Oh Melbourne

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.

Itty bitty crescent moon

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

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...

No moon!

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.