Sketch

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

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

... 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.