like ducklings after their mother: Titan, Rhea, Tethys and Enceladus, according to Stellarium, getting closer. Plus the rings were incredibly crisp, as was the shadow on Saturn's disk from them.

I was on quite a high after finding most of the things on my list, so despite being freezing (according to J's scope it was 4C), I decided to grab the SkyMaps list and at least check off the naked-eye objects, in my continuing quest to learn my celestial cartography. Couldn't find five things, but only because they'd already set. But, for the record, I did find: Arcturus (in Bootes); Sirius (Canis Major); Procyon (Canis Minor); Canopus (Carina); the Coalsack (near Crux); Regulus (Leo); Antares (Scorpio); and Spica (Virgo). I was totally going to try for the binocular objects, but when I realised that the scope was dripping with dew and I would have to spend heaps of time swinging the scope around and around, I gave in and went inside.

J did show me some awesome things through his - I especially liked the Blue Planetary, a round nebula that really does look like a planetary disk.

All up, it was a brilliant weekend. Our star chairs - both Cats' Perches - were marvellous and very welcome for 2-hour observing stints. I have rarely been so thankful for my down-filled jacket, and the doubling-up of Explorer socks in my walking boots was awesome on Saturday. Plus, our headlamps - strapped to our heads, looking a bit dorky perhaps - with red cellophane inside? Brilliant! No longer worrying about ruining our night-vision with white light, and not having to use a bike light to read the map!

Mansfield nights

2010-05-16T15:20:00.003+10:00

New moon weekend, and we managed to get away from Melbourne again, hurrah! The week had been cloudy and rainy in true Melbourne-autumn style, but we clung desperately to the forecast that the weekend would be sunny - and that Mansfield is on the other side of the Divide, so they get different weather. It looked incredibly unpromising as we drove away from Melbourne - no break in the clouds to be seen - but then, as we went over some hills, an amazing thing happened. The clouds were left behind, and the sky was a glorious blue. Joy!

I had me a list of double in Centaurus that I want to chase, so that's what I mostly did, over two nights.

Friday

Firstly, we saw Venus! on our way to dinner, but it's the first time in ages I've seen it after sunset - so bright!

Began by finding omega Centauri, the globular cluster, just for kicks and because it was naked-eye visible it was that dark. Also Mars, in order to get the Rigil in line; it's not nearly as interesting as it was a few months ago.

As for doubles, started off with Rigil Kent (alpha Centauri), which I managed to split although only just. When I then moved on to Hadar, the other Pointer, I realised that I had been somewhat optimistic: it's got a separation of just 0.9 arcseconds, which is really close. I reckon on really good nights I'll be able to split maybe 8 arcseconds? So no dice with Hadar, and I realised looking at my list that there were a good few of separations I simply wouldn't manage. Oh well; I found (what I think were) the stars anyway, for fun.

Also? I think I will have to learn the Greek alphabet since, according to J, referring to the stars' reference as 'the squiggly one with a bit on top'? Not so impressive.

The next attempt was on gamma Centaurus; also 0.9 arcseconds, also no luck. Alpha Circinus, however - score! 16 arcseconds. And yes, not in Centaurus, but just below so it totally counts. Gamma Circinus was another no-go, at 0.8 arcseconds, but I did find an unlisted double near it, so that's fine.

At about this point, the owners of the place where we were staying came out - I'd told them they should - so I found Saturn, and it looked awesome. In mine, I could see Titan a fair way out; a faint star close in on both sides, and another faint one on the opposite side. It turns out, through J's telescope, that those two close-in moons were actually both pairs! (Stellarium tells me they were Rhea/Enceladus, and Dione/Tethys, with Iapetus a long way out.) They were suitably impressed both with that, the telescopes, and the fact that we were outside at all - did I mention it was freezing? I was wearing multiple layers, although no beanie, which J thought was crazy but taking the glasses on and off with a beanie on is more trouble than it was worth.

I finished the night somewhat ambivalently. I found DUN159 and 133, but failed with I424 and R213 - imaginative names, aren't they? Then, having been outside for a bit more than 2 hours, we scurried inside to warm out near-frostbitten tootsies. Also, my scope was having a bit of a dew problem. J had rigged up a dew system for his, what with the mirror being bigger and all; he'd wondered whether mine would require it too. Having to wipe off the Rigil in order to see through it, and ditto the eyepieces? And discovering the front element had a fine mist of dew over the whole thing? yeh, that would be me requiring a gadget to act basically as a hot water blanket to my scope.

Doubles hunter

2010-05-02T09:29:00.009+10:00

With my brand-spanking new Double Star Atlas, I can now really and truly have a go at hunting doubles!

Last night was the first in ages that was actually clear. There were some high wispy clouds at sunset that had J panicking, but they went away so we went outside. As well as my Atlas, the other exciting new thing I have is a Cat's Perch! J's been talking about getting a star chair for months, and he ended up ordering two of these - it's so much easier to focus and hold steady when you're sitting down, rather than standing. He'd constructed them last weekend, and sanded them yesterday, so they were ready for a test. And I loved mine: I was observing to the west, so I ended up having the scope very low down and the seat correspondingly so. I could have had it higher, but I think that would have been more annoying.

So, what did we see? I started off with Saturn, of course; and it was lovely. I could definitely see the shadow band under the rings, and I could just see one moon, which was either Rhea or Dione. I then swung around and decided to play around in Canis Major, to see what doubles I could find and whether the Atlas is going to work for me.

Firstly, I'm glad it's spiral-bound. The Atlas has 30 double-page maps, with constellations and doubles and some other features marked. Then, at the back, it has the list that the authors worked from, of which doubles to include: this has the magnitudes and separations of the respective stars. This is very, very useful when you think you've found the right star, but you're not sure you can see a companion, so you need to know whether they're only 8 arc-seconds apart and therefore unlikely to resolve under light-polluted skies (which happened to me), or whether the companion is TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE arc-seconds away and therefore could be one of three faint stars you can see (I am annotating the list as I go, with ticks and dates of when observed. This one I also annotated with "srsly?!"). The one problem - and this is only a problem for me, not the book - is that they're in right-ascension order. This has to do with how the stars are mapped, and I am struggling to really get my head around it. (Dumb moment of the night: realising that I was treating the lines of right ascension and declination as if they were straight, rather than curved....) This is something that I will get used to over time. I presume.

Anyway. Canis Major. Start with Sirius; no luck splitting. Move up to Wezen: success! (At least, I presume so; that's the 265" split.) No luck with Adhara (7" split, so not that surprising). Then, on to some harder ones. There's a little group of three along the 'spine' of Canis, two of which are noted as binaries. I hazarded a guess at where they should be, looked in the scope... and didn't think I'd found it. Asked J for some help, tearing him away from his open-cluster hunting, showed him the map... and he found exactly the same thing. I looked at it a bit longer - checked the list at the back - and realised that actually, one was a triplet, and that's what I'd been confused by: the top star in my eyepiece had two very faint stars nearby, which was indeed my triplet! This was also helpful because I now have an idea of what 44" looks like. That was 17CMA; sadly couldn't split pi, so that will have to wait for another night. After that success, I attempted tau-CMA, which is in the open cluster NGC 2362 - which, I didn't realise, is J's favourite little one. And I found it, and I think I saw the double; at 85" separation, in a cluster, it's hard to be positive.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a great end to the night. There's another little group of three, between Sirius and Mirzam, that looked like they should be easy enough to find - two are bright-ish, and they're convenient between those two very bright stars. I got quite frustrated because I just couldn't find them. So J had a go, and swapped in our widest eye-piece. Turns out I was looking in exactly the right place... but I had totally underestimated just how wide the set was. This is another thing I will have to get used to judging. Anyway: I split v-1CMA and v-3CMA (although the latter doesn't appear to be in the master list, which is odd).

The other thing I have to get used to, and adjust my expectations for, is how many things I will manage to see in a night. At the moment, the answer is not that many. J has much more practice with observing, and reading charts, and is not handicapped with a monumentally unspatial brain like me - so he's always going to see more. It's also a lot easier to tell when you've hit a cluster, than when you've hit a double, so he can skip around more easily if he wants to. I think this is something I can deal with... eventually... and as I keep reminding myself, the sky actually will stay basically the same for my entire life. It's not like I'm running out of time to do this.

Sketch

2010-04-12T16:52:00.003+10:00

This past weekend we were in Ballarat again. We had hoped that we would get nice clear skies to do some observing. Thursday night was clear... but I was feeling absolutely dreadful, for no apparent reason, so I managed to stagger out and have a look at Saturn (awesome, especially with the extender, which J kindly found for me) and then staggered back inside.

J, however, produced this:

Apparently it's common to invert them, so:

... which I think is pretty awesome for a first go at drawing a nebula.

Friday night = absolutely no chance of clear skies. Boo hiss.

Easter Sunday observing

2010-04-04T21:26:00.006+10:00

Tonight started off as quite a family night. I got to show Saturn (and Titan and Rhea, and possibly Tethys although I might have been kidding myself) to most of J's family, who were all very appreciative, as well as Orion, which a couple of them had never seen. It's always great to show something like that and say - your eye sees that as one star, or a fuzzy blob at best. (Annoyingly, I couldn't split Rigel tonight; I think the seeing was worse than it appeared to the naked eye.)

Then, my telescope got hijacked by D, who wanted to just cruise around the Milky Way a bit. So I pointed it at Eta Carina and showed him the controls and away he went. I sat in one of the deck chairs we'd dragged out and just looked up, which was very pleasant and included seeing the Beehive, thanks to the great big pointer that is Mars.

I got a bit bored then for a bit, and was considering going inside even before the moon came up, because I hadn't planned what to look for/at. But J decided to look a the Leo Triplet again, so that was worth staying up for (much fainter than in Mansfield though), and then I realised we had the star atlas out with us when J grabbed it to find Virgo. Consequently I now know where Leo is, and I can basically figure out Virgo too. I tried to split Regulus, in Leo, but that didn't happen; I had better luck with Algieba though. Over in Virgo Porrima wasn't splitting for me, but I did manage the double in Corvus, called Algorab, which looked awesome because they both appear to be red. Nice.

Through J's scope, I saw a few of the Virgo galaxies (awfully dim, here), and a few star clusters.

Just a quick observation

2010-04-04T14:46:00.004+10:00

... since last night we had Other Things to do, and given it's Easter the moon came up like a spotlight when it wasn't very late (but my goodness it was cold).

Saturn was my first object of interest, and it was great showing it to J's parents; they were quite impressed. And so was I - I could definitely see Titan, and I thought I could see another moon, quite close to the disk on the other side from Titan. Through J's telescope, turns out I was right, and I could see another as well: according to Stellarium, they were Dione and Tethys. If I'm lucky, tonight we should be able to see Rhea too! (Saturn's moons are named after the Titans, the generation before the Olympian gods in Greek mythology).

Swung around then to Mars - quite red, and quite small. Since I was quite tired, and knew we weren't going to get much observing in, I then had a look at each of the stars of the Southern Cross - split Gamma Crucis (and Alpha Centauri too while I was at it). Since I was using a fairly wide eyepiece, I also managed to find the Jewel Box by accident when I was trying to remember if Mimosa Crucis is a double (if it is, not such that I can split in my telescope!).

J also looked at Saturn, and a few other objects, including the nebula in Eta Carina, which he let me look at. I was someone dismayed that we've basically lost Orion for the year.

Combing Puppis

2010-03-14T21:09:00.028+11:00

It worked well for J having a list of Messier objects he wanted to look for, so he could mark them off. Just having the book to look at with Crux hadn't worked as well, so I chose a new constellation to check out - Puppis - and made myself a List. I ended up working on it both Friday and Saturday nights.

Puppis as a constellation was, or is, a part of a huge constellation: Argo Navis. Puppis is the stern - Carina is the keel, Vela the sails. Puppis was directly overhead on Friday and Saturday, which in theory was good because it's the best seeing but in practice made it bloody hard both to find things and then to look at them properly. It also didn't help that it's not an especially distinguished constellation; I had to keep reorienting myself with regard to Sirius and the rest of Canis Major, because I just couldn't figure it out otherwise.

I'll say up front that I didn't find everything I wanted to. Partly that was a tiredness issue - because we were doing a lot of other things, as well as observing, we weren't nearly as fresh as is optimal come dark. It was also an issue of navigation. I'm still finding this quite difficult. That most of our maps are designed for the northern hemisphere does not help; nor does the fact that the maps have different scales - often it's different for different maps in the same book - so, when you're starting out spatially challenged, it's an added degree of difficulty. Nonetheless, I did have fun, with the odd moment of frustration.

Puppis, for a scope the size of Ptolemy, is all about the double stars. So, I found and split k Puppis; 5 Puppis (a nice reddish tinge) and 2 Puppis. I don't think I found R65, which was disappointing because it's a triple. I think I found Sigma Puppis, but I'm not convinced - I saw a reddish star with what looked like a faint companion, but I'm not sure it was the right spot.

Other than those, I also found M46 and M47 all by myself (and didn't that just get a victory dance from yours truly), and another open cluster in M93. NGC2451 is yet another fairly diffuse open cluster; NGC2477, however, is a very cool, fairly faint, kind-of teardrop shaped cluster which I really liked. And found all by myself.

Again, we had friends out with us both nights; D and K, and also A&G. So we had to turn on a good show: Mars, Saturn, Orion Nebula, the Jewel Box, (I looked at all of these both nights, I think - old reliables!) and just to show off I showed what Acrux looks like as a binary. Which was fun.

J was chasing Messiers again. It was dark enough that the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were quite obvious to the naked eye when it wasn't even what I would call especially dark, so he aimed at the Tarantula Nebula which was awesome. He found the totally amazing Leo Triplet, too - a set of three galaxies that can be seen in the same field. And we looked at the Beehive through the binoculars. Well, I tried anyway; I really am not good at holding them in place. Glasses don't help.

Again, it was an awesome weekend of viewing. We didn't stay up as late as we would if it had been a dedicated astro weekend - don't think we saw midnight either Friday or Saturday, although we did hear all of Mark Seymour's gig on Saturday! But given it was mixed with riding, and lots of food, and lots of people, I think we did well.

Dinner, and a show

2010-03-14T20:51:00.005+11:00

My darling was in a prolonged bike race in Mansfield this past weekend, so because it was also almost a new moon weekend we took the telescope(s) up with us, for a long weekend.

Wednesday night: cloudy. Bit sad, but not too much. Meant we could sleep well after our outing to the Mansfield Pub.

Thursday: was clear. Very clear. Firstly, though, we had to go and eat our way through DB's voucher for $400 at a local restaurant, won through this event last year. An entertaining night indeed. And then, out to discover just how dark it actually gets in Mansfield. Happily, we were about 1km from the main street - which was actually annoying most of the time, but did mean we were away from most of its (admittedly minimal) glow.

We'd set up the scopes before we left. To explain that plural: I have no picture yet, but J has decided that sharing with me was going to be just too annoying. Therefore he recently bought himself one: a 16" Dobsonian. If he's lucky a picture of it will appear on here at some stage. Because it's newer, and fancier, I decided it ought to be christened Copernicus...

Anyway. It was a great night for viewing. I had planned to find my way around Crux, because it's in a good spot at the moment and southwards-viewing really sucks at our place. I split Alpha Centauri for a start, which is always very satisfying. I also found the Jewel Box by myself, which is also satisfying - and is something I'm having to do all of sudden, what with J off playing with his own telescope. I split a few other doubles, too: Acrux, although I don't think I made out the triple; Gamma Crucis, and Mu Crucis. I also found the clusters NGC 4103 and 4349, and I might have found 4052 but I'm not entirely positive.

I got sick of finding brand new things after a while and swung over to the old reliable, Orion, which is sadly beginning to set awfully early these days! I split Rigel and had a look at the Nebula. Most exciting, though, was finding Mars - getting smaller - AND Saturn! Which looked totally incredible, with the rings directly across the face of the disk so it just looked like the pictures. And we think we saw Titan, too, and possibly another moon even! It was terribly exciting.

J went hunting Messier objects. Found Omega Centauri, M46 and M47 - which do look cool in the same field of view, because the former is a fuzzy blob and the latter is a loose, dense conglomeration; M50, M78, and M79 as well.

We stayed up until about midnight. We'd shared the night with D and K, for a while - they piked a lot earlier than us, but made lots of appreciative noises, especially over Saturn.

Last week's observing

2010-02-22T21:42:00.008+11:00

We had a mighty fine time last week! A whole string of clear nights; we took the 'scope out the backyard and decided to work our way around Orion and Canis Major (and a couple of other fine things).

47 Tuc, and it really was beautiful.

In Orion, I checked out Rigel - which it turns out is a double star, and I could indeed see the very faint blue companion star. I also looked at the other three corners of Orion - Betelgeuse, which was really red, and I forget the names of the other two corners. Then there's Eta Orionis, which is really a triple but only the AB pair are visible, and even then very close: they look to be touching. The Trapezium, of course, is glorious; and the nebula of M42, even from the light-polluted backyard, is always a happy-Alex-making sight.

I enjoyed looking around Canis Major. Of course, there's Sirius - almost bright enough to be blinding in the scope. The delightful H3945 is an orange and blue double, pretty widely spaced apart. But even more awesome - and perhaps my new favourite object - is Beta 324: two pairs of doubles, perpendicular to each other. They just look amazing. Then there's M41, an open cluster; c121, another cluster; NGC2362, a tight cluster with a single very bright star in the center (Tau Canis Majoris); and yet another open cluster in NGC2360.

Mars is particularly marvellous at the moment. It's still getting up a little too late for easy casual viewing, but it's getting there. It's far enough north that when we were out and looking, we had to drag Ptolemy through the entire house (the courtyard looks south) to check it out. But it was worth it: a great big red disc. Glorious.

I think that basically covers it. I was pretty out of it the first night, despite J's attempts at jollying me into it. The next few nights I got more into it, which was great.

New moon weekend 1/12

2010-01-17T15:09:00.007+11:00

NB: yes, this is several days after the weekend. Whatever. Also, I'm quite smug that I'm writing this based on notes that I wrote in the front of my Pocket Sky Atlas - the first few in the pitch black, then the others with the aid of our red light. (Have I mentioned this before? We found a red light! It looks an awful lot like a bike's rear light.)

We're hoping to make good use of the new moon weekends this year, and we decided to start by going to Forrest - a bit more than two hours from Melbourne, it's close-ish to the coast and fairly far from big urban sprawls. And hey, how convenient! There are mountain bike trails for during the day!

Friday

...had us alternately groaning and gleeful, as we drove down, because the clouds built up and then disappeared several times. Early in the evening it looked like the clouds had come in... but then, by the time it was properly dark (except for the glow on the western horizon which stayed there, and so was presumably Geelong rather than the sunset) the clouds had gone and voila! for the first time in a really long time, there was the Milky Way. It was dark enough to see the Coal Sack quite clearly, next to Crux; and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were totally obvious. Lack of light pollution makes the most stunning amount of difference.

First, because it was there, we tried looking at Mars. Sadly, although it's at its closest for years, it was quite a small disk. Distinctly red, though. For something a bit different, we swung over to Omega Centuari: the largest globular cluster in the southern sky, I think? Pretty impressive, anyway, although I actually think not quite as good as 47Tuc, because it didn't seem to have the tendrils reaching out.

(Pause for collimation...)

On to the Carina constellation - which I still can't quite figure out, the Pocket Atlas isn't so good for that - and checked out the Eta Carina Nebula, which is enormous and has really cool dust lanes in it. The whole area around that nebula is pretty cool - heaps of stars, of course, because it's bang in the Milky Way. Then off to the Southern Pleiades, an open cluster... and I just don't find open clusters that interesting. They just look like a bunch of stars. Yes, sometimes they're in a pretty formation - I like the normal Pleiades - but... anyway. Also in this area is another, tighter cluster - IC2581. And it was more impressive, I think because the stars are closer together and there are more of them that are obviously part of the gang.

Moving on, we decided to get a bit ambitious and have another look at the Large Magellanic Cloud. I probably didn't actually spend enough time looking at it, to allow my eyes to adjust enough to pick out interesting aspects; there was too much else to look at. But I'm quite sure that the fuzzy blob - in the same place as when we looked at it in Ballarat - is the Tarantula Nebula. It's pretty awesome to have found an object in another galaxy.

Finally, to finish Friday night (by this time Saturday morning), we had a look at Alpha Centuari - split it easily (I think I'd like to start collecting double stars...), and of course it wouldn't be a complete viewing night at the moment without checking out Orion, which looked breathtakingly awesome. Of course. A final look at Eta Carina, and 12.30 on a Friday night was definitely bedtime.

Also, we saw numerous satellites.

Saturday

... was another very off&on again day, cloud-wise. We really thought we were going to get screwed over, but come 10.30 or so (and a little snooze) it had cleared enough that we bothered dragging Ptolemy onto the balcony. (Did I mention that? Observing from the balcony. None of this whole going-a-long-distance-from-the-house-or-car business for me.) We had a quick look at Eta Carina again (and aren't we glad the Atlas comes with a Greek alphabet guide, since it's a long time since I did esoteric maths), but frankly the most interesting thing about the sky was watching the clouds and general murk come... and go... and come again. I think we only stayed out for half an hour or so, because then a sky-covering cloud came in and ruined our fun. There was certainly no Mars viewing.

The one thing I was sad about? No Saturn. Rising too late, meant that it was in the murk both nights. Hopefully we get to see it over winter.

Pity we weren't better prepared

2010-01-10T09:49:00.003+11:00

So, when we got up here I realised that I had forgotten to bring a sky atlas. Which was pretty annoying. When it got all clear and lovely last night I pulled up Stellarium on the computer, which shows some stuff obviously, but it's not good for aiming at the sky and figuring out what to try looking at. I felt a bit guilty about wasting a lovely evening, with no moon, because we didn't stay up that late; but at the same time we hadn't really planned on a long observing session, having had a busy and tiring day already.

Anyway, we did see some cool stuff. We ticked off three new Messier objects, all open clusters: M46, M47, and M50. 46 and 47 are very close together, such that in the 35mm and 17mm they were in the same field of view. They're very different; 47 is a fairly open, brighter cluster, while 46 looked more like a globular cluster: a fuzzy patch of lots of stars. We tried finding the Cone Nebula but it was too early - it hadn't risen above the trees.

Swinging around, J did manage to find 47Tuc, which was good; and it was indeed a lovely fuzzy ball of stars, with tendrils going out faintly.

It was dark enough that I could definitely see the Large Magellanic Cloud naked-eye, and could even - after a while - fool myself that I was seeing the Small Magellanic Cloud, too. With the 35mm, we had our first real go at looking at the LMC. I have to say I didn't give it much time; I was getting tired, and the temperature had dropped surprisingly fast (which was good, after the 37C day). However, even with the brief look - and skies not that dark - I could begin to make out features. There was a bright fuzzy blob in the bottom right-hand area - which is actually top left - which looked like a globular cluster; I'm looking forward to having a look at the atlas to see if I can figure out what that is. I could also some dust lanes, I think.

Finally, we checked out Orion - this is going to be my replacement for Jupiter for the next little while, I think - and it was the best I've ever seen it. The nebulosity went on for degrees; the Trapezium was obvious; and I could even see some individual stars within the gas. M43 was obvious as a smaller nebula 'below' (above) Orion, and I'm quite sure there was some fuzziness around a star above-left (in the eyepiece; actually below-right). I must check that out, too, to see whether I'm right or if my eyes were just playing up.

In all, a good night's viewing. We also saw a satellite, which is always absurdly exciting.

Haze, clarity, haze

2010-01-08T22:58:00.003+11:00

Stinking hot day. I didn't have much hope for the evening because there was a lot of cloud just on sunset, but it did clear - mostly, anyway. In astronomical twilight, I went and set up the scope (mostly all by myself - with the new mount - dead exciting, if a bit hard); found Jupiter, but it was pretty hazy off to the west. So I saw it, and I think four moons, but it wasn't very impressive.

Next, swinging around, I tried for the Orion Nebula - and found it, but again it was just too hazy: there was no nebula! Also, still not that dark. This was a bit sad for K, who came out in the dark and mosquito-infested-ness only to see just a couple of stars.

Anyhow, went back inside for an hour or so. Then, ta da! It cleared! So out we went again. Orion, this time, looked totally spectacular - so K, and D, both got a good look, and I think they were impressed. Then around to the Pleiades, which looked pretty good. J tried to find 47Tuc, but to no avail - clouds were coming up in the west, and it wasn't quite dark enough anyway, I think.

The last thing we tried was M41, we think; it was an open cluster, and it was roughly where J was looking for it last week in Melbourne. Certainly found a cluster, anyway. By this stage the clouds were coming in, as was gauzy haze, and the mosquitoes were getting worse. So we packed it in.

Mount and mosquitoes

2010-01-05T22:04:00.003+11:00

A little while back J caved, and decided that actually he'd quite like his tripod back, and the telescope would do better on its own, proper, mount. So he ordered one, and six weeks later it finally arrived. Huge darn box for me to lug home from the post office.

There was a bit of angst over the setting up, and we're still not entirely sure it's exactly how it should be. But it's very stable, so it seems ok. And I love that there is a little tray between the legs for putting eye pieces on!

Last night, a lovely evening, we were too stuffed to take advantage of it. Tonight, there are a few clouds around; we went out for a little bit, but were soon driven inside by mozzies. Before that, we had a quick look at Jupiter - very low on the horizon and quite atmosphere-muddled. Then Orion, but really it's not dark enough yet. Finally, because I noticed in Stellarium that they were close to Orion and Sirius and therefore should be easy enough to find, J found the open clusters of M41 and M47. At that point we caved before the might of the insects and decamped inside.

I love the mount, though. It's lovely and wooden, and suits the scope far more than the grey metal of the camera tripod ever did - a very important consideration, of course.

Late night Ballarat viewing

2009-12-28T23:25:00.008+11:00

We did view briefly on the night of Boxing Day; we showed some friends the moon, and they were suitably impressed. We didn't get much more viewing in - we saw Orion, and 47 Tuc, both of which were of course awesome; but then the clouds came up.

Last night we were utterly tuckered out. We convinced ourselves there were some clouds around.

For tonight, our last with the clearer skies of the Rat, we prepared well by napping in the afternoon and not having too strenuous a day. Very important, this sort of preparation. Happily, it wasn't as cold as the last few nights; sadly, for us, the moon is enormous (86% full, according to my adorable widget) and was hanging bulbous and annoying right near the Pleiades.

Anyway, we started by looking at Jupiter - very low in the sky, in fact just about disappearing behind the roof of the house. It wasn't an awesome view, but most importantly for me I'd realised that Neptune is very close to it at the moment. We're pretty sure we found it; the blob of light certainly looked like a disk, rather than a point of light, just as Jupiter's moons (let alone Jupiter) and Mars resolve. There was no blue/green colour, because it was too low to the horizon; it was yellow/red instead. For the same reason, Jupiter was an awesome fake yellow/orange colour, although it was impossible to resolve it properly thanks to the atmospheric issues. ETA: apparently Neptune is currently mag 8, so I'm pretty pleased at finding it, it being so close to the moon and all.

Next, we tried checking out some stuff near Canis Major. First up, M41, an open cluster. I'll admit here and now that I am not usually wowed by open clusters (in my vast experience of them). This one was pretty enough... but it just looks like a particularly dense clump of stars. Which it is. Nearby, we looked at Cr121 - where Cr, according to my trusty Pocket Sky Atlas, stands for Collinder, presumably the dude who catalogued it.

Swinging around we amused ourselves looking for 47Tuc, and although the sky was still washed out it was still all tendril-y looking. Swinging back, J got a bit ambitious and tried looking for M44 - the Beehive. We didn't find it - too low, and therefore behind the trees from our position. We did find some cluster, but we have no idea whether it has an official designation.

The Orion nebula, as always, looked good - although it too was a bit washed out from the moon. Despite that I think I'm picking up new details every time; I don't remember noticing a star below the Trapezium before. And M43 looked quite obvious too. J picked up the Small Magellanic Cloud in the binocs, as well as various other bits and pieces. I had a quick look - I'm not very good with binocs, at least partly thanks to the specs - but in my wavering grip even I could see M42, vaguely, as well as a couple of the open clusters.

Finally, we wreaked vengeance by looking at the moon - remembering this time to put the neutral density filter on, although to be honest I still felt blinded. Tycho and Copernicus were both in full view, with their respective ejecta very obvious; it was a brilliant sight.

Overall, we've had good viewing up here. It's going to be weird to go home to very obvious light pollution.

Christmas night

2009-12-26T08:43:00.005+11:00

As predicted, the telescope has given J an easy way of buying me presents. I 'unwrapped' (don't ask) a 17mm eyepiece, which is mostly mine, and a 35mm, which is partly mine and will be mostly J's when he gets a certain something next year (again, don't ask).

Being in the 'Rat, we rather excitedly watched the sky off and on throughout the day, in between eating and napping. It stayed clear, so after we recovered from dinner we took the scope out. One problem: J, in his forgetful optimism, had poo-poohed my query of whether to take my beanie and/or gloves. Turns out that actually, yes! They would have been a good idea. Fortunately after standing out there freezing in a jumper for a little while, my mother-in-law rescued me with gloves.

It was a glorious night. Of course, it wasn't as dark as it could have been, what with the half-full moon that was casting extreme shadows. Looked at it for a little while - hadn't added the filter, so I was half-blinded when I looked away. But it did look awesome. I could see the Montes Appeninus really clearly; it's the first time I remember noticing them. There was also an awesome large crater to the south, with two smaller craters within it that looked fantastic, the rims just catching sunlight. J thinks it might have been Clavius, but I'm not convinced. I didn't check last night because my hands were too cold.

After recovering from moon blindness, we turned on Orion - and the nebula looked just amazing. We played around a bit with the different eye pieces, experimenting with the wider view and the close-up view. For me, the wider view didn't do that much; it's kind of cool to see more stars, but since the other stars in the sword are actually little clusters, it's not like you get a line of stars like you see naked-eye. Anyway, M42 itself was breath-taking. We also saw a satellite zooming across the sky, which was very cool.

While J was looking at the nebula, I was looking around the sky. Off a bit to the north was Sirius, of course, and a series of stars that looked like they just had to be a constellation. Oh, of course; after looking it up they turned out to be Canis Major. Exciting to recognise it!

Next we swung a bit west, and J set himself the task of finding 47 Tuc, that lovely globular cluster. He found one, which we had a look at, but it was too faint to be the right one. At that point I got out the map and reminded J exactly where he was meant to be looking. Then we found it, and it was incredible. With the zoom lens, while it got a little fuzzy you could also see more detail in the centre - lines of darkness, and zillions of pinpricks of light. With the wider view we could see the tendrils that extended out a fair way from the central blob. Very rewarding.

I'm very keen to see the Magellanic Clouds (also Andromeda, because, hello! They're really outside our galaxy!). We'll never see them from home, so it was a good chance to try from here. Sadly, I could only get the vaguest hint of the Small Cloud, naked-eye; there was the moon, and Ballarat puts out a surprising (and annoying) amount of light pollution. By the end of our viewing session, though, the Large Cloud was quite obvious naked-eye, so I declared we should have a look. Of course, it was a bit disappointing, because it's not like looking at a nebula, although I originally thought it should be. Instead, it's a dense but not that dense conglomeration of stars, and I'll have to do some studying of the map to be able to pick out genuine features. I did see a globular inside it, too, though.

Finally, we finished the evening by checking out the Pleiades. We started by looking through the 35mm, and really that was the best option - it's such a huge group of stars that anything smaller doesn't really do it justice. So I'm sold on it for objects like that. It really is a delightful cluster.

Here's hoping Boxing Day delivers clear skies, too. Because I'll be starting with gloves this time.

Back in the saddle...

2009-12-21T22:19:00.004+11:00

or on the 'scope, as the case may be.

As my friend Gina noted the other day, the blog has been rather quiet of late. There are a few reasons for that. Firstly, the late Nov/early Dec sky - earlyish in the evening and especially from our yard - is boring as batshit. Second, there have been lots of cloudy nights recently, and when there have been clear nights... well, third, we've been awfully tired.

Anyway: tonight it was beautifully clear, we're not too tired, so I pulled Ptolemy out and there was Jupiter. Looking lovely. I didn't quite get out it in time to see the moon - it had disappeared behind the trellis - but Jupiter had four moons looking lovely.

Then, I turned around, and presto! there was Orion coming up out of the foliage, and despite a dirty big streetlight (grr) it looked good. And there, my friends, there was the Orion Nebula, M42, looking awfully shiny and nice. The Trapezium (four stars that very obviously form a rectangle) looked brilliant, and with averted vision the nebula itself was looking like a lovely butterfly. I was originally looking through the Ethos, then swapped to the TeleVue for a closer look. And it was great.

J played with his new toy, which arrived today: Fujinon 10X70 binocs.

Can't believe we got to view tonight

2009-11-22T21:48:00.004+11:00

... given that the whole day it's been raining, and raining, and raining.

It's the first night for viewing all week, basically - clouds have come in every night - except Thursday, when we had some friends over and showed them a fingernail of moon (first time for all three!) and Jupiter + three moons (also first time!), which was fun.

Tonight, given we're both awfully tired, we just looked at the moon and Jupiter. J decided to have a go at crossing off one of his sketching goals - from the Lunar 100 - the result of which is this:

He's not sure whether he likes it without the square border. What do you think?

It's number 20 on the list. We like lists. I downloaded a list of galaxies to try and view, the other night. One for dark sites I think.

Jupiter was pretty easy to see; it's clear that in a few months it's going to be completely gone from the night skies, at which point I may cry. When I first pulled it up, all four moons were visible, with two very close together and only just separate. I wasn't sure if they were coming or going... until all of a sudden two became one, which answered my question. Stellarium informs me this was Europa and Io, and that if I'd been just a little more patient - or a little less tired - I would have seen them come apart again quite quickly.

November has boring evening skies

2009-11-17T22:57:00.006+11:00

We've had a couple of viewings of Jupiter, but nothing spectacular. Frankly, November is seeming a bit boring here in the bright urban areas. Plus, we've had some cloudy nights.

Tonight J dragged Ptolemy out and played around with the polar alignment, figuring out exactly where celestial south is from our backyard. He also had a look at 47Tuc, which looked quite good despite it being quite bright to the south. I could see a few stars to the left and bottom; not sure if they're in front of the cluster or part of it.

On to Jupiter, and hey! a shadow transit! Very exciting to see. Just three moons, all in a line. Could see a bit of detail on the planet's disk, the pole looked darker and the two main bands certainly had some texture.

We came back inside and sat around for an hour or so, waiting for Orion to make the sky interesting... and then there it was! We could see the Orion Nebula (M42) from our backyard! This is very exciting. Sure it looked better from Ballarat, but that we can see it clearly and with some detail, even with just a cursory glance, is very encouraging. Four stars were obvious in a tight little cluster, in the middle of the nebula. Expect to see M42 get bigger in that tag cloud over the next few months. I'm also looking forward to looking at the other stars of Orion. Interestingly, the nebula filter didn't seem to help that much. Forgot to look for M43, though, I just realised. Oops.

That's what you get for impulse buys

2009-11-09T22:18:00.004+11:00

Seems like a boring time of year as far as the sky in urban Melbourne is concerned; or maybe that's because we're not staying up late enough, so the sky isn't getting dark enough.

Anyway: the impulse buy was the Telrad. Turns out it's not particularly easy to mount on the Sky-90, which is a shame. To set that right, a box turned up today, to receive which I was required to stay home: it contained a Rigel QuickFinder, which is exactly the same idea as a Telrad, just a bit smaller and easier to mount on Ptolemy.

Unbeknownst to me, J also decided to add an Extender-Q to Ptolemy. Essentially this corrects the Sky-90 for looking at the moon and planets, and gives an extra 350mm of focal length. Now, with the zoom, I have 265x max magnification, though it will take a very steady night sky to get to that level. It does make the scope look totally lopsided, but it also made Jupiter HUGE. Which was cool... pity the atmosphere was so whacked, at least partly from the heat.

We decided to play with the Rigel by choosing a couple of Messier objects in Sagittarius to try and find. First we tried to find M70; pretty sure we got the right area, but it must be too dim; M69 was also too dim, and I'm not convinced we got the right area. M54, however: bingo! Right where it should have been - a very faint globular, but definitely there. Then J realised that with Achenar pretty high up, one of his longed-for targets should be visible... and there, lo and behold, was the glory that is the globular cluster of 47 Tuc. This is one of the brightest globular clusters in our sky, and it looked awesome even in our light-polluted backyard.

All up, a good night's viewing.

Too hot!

2009-11-08T22:08:00.002+11:00

It's Melbourne; we complain about the weather almost as much as Brits do. It's compulsory in this town.

Fairly bright to the south even at 9pm, so not a whole lot of interesting viewing. I got in Jupiter, which was looking pretty good - two moons either side close in, two either side further out. A third band, to the north of the disc, was obvious.

J had flaked in bed because of the heat, so I decided just to be impulsive and simply started turning the adjustors. I was doing this with the 6mm eyepiece, so perhaps not the best for just randomly roving the sky, but kind of fun nonetheless. I didn't find anything interesting - except for a couple of quite red stars - but it kept me amused for a few minutes.

A few days ago...

2009-11-08T17:45:00.002+11:00

... it was clear enough to have a quick look at Jupiter, but really not much else; there were skating clouds, and a haze that made it even brighter than normal because the lights were reflecting back off. Did I also mention the mosquitoes?

It's weird to notice the sky having moved around since we started on this caper. Where is Scorpio going?? Why isn't it stable??

Hard. Core. With frog chorus

2009-11-01T09:50:00.004+11:00

We had planned to go camping this weekend: take the scope out to some dark site, stay up really late, it'd be awesome! Yes, well, then we realised that it's a full moon this weekend. Great. Also, the weather forecast just got worse and worse.... So we decided to visit the parentals in Ballarat, because that is at least a bit darker than Melbourne, and if the weather was bad it wouldn't be a disaster.

So we came up yesterday, on a scorching afternoon - where were those thunderstorms? - in time to have dinner with some good friends of J's parents. As they were leaving (after there had been lightning, and a short but violent rain storm), the clouds had cleared somewhat so we dragged the telescope out to show them (and especially their two young kids) the moon - enormous and very bright - and Jupiter, which was a real highlight. Could only see two cloud bands, the brief time I looked, and at first it looked like there were only three moons visible. On closer inspection, the fourth was there, really close to Jupiter itself. Which at least one of the kids could definitely see and was very excited about.

The hard core aspect of this weekend was the setting of the alarm for 4am this morning. And that we actually got up when it went off. Admittedly, I hadn't slept that well because it was hot. We crept outside - trying very hard not to disturb other sleepers - and set Ptolemy up on the side away from the moon, which was only just disappearing into the trees (it was very yellow indeed).

Our first target was M45 - the Pleiades. It was obvious naked-eye, and quite pretty (could count seven stars). It was pretty cool through the scope, although I didn't know what to expect so I wasn't entirely sure I was seeing it all. I look forward to seeing it at a really dark site.

Next we swung up to Orion, which I haven't seen in ages! It will be nice to look at it in winter. J found the Orion Nebula in the sword - M42 - which was just amazing. I think it was heaps more impressive than the Lagoon, to be honest. Its shape was quite distinct, and the Trapezium Cluster of stars in the middle was very obvious and added a beautiful highlight. It was very, very exciting. Additionally, I thought I could see some nebulosity around a star very close to the nebula - turns out this was M43. Go me.

Finally, we moved the scope so that we could Mars above the trees. I couldn't focus on it very well, mostly because it wasn't very high above the trees and there was some haziness, but it was still a very obvious red disc. It was much bigger than I had expected, and that's when it's a very long way away; I can't wait for when it's closer and we'll be able to see some detail. Of course, that won't be for a few years....

We stayed outside for about 40 minutes. Clouds were coming through fairly frequently, and by the end of that time it was pretty much entirely clouded over. I did get another good look at M42, which pretty much made my night (day?). So I think it was worth getting up at that time, although I doubt we will make a habit of it.

Approved

2009-10-29T20:58:00.004+11:00

God clearly approves of our new hobby. All afternoon - clouds. I came home early from uni partly because I didn't want to get stormed on. We get out of pilates... and the sky is completely and utterly devoid of cloud.

Of course, we still had to deal with Killer Mosquito Brigades. It's warm enough I could have been outside in a tshirt, but I wasn't; I like my arms without welts.

Moon was lovely: Copernicus is hugely impressive, of course - I love it more every time. My new discovery tonight was Schiller, an elongated crater that looks really bizarre with half of it full of shadow. I also quite liked this crater, even before J drew it:

Jupiter looked pretty normal. Seeing was entirely average from the backyard.

Bloody mozzies

2009-10-28T21:30:00.005+11:00

Nyagh. Hate mosquitoes.

All day it was cloudy, and then - ta dah! - it mostly cleared at sunset. Having not expected to be able to observe, this was a nice surprise. J took the 'scope out and produced this:

which he's not very happy about, because he didn't get a lot of the detail he could see. I like it. I hadn't realised Copernicus would be visible already! - I forget just how quickly the moon progresses through its phases, if that makes sense - the fact that it's going on while I can't see it... I like Copernicus. And I really like it in our zoom; it's that much more immediate.

He also produced this:

I could see quite nice detail on Jupiter tonight, too - not sure whether this is because of better seeing conditions or more experience in looking, but probably at the moment it actually doesn't make much difference.

Then the mosquitoes drove me inside.

Two can play at that game

2009-10-27T21:21:00.002+11:00

The game of online shopping, that is.

I had long since decided that part of my tax return would go on a Telrad, which would hopefully make it easier for both of us, but especially me, to locate things in the sky. On the weekend I figured that since we're hoping to get to some dark skies next weekend, I'd buy one in advance of the tax return actually coming through.

It arrived today.

It is so big. And J was appropriately impressed, although a bit aghast at the idea of attaching such an unwieldy looking black object to the lovely white dew shield of Ptolemy. As a compromise, it is currently attached with black electrical tape... because that's so much more refined.

We looked at Jupiter. And the moon. And then I went to bed.

Oh Melbourne

2009-10-26T21:15:00.004+11:00

Another lovely clear night! We've been blessed the last few, and apparently it should stay like this. Of course, given we have a long weekend coming up, it's likely to be cloudy...

We looked at Jupiter: Europa was getting very close and, over the evening, we saw it get closer and closer until - blip, its light was swallowed up Jupiter's. It's passing in front, so eventually there will be a shadow chasing behind, but I don't think I'll be up for it. Sadly, along with a lovely clear night, we've got mosquitos. J did a sketch:

I too could see that faint half-band to the south; this was very exciting. I could also definitely see some texture especially in the lower of the two dark, middle bands.

We looked at the moon: going from crescent to gibbous, it looks awesome. There's a really cool section at the south pole, right on the terminator; very cratered.

We split Alpha Centauri definitively.

We gave the UHC filter another go, and the result on NGC 6231 was very convincing (we did a with/without test). It's a winner for urban astronomy. Also convincing when pointed at the Lagoon Nebula (both of these with the 10mm, the rest with the zoom). I tried it on Antares, too, since there's apparently nebulosity around it... I thought I could see some fuzziness, but I might have been kidding myself.

Fast moving clouds are good moving clouds

2009-10-25T22:12:00.005+11:00

If you have to have clouds, at least they can be patchy and in a hurry.

Our regular Sunday date was cancelled - their kids are a bit under the weather - and at sunset it looked fairly clear with just a couple of clouds around (this has changed the later it gets). So, went out and looked at the moon for a little while - that zoom lens is wonderful! Atlas and Hercules in full sun, as is the entirety of Serenitatis and Tranqulitatis. Then I got sent inside while J did a sketch:

I like this one.

Out again a bit later, after J had played with the collimation a bit; the zoom lens had demonstrated fairly clearly that we had some issues in that area. It's almost fixed now; our trek to a dark site will hopefully clear up all issues. Anyway, we found Jupiter - complete with a moon transit! There was a black spot, moving across, which Stellarium confirmed for me was Io. I actually thought I was looking at the moon itself, but I was actually looking at the shadow trailing behind it, which makes sense I guess. Other than that, we toyed with the notion that we might be able to see other bands (I think I could, in the polar regions, but that might have been wishful thinking), and also about whether there was a darker patch in the lower cloud band (again, wishful thinking?). We came back a bit later and the moon had just come out - little pimple on the side. So cute.

What with a big clear patch and the UHC filter (apparently good for showing up nebulae in urban areas), we decided to try for the Lagoon Nebulae (M8), around which we totally failed to see nebulosity last week. And it was indeed better! Interestingly, it was also better through the 10mm rather than the zoom; apparently the former is perfect for our little Takahashi and deep-sky objects. Anyway - nebulosity: we saw it. We also saw a bit around M20 (Trifid Nebula), although not as much.

Back to Jupiter for a last look, and J decided there was enough of a cloud gap that he would give sketching it a go...

For a fairy cloudy Sunday night, on the chilly side, it was a remarkably rewarding night.

Galilean Nights

2009-10-25T08:12:00.005+11:00

Although we didn't take the telescope out, we did still participate in Galilean Nights - having our wonderful friends M&M over for dinner and viewing. It was a glorious day; so glorious I have a burnt neck to show for it. Of course, this being Melbourne, the clouds started coming in just before sunset. While the boys went for fishnchips, I showed M the moon - I don't think she'd ever seen it through a telescope before, and being very shortsighted was dubious about whether she'd be able to focus it. Of course, the new you-beaut zoom lens did wonders, and she got great views of the 35%-ish moon (and I got to see the wonderful Atlas and Hercules).

After dinner there were breaks in the cloud so we took them both out to see Jupiter and the moon, which were really the only things you could see - a couple of other stars were faintly visible, but there was so much glare thanks to the clouds that the viewing was atrocious. The Jovian system put on a nice show with a very cool staggering of the moons; both boys claimed they thought they could see the Red Spot. Me, I had trouble focussing again. The other M was also appropriately impressed by the moon through the scope.

We introduced them to Spooks when the clouds rolled in completely.

On the horns of a dilemma

2009-10-24T00:03:00.002+11:00

We had the lovely A, and the ever-entertaining R, over for dinner last night. It was a lovely clear evening, so we'd put the scope outside early on - but deciding whether to be congenial or observing wasn't the dilemma. A went home when little E started getting a bit ratty (landing on the floor not helping with that), so we then invited R out to have a look at the moon and Jupiter - and he was gratifyingly impressed. He's good like that.

No, the dilemma I will have from now is whether to look through the wonderful, original 10mm eyepiece that J got with the telescope... or whether to look through the 3-6mm zoom lens that he recklessly purchased courtesy of the Australian dollar skyrocketing, despite an agreement to get it for Christmas. Apparently he'd had it in his pocket for a week or two and been waiting for a good night to present it to me.

So, we'd had a quick look at the moon and Jupiter - just three moons visible - with the 10mm, and then we of course stuck on the zoom to see what it could do. Oh my goodness. Jupiter was huge! I think I could see a polar band, which was cool, but THE exciting thing was a shadow transit, probably of Io! Apparently it has something to do Earth and Jupiter at opposition?which makes it possible to have a shadow transit without the moon actually transiting as well. This may also account for Callisto being impossible to see because, according to Stellarium, it was at mag 28 or something - I guess in Jupiter's shadow relative to us and the sun? Anyway: a shadow transit! It was so exciting! And over the time we were observing - maybe 40 min - it moved across maybe half of Jupiter's disc. So cool. I experimented with the zoom on the lens; it was actually quite a hazy night, despite the seeming-clarity, so the higher mags weren't really doing it for me until just before we went it, when it cleared a little. But even at 6mm, it looked just amazing.

And then there was the moon: too big in the zoom lens to fit it all in! So much detail on the craters! And of course, Atlas and Hercules were out - so it was amazing to see them so very close up, and begin to get a real sense of detail. I think it will make getting to grips with the southern hemisphere easier, too, because I'll be able to look at one section, identify it on the map, and then move just a small amount to figure out the next section. Anyway, again, it looked just incredible.

Finally, before going in, J found alpha Centauri for me: and, even with the weird hypercolour thing going on because it was so low to the horizon and street lights, it was very definitely and very clearly a double star. YAY.

As well as the eyepiece, J also bought two filters: what I'm calling sunglasses for the moon - a neutral density filter which makes the full moon not so glary; and a UHC one, which turns things green when they're as big as Jupiter, and is designed for allowing urban astronomers to see nebulae more clearly by blocking out light pollution... somehow. I know it turns Jupiter green because it's also meant to make the bands more obvious, but it didn't really work for me.

Red wine and observing?

2009-10-22T21:47:00.005+11:00

I'd need a straw for that.

Got out just after sunset - still a purple glow in the sky - to look at the moon, and again that crescent was just lovely. Mare Crisium was doing its wonders; Endymion was stark and lovely. Atlas and Hercules should be out tomorrow. Mare Fecunditatis is my next project - to get to know it quite well. I really struggle with the southern section; it seems more cratered than the north, as I may have noted before. It's possible I guess that if we turned the image upside down it would be easier to make sense of - but then I'd have to read the map upside down, and my brain just doesn't process images upside down. I am so not a visual learner.

This picture is of Langrenus, on the eastern side of Mare Fecunditatis.

While J was composing the above sketch, the clouds rolled in. Jupiter had been visible earlier, but we didn't look because the moon was going to disappear first; as it turned out, the clouds stayed around and we didn't manage to see anything else.

Itty bitty crescent moon

2009-10-21T20:01:00.009+11:00

Awww, so cute! 11% waxing and it's a bitty crescent - couldn't be seen until quite close to sunset. But there she is: haven't seen it in a while, and it's very cool. Again. Still.

After the sun had set and it got a bit darker, the moon looked even more impressive because the rest of the disc was illuminated by Earthshine. It's just lovely, against a dark purple background - a star above and below - the disc just hanging there. Pity I'm neither poet nor painter.

I knew J wanted to do a sketch of the moon, so while he was futzing around I swung the scope over to Old Reliable. Jupiter is going to disappear behind our antenna, and then behind our house, in the next few weeks, I think. Tonight though: all four moons - three on one side; two bands, as always through this eyepiece. I think a planetary eyepiece may be on the cards. Maybe for Christmas.

J is currently sketching the baby moon before it disappears behind the tree and fence. After that... I'm not sure what we'll look at. I should look at a map. Fortunately, one of the results of J's spending spree was Sky and Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas, which is a whole lot easier to use than the bigger sky atlas we also got.

I didn't get back out to the scope until the moon had disappeared, so no more lunography for me. There was this, though:

Inspired by the pocket atlas' picture of double stars, I found alpha Centauri - which I think I split, but the south is the brightest part of the sky around here - and then tried to split Kaus Australis - Sag Epsilon, I think - the brightest star in the Teapot. No luck. Spotted J's little favourite open cluster, NGC 6231, and its more diffuse neighbour Cr 316 (not sure what that designation means; something else I ought to learn). Checked out Antares, in Scorpio's tail, because the atlas showed bright nebulosity around it; not in my sky there wasn't. While in the vicinity we tried finding the globular cluster M4; we think we found it, based on a very faint fuzzy patch that was really only apparent when the view was jiggled around.

Ah, urban astronomy. It's all about what you don't see.

Praise the Lord for clear skies

2009-10-19T20:15:00.004+11:00

For the first night in a while, we have a delightfully clear night - so far, anyway. It's also almost warm! Which is exciting.

We started viewing at about 8pm, when by no stretch of the imagination could it be called dark. But I wanted to see what Jupiter looked like without a black background. Answer: like Jupiter against a dark blue background. There's three moons out right now, but having checked Stellarium I know Europa is coming out of occlusion right now. So excuse me while I go see if I can see it happen...

Some time later...

Well, we eventually did see it come out - which was cool. I don't know why, given the other three moons are just pinpricks in our eyepiece, but for some reason I was expecting to see a bulge in Jupiter's side! Instead, at first we thought it was us seeing what we expected to see, and then we knew it was there: a little pinprick moving slowly away from Jupiter's mass. By the time we went inside it was still quite close to Jupiter, and fainter than the other moons. I also some a meteor while looking at the planet - presumably part of the Orionid mob.

Meanwhile, waiting for Europa, we looked at other stuff too. We're learning our way around the sky, so we figured out which stars were Altair, Formalhaut, and Antares - three of the brightest stars up at the moment; we already know alpha and beta Centauri (the Pointers, of course); the other bright stars aren't visible from our high-fenced courtyard.

We'd figured out some interesting objects to try and see, from an October sky map, but we hadn't really taken magnitudes into account. M6 looked impressive - diffuse but big clump of stars; M7 was a bit faint. M8 - one of my favourites when we were in Ballarat! - was quite disappointing; took some imagining to see the Lagoon at all, although the stars were impressive enough. M20 was also a bit disappointing, while M22 was a very faint blob of nebulosity. (The Messier Icon Sheet is a quick and easy way to figure out what I'm talking about!) We totally failed to see several other objects we had hoped to see in that same area of Sagittarius. We did manage to see NGC 6231 - it's very reliable, and one of J's favourites. At least partly because you can actually see the whole clump of stars in the finder scope so you know when you've found it!

As well as scoping out the sky we also counted the stars - part of a project to map light pollution around the world. You have to find the Teapot (part of Sagittarius) and count how many of the stars you can see (there's a guide sheet). Our back yard is mag 4; J claims he could just see the stars that would make us mag 5, but I'm not convinced.

Eventually came inside at about 9.50! My eyes were pretty sore by then - I was having trouble focussing on Jupiter, which is what I looked at most. But it was a very, very awesome night of observing. Pity it's meant to cloud over this evening...

Count the stars!

2009-10-16T16:04:00.001+11:00

This is a really cool idea - one I'd not heard of before - an attempt to map the light pollution of the world. And it's easy, and only requires you to have a cloudless night sometime in the next week. I love it! ... although I'm a bit worried about how Melbourne will go. Not as bad as some places, of course.

Reassemble Ptolemy

2009-10-16T14:39:00.003+11:00

We had to disassemble Ptolemy last week, for having a little birthday bash - and it wasn't that much of a loss frankly because the skies have been rainy and cloudy almost every night for more than a week. Except last night! After a day of rain and hail and general cloudiness, there no clouds in the sky last night!

... well, so it appeared. Turned out, after we set up the 'scope and had it outside to cool down for an hour or so, that actually the atmosphere was quite hazy and there was some high-level cloud. We sighted Jupiter for a start - all four Galilean moons out, two on each side - but it started giving me a headache to look at it because it fuzzed a lot. I did, though, see either a meteor or satellite out of the corner of my eye - exciting stuff.

We figured there wasn't much point in looking at much else, with that much haze going on and bright lights nearby; we had a quick look at an open cluster whose number we've forgotten, and then M7, but that was it. Hopefully we get a chance in the next while to have a look at some other stuff before the moon is our main target again.

No moon!

2009-10-08T20:47:00.004+11:00

So, never having paid that much attention to the moon, I've never realised just how much it moves. That is, that it rises in the early evening for quite a brief window of time - it wasn't out this evening - but it was up this morning. Not that I'm complaining that much - there's plenty of time for staying up really late or getting up really early to see a waning gibbous (as it is right now). I do wish we could see the LCROSS impact, though!!

Jupiter was on display with all four Galilean moons; very clear seeing, I think I might have caught a third band from the corner of my eye. We then checked out NGC 6231 - an open cluster 'associated with nebulosity', apparently; it was the only interesting thing Stellarium said we would be able to see at that time and with our level of light pollution. It's part of Scorpius - just at the kink in his tail - and can indeed be seen, naked eye, as a faint blob. It's quite a pretty cluster. I also liked the three stars 'up and to the right' (as seen in the eyepiece); two of them were faintly red.

Awfully tired so I didn't get as much out of the lovely clear night as I might have. Shame.

Saturday night viewing

2009-10-03T20:18:00.002+10:00

After a very cloudy day, it's become a lovely clear evening! And the night before daylight savings kicks in, too - so our last night of viewing at a not-too-late time for some months. Ironically, when we realised the night was clear the moon was too low to see... so we had to start with Jupiter, instead.

Europa was in hiding, tonight, but the other three were obvious. Two bands of clouds on Jove himself.

Looked at the moon - basically full! - but at first I couldn't orient myself at all, because of the direction of the 'scope. Don't know enough of the moon geography to figure it out myself so I got J to move it a bit - south up. Copernicus was looking mighty fine. However, I couldn't look at it for very long, because it was so very bright. I never thought I'd have to consider a moon filter, but if I want to look at it for any period of time I think I'll have to find out about them.

And then it clouded over.

Carnival of Space #122 is up

2009-10-02T09:07:00.001+10:00

Over here.

A carnival every week? These astro types must write copious amounts!

Tycho! Copernicus!

2009-10-02T07:35:00.004+10:00

Plato! Keppler! Herodotus!!

We've had clouds for the last too-many nights, despite a couple of clear days. I've been all desperate to get out there and view the moon, feeling like I was missing out on something... as if it won't be there again, in almost exactly the same place and illumination, in a month. I'm not used to this idea of being able to go back later and I won't have missed anything.

There was some haze around last night, which made the seeing a bit unpredictable and shimmery, which eventually gave me a headache. Before that, though, J managed another sketch - very nice.

ETA the picture:

I got an eyeful of Tycho and Copernicus, which are both very impressive craters indeed. Herodotus and his companion crater weren't on the terminator but are obviously on enough of an angle that they still looked impressive with shadows and stark white centres. Again, it was exciting to look up and think - 'hey, Mare Crisium!' and be able to actually recognise some lunar geography. This is something I'm sure I'll get better at over time; yet another way to prove my nerddom.

The seeing for Jupiter was crap; very hazy. Only three moons visible - I think Io was transiting behind. Two bands of cloud obvious to my eyes.

Didn't think tonight would be a viewing night...

2009-09-26T21:55:00.004+10:00

but turns out that after a day of mostly rain and even hail in some areas, the evening was clear-ish. When we got in from dinner at D&K's, J looked out the window and announced he could see the moon. I was not feeling that great - tired, and like I'm getting sick (oh no) - but the beauty of the Takahashi is we really can drag it out just for 10 minutes of viewing: we leave it set up next to the door, ready to be taken outside and aligned.

The moon was 53% illuminated when we looked, and again the change in detail and landscape was incredible. It was incredible to see Atlas and Hercules looking totally non-shadowed. It was amazing to be able to look to the left and think - hey, that's Mare Crisium! I know that one! I think it was also the first time that bits were illuminated on the wrong side of the terminator - peaks catching the light before the plains around them did. That looked pretty cool. Anyway - only looked at it for about 10 minutes, and didn't have our moon map out so I don't actually know what else we saw, but it was good to do.

As ever, finished by pointing straight up and there was Jupiter. All four moons out - three on one side (forgot to look up who the loner was). J claimed to be able to see the Great Red Spot, but I definitely didn't - tired eyes, and then cloud came over so there was no chance.

This might be getting predictable

2009-09-24T21:13:00.005+10:00

This sketch J did while I was preparing dinner:

This one I commissioned; I'm quite a fan of that Atlas/Hercules pair, for some reason, and the craters like Posidinius with their own little craters which look like mountains in the middle? they're awesome.
Melbourne turned on another lovely night, for this sort of thing; only a little cloud, and the moon looked lovely. I'm sure I'll get over it eventually, but the wonder of seeing last night's area in full sun and a whole new area revealed is just marvelous. I can understand the first telescope-users' amazement at the details on this close, yet so different, world. And the Mares really do look like shallow seas.

Anyway - it was great fun looking, again. It's 1/3 illuminated tonight, as I can tell (and you can too, Dear Reader) thanks to the widget someone over at Ice in Space provided the html for. Particularly freaky this evening was some cloud blowing past in front of the moon, all wispy like. Also, I realised I'd been spending most of my time looking to the north, because it's the easiest bit when the moon is centred in the eyepiece; so I moved it a bit and had a closer look at the south. It looks much more cratered than the north at this illumination and resolution.

As usual, I checked out Jupiter before turning in. There was some high-level cloud or general murkiness, because I could not focus properly at all. Only two moons out - Stellarium informs me they were Ganymede close in, and Callisto further out. Europa was behind Jove, and for some reason Io was down at mag 28 or so; maybe occluded by Ganymede's shadow?

Another good night.

The moon, and a sketch

2009-09-23T21:21:00.004+10:00

Check it out!

As part of his/our Amazon haul, J bought himself a how-to of astronomical sketching. Drawing is something he's been interested in for a while, but never had the chance? opportunity? impetus? to get seriously into. The moon in particular seemed like a good target, so today he went and faithfully bought everything recommended. After a will-she, won't-she kind of day this evening turned out cold and cloud-free, so we had another awesome moon viewing (illumination 24.5%, 4.9 days old). It was very cool to see how the terminator had moved from last night (I didn't think it moved that much between my two viewings - had to watch Spicks and Specks - but J said it moved noticeably while he sketched). I'm so glad our first moon viewing was really at the start of the lunar cycle, because I will get a very good sense of lunar geography (lunography?) - seeing Mare Crisium totally in the sun was a good reference point. I particularly liked the craters Atlas and Hercules, north of Crisium (not in the sketch); and the very southern section of the moon, near the terminator, is just rife with craters - not a good area to start sketching, hence the concentration on the north.

Once again I indulged in a little Jupiter viewing to finish the night; two bands, Io very close in. The other three moons were spaced out fairly regularly.

First night of viewing in Melbourne

2009-09-22T21:00:00.006+10:00

Our first night back home it rained, and rained, and rained.

Tonight, it didn't look too promising at sunset - lots of cloud. Twilight, I went out to check on the sky (and the washing), and there was the moon: a beautiful crescent! (A waxing crescent, illumination: 16.1%, at 3.9 days old apparently.) We had Ptolemy set up next to the door, so we dragged it out and set it up as quickly as we could. We set the tripod up lower than in Ballarat, because we have plastic chairs out there and we decided to give seated observing a go - and it's a win; so much easier and more comfortable.

I sighted on the moon, and my goodness: what a sight! I hadn't expected it to be nearly as clear as it was - incredibly exciting. The first object that my eye latched onto was Mare Crisium - and I know this because J has gone a bit nuts on Amazon recently, and one of the things we've/I've ended up with is Sky&Telescope's Field Map of the Moon - foldable, laminated, and mirror-image so it's very useable. Anyway - the Mare - with the Picard, Peirce, and Swift craters very obvious. North of that was Cleomedes, Burckhardt, and Geminus; further yet Lacus Temporus, and Endymion - which I think is a crater? South we picked out Condorcet close to Mare Crisium; then, strikingly, the crater set of Langrenus (with its hill in the middle), Naonobu and Bilharz, and then further south still Petavius. I can see myself becoming quite the fan of the moon. I might well aim to do the moon one hundred at some point.

Because we could, having a reasonable window of cloudlessness and wanting to test the limits of the light pollution in the city, we aimed for Alpha Centauri; J managed to split it, while I confess that it just looked like a particularly large star to me, mostly. J also looked at the Jewel Box, but it had gone behind clouds by the time I got outside; and we pulled up M7, too, but it wasn't that impressive.

To end the night we looked at Jupiter. Europa and Io were fairly close together on one side, Ganymede and Callisto quite separate on the other. I could see two bands, but the seeing was pretty average - think there was some high-level wispy cloud, as well as the light pollution and heat haze from the city.

All up it was a very exciting night for our first at home. The moon should continue to offer plenty of interesting viewing even when the rest of the sky is a bit hard to see because of the light pollution. And Ptolemy really is easy to use, fast to set up, and portable - an excellent choice for us.

A clear night, after two cloudy ones

2009-09-18T21:50:00.005+10:00

And boy was it cold tonight. We did have quite the frog chorus, though.

I trialled using the Voice Memo app on the iPhone tonight, to take verbal notes; aside from feeling like a bit of a twitcher for talking to myself, the main problem was having to turn on the phone each time - and the screen being quite bright. I'll give it another go, maybe using a sleeve to cut down on the brightness. Having a hands-free mic (on the earpiece) was certainly an advantage; I hate listening to my own voice, though. ... And listening to it now, it seems like I've managed not to record my notes for the first half of the night - I was turning it off when I thought I was turning it on!

At any rate, things we saw tonight:

M2
NGC 6752
M4
M8
M20
M21
Jupiter

M2 and M4 were both quite faint, small globular clusters; through the 10mm eyepiece they weren't that spectacular. NGC6752 was much more impressive ; it looked more speckled than fuzzy, with more of an indication that you were actually looking at stars than some amorphous blob. The centre looked denser, of course; the outskirts allowed greater resolution of individual stars.

M8, the Lagoon Nebula, we saw a lot better tonight than last time. Partly this might have been improved seeing conditions, but for me partly it was also because I had looked up a picture of it, to remind myself what it looked like, and it was easier to pick out features when I knew they were there. It actually looked like a lagoon.

M20 and M21 were pretty cool, too, and again easier to see because I knew what I was looking for. M21 - the Trifid Nebula - still doesn't make much sense, at least at this magnification, as a trifid! but it's interesting to look at after the Lagoon. However, I couldn't help but focus more on the two bright stars in it, because they looked like a pair of eyes. M20, an open cluster, was pretty enough. Open clusters aren't that interesting as objects, yet, to me, because... they're just sets of stars.

Jupiter, our treat before going in, was looking stunning again. All four Galilean moons were on the same side as one another, the outer three quite close together with Io alone between them and the disc. I could definitely see two bands, and sometimes thought I could see a third; J thinks he could see a fourth band, too. I'm not that good yet.

Frustratingly, I've found that I've got a bit of a headache after each night's viewing so far. This may be due to a combination of factors, from what I can tell: not re-focussing for my eyes after switching with J; going from glasses to the eye piece; and possibly switching from eye to eye for viewing. Have to give some thought to how to fix this, starting with remembering to re-focus every time.

Second night's viewing!

2009-09-15T22:18:00.011+10:00

Not as cold tonight as last, which was a relief; or perhaps I was better rugged up. At any rate, we stayed outside for maybe an hour and a half, and only my nose got a bit chilly. Also, we decided to take the laptop out, set up on a stool under the tripod, with Stellarium loaded up so we could have a go at finding some stuff.

Firstly, Jupiter - again. I might have seen three bands this time; certainly two dark bands were quite visible. Io and Europa quite close in; I was rather hoping that if we stayed up long enough we'd see a transit, but J looked it up and apparently they will pass behind. This has therefore become a goal - to view a moon transiting Jupiter. Can't be that hard, surely? A matter of diligently reading the ephemeris when Jupiter is clearly visible, I presume.

Next, we swung over west to have a look for some stuff in and around Scorpius and Sagittarius. I've never been very good with constellations; it was very exciting for me when I learnt to pick out all of Orion, a few years ago. One of my big achievements for the evening therefore is now being able to pick out Scorpius! He's very obvious when you know where it is, and actually makes sense as a scorpion's tail. I can roughly pick Sagittarius, too - although he doesn't make nearly as much sense as Scorpius. And Capricorn, which I basically made out because Jupiter was in it, is just bizarre as a goat.

Tonight we had a look at a number of Messier objects: the Butterfly Cluster (M6; not entirely positive we saw this one, actually - we tried hard thoguh), M7, the Lagoon Nebula (M8), the Eagle Nebula (M16), the Omega Nebula (M17), the Trifid Nebula (M20 - I think I saw dust lanes, but I'm not positive), M21, M22 and M28 (both of the last two are globular clusters; M22 was quite bright and I could pick a few stars in it). Some of these objects were smaller than I had expected, but some were quite lovely. I'm not always sure exactly what I'm looking at, so I may not be getting the full effect, but still the view - all 2 degrees of it in the eyepiece - was generally well worth looking at anyway. I guess it will be worth looking at these again when I'm more used to looking through the eyepiece, and at picking up details... and when there are fewer lights going on at random intervals in the house next to the 'scope (argh).

Also, saw one - possibly two - meteors. Perhaps this is just a factor of actually being out there and actually looking. I'm really looking forward to being out during a good meteor shower, now. Finished with Jupiter, again, because it's just too good to go past right now.

First night viewing

2009-09-14T21:41:00.004+10:00

Along with the telescope, J bought me a 10mm teleview eyepiece. Tonight, we went out to give the whole contraption a go.

Before dinner, we had a quick look at Jupiter, because that section of the sky was clear and it's high in the sky. I could see three moons, although one was fuzzy - it was actually two moons close together. I could also see two darker bands on Jupiter's disc.

After dinner, we braved the cold again, and brought up Jupiter, and this time all four moons were distinct. J is sure he saw a red patch on Jupiter; I definitely didn't.

As clouds started to obscure Jupiter, we swung the telescope around and looked at the Jewel Box - NGC 4755 - which was just above the tree line. Lovely! I might have seen a hint of colour, but the stars were lovely anyway. Also had a go at aligning the 'scope. Alternating between glasses on and glasses off may be a bit of a challenge; viewing without them seems to be the way to go at the moment.

After the Jewel Box, J brought up a globular cluster - NGC 5139 - in Centaurus. I slowly got my eye in and could make out some individual stars on the outskirts of the cluster. It, too, had a very nice set of stars around it.

There were a few clouds around, so to finish off the evening we swung the telescope up not-quite-horizontal and just had a look around the Milky Way - probably around Sagittarius. J happened upon another globular cluster (possibly M7?); we saw a nice open cluster; and a few random sets of pretty, bright stars (one of which was quite orange).

It was a bloody cold night. I'm starting to get the hang of the fine RA/Declination controls. We had a bit of an issue with the motor control - it wasn't tracking at all - until we switched it to Northern Hemisphere controls. Looks like we might have put something together backwards...

Also, I think I saw two meteors! One, while I was looking at the Jewel Box, might actually have been a satellite; not sure. The other was definitely a 'shooting star', though. Terribly exciting.

Setting up the 'scope

2009-09-14T21:28:00.005+10:00

For the first time in my life, I get to have a significant birthday present early. This is largely because the boxes were all sitting there, in the way, so it just made sense to put it together; plus, J was as impatient as me.

So today - three weeks early - we set up my new Takahashi.

The mount is mounted, thanks to some drilling J prepared earlier.

Nell investigates the strange tripod creature

Tube attached!

In the garden - left outside to acclimatise to the freezing cold.

Love that industrial green. Also, this was largely accomplished with just the pictures in the instruction manual, since the written instructions were in Japanese...