The Moon and the Pleiades

I just finished up my viewing of the Moon occulting the Pleiades. If you follow the link you'll also see an excellent graze map! Never seen one of them before.

I had planned to stay in Cambridge, working late, and then cross the river at sunset and observe from Boston's Esplanade. But, around 6pm clouds rolled and and I wasn't going to stay late for nothing, so I came back to my crash pad in the Savin Hill area of Dorchester for a night without star viewing. You see, we're on the north east side of the hill, the west is obscured by houses above us!

I was quite pleased to see, from a west facing window, that I could see the moon! I quickly grabbed the binoculars. It was still twilight and at 7:38pm I could make out 3 of the 7 sisters. The moon was in the field of view of them.

I checked again at 8:01pm and I could make out 6 stars now, but the moon was getting perilously close to a neighbors house, and worse, the heat plume from his chimney!

By 8:07 I still could only see 6.

At 8:23 the moon was behind the house and I figured, what can the neighbors do? Call the cops? I'll show them the moon! So I went outside and was pleased to see that through a large gap in the trees I could see the show and, more importantly, not be seen as looking into someone house!

I only counted 13 stars in the Pleiades. This is pathetic. I had thought that Manchester was bright but Boston is really, really bad. Auriga had only 4 stars to the naked eye. Castor and Pollux had only 3, plus Mars. I tried to find M36, the eaisest of three clusters in Auriga, I found all my pointers but the cluster was not to be seen.

Maybe I'll take back what I said about city observing being fun. I guess I should say that small city observing is fun. Boston viewing in pathetic.

Messier Marathon practice

In preparation for the Messier Marathon at Larry's house, I wanted to run a practice one, too see what setup is like, to see how long it takes to get align from when the first stars come out until you get your first slew.

I setup on the 3rd floor deck at the apartment in Provincetown. I knew it would be wobbly and I knew I'd have light pollution problems but I figured I'd give it a try, why not? I had a black fleece to use as a hood if I needed it.

Sirius was the first star out, of course, and then I think Procyon and soon I had several. Sadly, I did not have Polaris! I eventually found it binoculars and this let me see it naked eye. I moved the tripod and stood behind it, eyeballing Polaris. I never did it through the bore, I was in a hurry, I knew that some dusk objects would be difficult, I was especially worried about M77.

So althought that wasn't the first object on my list, I used McNish's site to print out my lists, using the Phil Harrington, Astronomy 2002 sequence.

The horizon was still in twilight when I slewed to M77. Now I knew my Goto could be off, especially my first one of the evening, but I couldn't even seen Menkar, so I knew it would be bad. For some reason I put the hood on, then I pulled up my chair and waited. I probably spent about 15-20 minutes looking for M77. Sometimes I'd stay in the same spot, sometimes I'd nudge the hand controller to move the scope a bit. When I could see the power lines through the finder scope I knew I should give up. The sky still wasn't dark yet so I moved on.

M42 and M43 were the first objects. Well, M45 was but I wanted to bag at least one naked eye so I knew I'd have to wait for that one. For almost all objects I was using my Garrett Optical 30mm wide angle 2" eyepiece. This give about 1.2 degreess field of view. I wasn't using the Siebert, I'm not sure why. Maybe I wanted to use an eyepice that I was quite familiar with? I dunno. Anyhow, did us the 22.5mm Siebert to pull in M43.

Then the fun start. I slew to the next object, check it off, repeat. If I knew I could grab an object with binoculars, I would. Why not, it was both fun and probably faster than slewing.

Look up an object, slew, check it off. I know, I know. MM purist will say it wasn't a real marathon. You know what? I don't care, I'll still buy you a beer some day. That's ok. I was enjoying myself for the most part.

Why "for the most part?" Well, this was too easy! MM is supposed to be a challenge and this wasn't a challenge at all. Slew, view, check off, repeat. It was like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel!

I'm not going to recount all of the objects, but here are some of the ones I made notes on:

• M76 - hard!
• M48 - impressive. This was with the scope. I had had this as a binocular goal object this fall but I was foolishly feeling time pressure so I just slewed to it instead. I must revisit this one!
• M81 - Meridian flip.

I didn't note the time of the meridian flip but it seemed pretty early for me. I now need to use a hood for more of my objects. There were so many street lights I was getting reflections on my glasses!

• M82 - hard. This surprised me, but I guess it had to do with the conditions. Lots of light and I was essentially never dark adapted because of that. M82 should not be a hard object.
• M108 - hard. Needed the hood and averted vision. Since I was so far away from the alignment stars, I realigned on Mizar.
• M97 - easy with the hood
• M109 - hood and averted
• M40 - failed to split with the binoculars

Arghhhh, I was moving my chair and I kicked the tripod, moving it! Oh, Rags will be laughing now. But, I didn't panic, I just realign on one star and the gotos weren't all that bad.

• M63 - a fishing boat started up in the harbor, I'm now getting a very strong diesel smell. Normally, I'd hate that but it fits in with observing from a fishing village.
• M51 - Saw both parts. Feeling less time pressure now I gave this a good 10 minutes looking for more detail with the 22.5mm Siebert. No detail was visible.

M95. Ok, here it goes. The dim spirals. I didn't have anything centered in the eyepiece but I could see something nearby. But that's isn't enough to confirm it for me. My paper chart from TUMOL was useless since I wasn't star hopping. I went inside and fired up Stellarium, that was useless also. I download Carte des Ciel and that didn't help. I was in a bit of bind. You could say that Goto was letting me down. But, Goto is a just a tool like a Telrad or paper chart. I needed to use my tools better. I could see Leo in the sky with Saturn added. Realign! I replaced my alignment stars with Saturn and Denebola. Slew to M95. Dead center, as expected.

• M105 - 2 objects in the eyepiece. The McNish charts say I'll see two, but TUMOL shows 3, but one is dim. Eventually, with averted I saw the third so I confirmed M105.

The Virgo objects were an easy blur. Everyone was dead nuts centered in the eyepiece. I have no problems claiming a find for them. Did I star hop? Nope. Did I learn how dense Virgo/Leo were? Yup. Clearly this wolud be a fun area to explore from a dark site!

• M3 - Hey, it is back. Very nice.
• M83 - I hear church bells. 11pm? Very hard, tried averted and the hood. The tube is almost horizontal but with essentially only the hills and the dunes of Truro I have perfect horizon here. Sadly, I didn't nab it. In retropspect, I may have tried too early, it could have risen some more! Yup, that's it. I just simulated it in Stellarium, I had 2 more hours until it was high.

At this point I considered giving up. I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. But, I scanned ahead in the list M13 and M92 were coming up. So I kept on going.

• M12 in Ophicchius. It was below the horizon! So were all the Oph objects.

Time for bed.

Well, actually not. The seeing had been great so I put the 9mm in and did some Saturn viewing. Sadly, the 3rd floor deck just didn't work out for this. I was bummed. This was the best seeing I had ever seen for Saturn, oh well, it will still be there later.

I hibernated the scope and left it all outside.

Next morning, I woke it up. Took the Telrad off and put the solar filter on. 2 sunspots!

Totals:

Found with telescope: 55
Found with binoculars: 7
Found with naked eye: 1
Did not find: 3
Obstructed view: 4

Total found: 63

The missed objects were 83, 33 and 77. If I had waited about 10 minutes, 33 would have been an obstructed, not a missed. But there was no way to get it in the twilight.

I was done by quarter after 11.

I'm looking forward to the real one next week. It will be better with friends. Goto will give me the time to observe. Clearly, I was ahead of schedule most of the night. I didn't like the TUMOL printouts, the McNish printout is better for Goto, the descriptions are better.

Truro dark report

Wow, it is dark out here.

I mean, wow, really, freaking dark.

I went to Pilgrim Heights around 8:30 tonight. I'm driving down the access road with my high beams on, having just got off Route 6 with other car's shining their headlights in my eyes. I park the car. I'm not dark adapted at all and I turn off the lights.

Wow, OMG, wow.

It is freaking dark here.

This place is darker than Steve's house, at least when I got there last week and initially wasn't dark adapted. I've not yet opened the door and with the car's dashboard lights on I can tell I'm going to be impressed when I open the door.

Now, let me digress a bit, both as a child and as an adult I've been attacked by a dog. I have a pathological fear of them. There are coyotes on the cape, in these dunes. I chose this site because of the trees, the winds are 10 to 20 mph now with gusts to 30. The house is shaking as I type this. The trees are all around me, I'm parked on just a thin strip of asphalt.

I can't open the door. I don't like being outside in the dark. I hate being alone at YFOS but I manage to do it, but I don't like it. But here? Jim Young isn't just over the hill. I try rolling down the window but that doesn't work well at all. I feel the woods around me, but I know at the beaches I'd feel the dunes around me.

So I open the door and stand next to the car with the door almost closed on me. M35, 36, 37, 38 all there, all with stars. Even M46 is almost bright. M42 is small in the binocs, but I think brighter than I've ever seen it, at least it seemed that way. It is certainly bigger than I've even seen in in these binocs.

Sadly, I know I'm never ever going to be able to use this site, at least not without a partner. Oh well, lets go to the house and see what that is like

The house itself has the front porch light on, casting huge shadows. I don't have a key, shoot, I don't own the house, so I can't do anything about it.

But I find the same objects. Trees are a problem at the house. NW is pretty bad but there aren't any leaves yet so I can see all the objects easily. I turn to try for M46. A car pulls out of the street across from me blinding me with his high beams. I lift the binocs and scan, there's M47 and M46 is right next to it. No problems with that.

Ok, so that's the answer. I put some pipes in the ground as foundations and I build some light screens and I do all my observing from right here. It is hard to tell but our house may be darker than YFOS.

I head back to Provincetown and get out on the deck. There are sodium vapor lights shining in my eyes. I try for M46. Yeah, got that too from P-town.

This is gonna be a good place to live.

No Boxes tonight, or, a dark site with the binoculars

Steve and Rags cajoled me into heading over to New Boston to have one lest viewing session with them before the move. I knew I shouldn't, I was way too tired and the boxes were calling my name. But, I did anyway. I really wanted to get a dark site view of the recent M-objects I had been observing so I could take that to Truro.

So although I had my scope in the car, I only carried my parka, chair, and binoculars out behind Steve's shed.

Rags was cursing the Goto Nova, not that there was anything wrong with it, but Rags just doesn't like GoTo scopes. I felt pretty bad when I tripped over the power and his alignment was lost, but it turns out that that was not the first time that had happened that evening already!

So Rags and I got some quality binocular time in. I should him how to find M36, M38 and M37. Those were the easy ones. M35 was a bit harder, pointing out "that star there" really doesn't work all that well sometimes, but he got it.

Somewhere in here Steve's Atlas is giving him fits and he disappears inside, trying to google something to fix it.

Then we get down in earnest trying to find P17, Comet Holmes. The Comet Chasers web site was still claiming that it was naked eye visible, so I figured with binoculars it would be a cinch. I had failed 2 nights running to grab it from Manchester. I knew that section of the sky pretty well. I got out the charts and we start looking for it. Both Rags and I tried both my 15x50s and Rags' 7x30s (???) as well as the 4" Jaeger refractor. Nothing! Steve comes back out and tries also. We spent a good 45 minutes on this. We know is going to be huge and dim but we are just not seeing it.

Steve realigns the Atlas and we poke about, finding the Flame Nebula, but not the Horsehead, not that we expected to, and the Owl Nebula. Wow, that was a dim one! I'm not looking forward to that at all during the Marathon!

I had to call it an early night, the alarm was going off at 4:30, the boxes were calling to me.

Just because you didn't see anything new doesn't mean you failed

So after checking out the Comet Chasing website I decide to grab Comet Holmes tonight from Manchester and then after that easy grab, I'd enjoy 46P/Wirtanen passing by NGC 1893. I knew that that would be dim but I'm getting so good at this it would be a piece of cake.

I went outside right around 7:30pm, watched the sky turn from a turquoise Maxfield Parrish blue sky into night. I found Mirphak and it was clear the sky was too bright so I waited a bit.

This was a gonna be a tough hop. From Mirphak I found the box of 5 stars around it, so then I could rotate my paper chart. Then to the left to a pair then up to a bright one (Delta Persei I guess), then curve around down to the next bright one then up to yet another bright one. Phew, now we are getting close. Find the next one and almost bisect them up to a double, three dim ones.

And I looked and waited. It was hard. I didn't want to put the binocs down because all my neighbors lights would ruin what little dark adaption I had. I waited and looked.

I closed my eyes and went in a got a pillow so I could lay down. I could find the spot again and again but no Holmes.

I checked the charts and saw that I was slightly off so I looked in the new spot.

I spent about 45 minutes, giving up around 8:15pm. I briefly went over to NGC 1893 just because when I looked for M38 the other day I saw some patterns that I thought might be something. I found them again but they didn't match the website that had a description by Walter Scott Houston: "contains a conspicuous Y pattern formed by four 8th magnitude stars." I thought I saw a T in the right spot, but certainly not a Y.

And 46P was, of course, no where to be seen.

All in all it was a good time, even though I didn't bag anything.

PS: about an hour later I briefly went outside too take a quick check on 1893 again. It was a lot darker now! I wasn't able to stay but that may have been my problem with Holmes. Clear Sky Clock is looking ok for tomorrow night, I'll try then also

Moonset over Manchester

Here's a quick shot of the moon setting. Probably one of the last Manchester moon shot's I'll take.

I never really did like this apartment but I must say, the photographic opportunities have been great. There used to be 4 or 5 huge trees which all were dying or dead. The town cut those down a few years ago. Once they were gone the camera came out. Odd that tree cutting would improve a natural setting. Then again, as an astronomer, I guess I should know that already!

I'm especially fond of the sunrise reflecting off the building pictures, the sunsets, and of course my lunar eclipse shots that got published in the Union Leader. I'll try and dig some of those up later.

Not only M objects you see...

So I'm sitting, you know where, reading the Feb 2008 issue of Astronomy. Wanting to see if there is something I grab tonight before getting back to my boxes.

Observe Winter's Forgotten Star Clusters it says and I say sure, lets read. First one up is NGC 1502 in Camelopardalis, which has got to be one of the weirdest constellations. (Note, from Manchester, you can't see any of it!)

Note that there isn't any clickable link for NGC 1502, there isn't much out there on it. But I fired up Stellarium and memorized the patterns. I used Cassiopeia to find Mirphak, then went in a straight line from Algol through Mirphak to 2 asterisms I found in Stellarium and hey, there it was.

Or should I say, there it should have been.

Now NGC 1502 isn't all that impressive in my 15x50 Canon IS binoculars from Manchester. At times I thought I could split the double but at other times I thought I couldn't. The article in Astronomy pointed out that it was at the tail end of Kemble's Cascade, a quite attractive asterism. I hadn't looked that up at all before I headed out and I saw something that could be described as a "cascade." As I was observing, a satellite passed through the field of view. I followed it to the horizon.

So I went back inside to google some and confirmed that that was indeed what I found so I went back out to enjoy it more.

I counted 21 stars in the Cascade, about a third of which I could only see with averted vision. Quite nice in binoculars. And wouldn't you know, another satellite passed through!

And as for NGC 1502, well, I'll claim it as a find but I certainly wouldn't have unless the Cascade was there to confirm it. I think I need more power to see anything there.

Oh, I went and checked out M44 some more just so I could fix it in my mind. Rags also saw it that evening, I just read his email before writing this entry. He didn't seem to think it was as nice as the Pleiades, the overall same dimness and all. Thinking about it, I think that that may be why I like it, it isn't flashy like the Seven Sisters, it is just big and full. But of course, the Sisters are nice also.

Back to boxes.