Hevelius and Pythagoras

Conditions:
Clear, fair seeing

Targets Observed:
Regions of Hevelius and Pythagoras

Notes
Two targets on the moon for my first try at sketching lunar features. These are on the far western edge, with the moon waxing gibbous at 93%, they are very elongated structures.

Hevelius is in a region with some lovely sights tonight. To it's immediate north is Cavalerius, a crater which got my bets rendering of the night. Hevelius' twin peaked mountain was plain to see and as I was sketching them, the sun broke across the far western wall of Grimaldi just to the south.

In the north west quadrant lay Pythagoras, encircled with smaller craters and part of the Sinus Iridum. Half of dark Plato was in my chosen field of view as well. Drawing the craters here was like sketching an open cluster.

Aristarchus and Herodotus

Conditions:
Clear with poor transparency from smoke and fair seeing

Targets Observed:
Aristarchus and Herodotus craters

Notes
Arising just out of the terminator on the moon's west side, these two craters are an interesting contrast. Aristarchus is very bright, a recent collision while Herodotus is darker as is the Mare around both of them (Mare Imbrium).

Moon was reddish thanks to the ecliptic being low and the smoke in the atmosphere from fires in the Chilcotin.

M57 and M29

Conditions:
Good seeing, very steady, poor transparency, moon just past first quarter

Targets Observed:
M29, M57

Notes
Spent some time selecting targets tonight. Was going to sketch the dumbell nebula but couldn't find it in the moonlight and light pollution, even though it's high in the sky right now. Found M71 but it was too

Turned instead to the open cluster M29 which I saw for the first time the other night. I spent some time sketching it and marked about 25 stars ranging down to magnitude 11.53. The cluster is large in size but not very populous. The reason for this, cooly enough, is that there is a lot of dust in the cluster that obscures most of the stars in the group. It is estimated that if the cluster didn't have so much dark nebulosity, it would shine around magnitude 3.5 which would make it very impressive.

Decided to sketch the Ring Nebula (M57) as well tonight as the sky will get brighter for a while and M57 will disappear over the house and be gone by the time the new moon rolls around. Completed a nice sketch quicky, as at high power there is very little else in the starfield.

M15

Conditions:
Partly cloudy, high cloud, transparency 4, seeing 4

Targets Observed:
M15

Notes
Decided to concentrate on one object at a viewing for now. Was inspired by this article on sketching objects.

And so, as Pegasus is up after midnight, I chose M15 as my target. This is a very bright globular cluster, shining at magnitude 6.4. It was easy to find off epsilon Peg, a bright orange star in an otherwise dim star field. M15 is the densest globular cluster out there.

To my eye the cluster appeared a little extended to the west, and other observations have seen this too. That gave it kind of a oval look. After a half hour or so I thought I could make out some of the structure of the cluster, with a faint triangular pattern of stars pointing to the southeast.

No auroras tonight.

Beautiful auroras

Conditions:
Clear, near first quarter moon

Targets Observed:
Aurora, Venus

Notes
Was out late last night and watched the aurora from Sandy Beach on Deep Bay. It started around 10:30 and came and went until 3:00 or so. Glow stayed green and did show some structure, with large spikes extending upwards of ninety degree. The majority of the activity happend in a band as high as fifty degrees. No curtains resolved, but clouds of light with pulses racing through them. The clouds got quite bright at times.

Venus popped up over the mountains at around 4:00am. Observed with the naked eye. very white and bright in the pre-dawn sky

Messier objects around the summer triangle

Conditions:
No moon, good seeing, transparency and clarity

Targets Observed:
M71, M39, M29, NGC 6811, nu Dra

Notes:
Sometimes I play at being Charles Messier and try finding the nebulae he saw with the smae instruments; his were not much stronger then my binoculars.

I looked at three objects tonight. Starting with M71 easily found in Sagitta, which is a loose globular cluster, easily spotted in binos and nicely resolved in the scope. It lies just south of the "shaft" of the arrow.

Then into Cygnus where M39 was found easily, although I was fooled by it's large size. There is a very nice hook of stars of decreasing magnitude leading off delta Cyg and curving north to point at NGC 6811. Finally M39, quite near gamma Cyg, the heart of the swan showed its relatively small number of stars.

Had a quick peek at the cat's eye double nu Dra befor eheading in.

Tripping through Aquila

Conditions:
No moon, clear but with some clouds, good transparency, medium seeing.

Targets Observed:
M11 (Wild Duck Cluster), M26, 15 Aql, 57 Aql, Beta Aql, M57 (Ring Nebula)

Notes

A funny thing happened on my way through Aquila. I set out a few targets for myself, the double stars 15 Aql, 57 Aql and Beta Aql as well as some open clusters - NGC 6709 and 6755 and Cr 401.

I saw nothing of these things. Instead I saw many other wonderful things.

To start with the night was so dark and clear that the dust lanes in the Milky Way through Cygnus were plainly visible, even a few minutes after lights out. There is no moon in the sky and only a few small cumulus clouds scudding in from the Strait, and the clarity and transparency was great. I began trying to resolve the double stars in Aquila, but couldn't. Instead I turned the scope on my favourite Messier target at the moment, M11 in Scutum. It lies at the end of one of my current favourite asterims, a hook that runs through Lamba Aql and into Scutum. 15 Aql lies in the crook of this hook. Below M11 is M26, another lovely open cluster, though not as impressive as M11.

As I scanned with the binoculars for 57 Aql, something caught my eye near 51 Aql which is just to the south west. There I spotted a slowly moving sattelite (perhpas geostationary) which seemed to be tumbling. It would give off bright flashes of light at about 11 second intervals, with less bright pulses coming around 6 or 7 seconds.

The Ring Nebula was just overhead so I finished with a peek at it. Structure resolved with the 10mm eyepiece and the Barlow didn't help.

Next I'm going to look at Scutum before it disappears behind the trees.

Update: The sattelite is ETS-6, a decommissioned Japanese test sattelite which is well known for its 11 second period. Ain't the Internet great.

Solar System viewing

Conditions:
Clear, bad transparency, moderate seeing, moon 4 days past full

Targets Observed:
Come C3/2003 K4 (LINEAR), Uranus, Moon

Notes
Mostly stuck to the solar system tonight, although tried my hand at finding Struve 2470 and 2474, the other double-double in Lyra. No luck there.

At any rate, the comet tonight had moved and was easy to find. Chi Her forms a nice triangle with 4 Her and 2 Her. Drawing a line through the triangle from 4 Her pointed right at the comet, which was just heading behind a tree limb. The comet crossed into Bootes, probably as I was looking at it.

After the fruitless search for the doubles in Lyra, I looked at the Moon for a while, figuring I'd pack it in. The walled plain Cleomedes was on the terminator tonight, just north of Mare Crisium. It has a small mountain in the centre the tip of which was still in sunlight, rising from the darkness of the floor. The walls are 3000 meters high, which is big.

Coming in, I did a quick lookup of the planet's positions, and discovered that both Neptune and Uranus were up, hanging around the moon in front of me. I turned the scope on a bright patch of sky in Aquarius and found Uranus. This was the first time I had seen it. It was easy in binoculars opnce I knew where to look, forming a little pair with a 6.5 mag star just north east of Sigma Aqr. I'll look for Neptune tomorrow night, over in Capricorn.

Conditions:
Clear, becoming cloudy with high cloud, bad transparency, moderate seeing, moon just past full

Targets Observed:
Comet C/2003 K4 (LINEAR), epsilon Lyr, zeta lyr, delta lyr, beta lyr.

Notes
Sketched starfield around comet and was able to positively identify it from the starfield in Cartes Du Ciel. Looked dim and the coma was just barely visible. No sign of a tail.

Looked at double stars in Lyra, notably those in the asterism. Hard to resolve epsilon lyr, but Epsilon1 Lyrae was occasionally clear.

Zeta Lyrae are a lovely pair like Alberio, consisting of a a blue dwarf and a red star.

Delta Lyrae is another nicely contrasting system. Blue and orange although the orange of Del2 looked more yellow tonight.

Beta Lyr was a bright blue/white star with a faint orange companion.

I was going to try searching for Struve 2470 and 2474 but it clouded over before I could try.

Finished with a look at the moon and the Mare Crisium. It looks like a happy face, with the eyes made from creaters Peirce and Picard and the mouth being the Dora Tetyaev.

Good night...I love standing in the dark letting my eyes adjust, listening to some music, classical or jazz, on the computer. I use that time to pick out the constellations, naming them and the bigger stars, looking for patterns. Then I'll get the bins up and trained on things. Lovely.

Conditions:
Clear, seeing good, transparency bad, nearly full moon

Targets Observed:
Alberio, Omicron1 Cyg, theta Cyg, nu Dra, M29, Moon

Notes
Nearly full moon. Had a go at the comet again, but it was too bright, so concentrated on some easy doubles. The seeing was really steady tonight although the moon wavered quite a bit.

Alberio was magnificent as was the breathtaking triple omicron Cyg, also a yellow and blue combination. Theta Cyg is a tight binary pair of the same magnitude, as is nu Dra, all in the spirit of the epsilon Lyr cat's eyes.

M29 is hard to make out against the Milky Way, and actually easier in the scope than the bins tonight. It lies just south of gamma Cyg, in the middle of the swan.

Gazing at the fullish moon, saw Crater Aristarchus in all it's glory. It is the brightest feature on the moon, a silver spot on the north west edge next to a darker crater, Crater Herodotus.