At play in the autumn jewel boxes
Conditions:
Clear, cool transparency 4/5, seeing 5/10 above and 2/10 to the west through the Squamish wind flow. new moon
Targets Observed:
Targets in Perseus, Orion and Taurus
Music
Irish mix
Notes
It's been a while since I've acquainted myself with the autumn sky and clear skies being so rare at this time of year, I was keen to see what I could in a general way.
The sky is littered with naked eye objects. This includes the open clusters of the Hyades and Pleiades, and the double clusters in Perseus as well as the big cluster around Mirfak. These are huge and deep and rich and great binocular targets.
In terms of clusters, I alos observed Kemble's Cascade a chain which leads to NGC 1502, a small cluster of about 45 stars. Also viewed NGC 1647 in Taurus, just a few degrees from Aldebaran. This is a pool of stars, including lots of pairs.
The seeing was crappy tonight as there was a Squamish blowing and the air column was appaling. This meant that most of the doubles and multiples I attempted were not resolvable. The quad in M42 in Orion was seen occaisionally but mostly just the three brightest. Lambda Ori was not resolvable and sigma Ori, another quad, only showed three stars, with the 10th magnitude one obscured by glare. No chance to split Rigel either, not that my scope is up to the task at any rate.
I also searched in vain for the diffuse nebula M78 in Orion but the sky was a little bright and far too unsteady to look there.
Overall a good night. No aurora, as I thought there might be, but a good orientation to the autumn jewels.