[Chaos-l] Observing sessions: 1 week ago, 2 days ago, 1 day ago

[Mark South]

Hi all,
The observing session at the Choas Darksite was great; we all had fun looking into the last "winter" sky until late this year.  Through Greg's scope, I enjoyed looking at the dark lanes M82, the Eskimo Neb, as well as the spiral structure in M51--the Whirlpool Galaxy. Wow.  When I went back to my ETX-125, we took a look at the Whirlpool.  Dyer and I claim that we were able to see the some spiral structure through this small scope, although the size in the field of view was twice as small.  Not sure if this was because we knew what we were looking at or not.  Perhaps it was because the sky was really dark.  

Through my 8'' LX6 scope, I looked at M35 and NGC2158.  M35 really looks great at 100 power and takes over the whole field of view in my Nagler 13mm.  It was a considerably bright, and fairly loose open cluster.  About 1/4-degree to the west (left field of view), was a fuzzy patch of faint stars called NGC2158.  Some of M35 was 'overlapping' NGC2158.  This was a considerably faint, fairly compact open cluster.  NGC2158 is much further away than M35 so they look "optically" together.  If they were placed side by side at the same distance, the absolute magnitude of NCG2158 would be much greater than M35 according to the Night Sky Handbook. 

Enjoyed the night very much.  Bummed I can't go back out until April due to a March trip to Japan!
Ad Astra,  
Mark South



On Sunday, March 05, 2006, at 08:52PM, Jon Stewart-Taylor <joncst at earthlink.net> wrote:

>1 week ago: We had our best turnout ever at the Currin's 7 peope with 5 
>telescopes and a pair of binoculars.  Observing conditions were as good 
>as the skyclock promised, and we got very good views of the late winter 
>and early spring objects.  The highlight was certainly Greg Dillon with 
>his 26" reflector showing us views of the Eskimo (planetary nebula in 
>Gemini) and several of the Ursa Major galaxies.  He even tracked down a 
>galaxy with a supernova in it.  If you thought about going that night 
>and didn't, you should officially regret your decision.  Mark, Mark, 
>Peter, Greg: anybody else want to write a paragraph?
>
>On Friday i went with my youngest daughter to the Duke forest session: 
>her middle-school science teacher was doing an astronomy unit, and 
>recommended either the Duke Forest or Morehead sessions, so i thought 
>we'd go and see what they're like.  When we arrived at 7:00 (about 1/2 
>hour after the official start)  Dr. Plessar had two Meades in 
>operation, and a crowd of a little over a dozen people.  He was showing 
>mostly the moon and Saturn at first.  It was a pretty good night 
>apparently: Saturn was showing 5 moons, and the Cassini division was 
>barely visible.  Then we made a quick visit to the asteroid Vesta and a 
>longer one to the Orion Nebula.  Later on he asked for advice on what 
>to show people: very convenient, considering my recent articles for the 
>newsletter.   We left around 8:30 when America started getting cold.  
>Not a bad quick session, and if it wasn't terribly dark it was at least 
>better than our yard.  Dr. Plessar seemed very glad to have a CHAOS 
>member there.  A reasonable possibility for getting your public service 
>time in, and for a quick photon fix if the weather hasn't been 
>cooperating for sessions at darker sites.
>
>Saturday i went to the Morehead session advertised by Joshua.  It was 
>much better populated than last month's session, presumably because of 
>the much better weather.  The seeing seemed unusually good for 
>Ebenezer, and people queued up for Saturn for almost all the first 
>hour.  Later we visited the Tourist Traps.  I handed out all of my 
>CHAOS propaganda cards, and people seemed particularly interested in 
>the "What did i see" page.  There were also quite a few people asking 
>beginner questions: how to get started, how to learn constellations, 
>what telescope should they get, how to make the sub-standard telescope 
>the got as a gift usable, and so on.  A very nice public session.  
>Thanks for hosting, Joshua.
>
>J.
>-- 
>Jon Stewart-Taylor	joncst at earthlink.net
>Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos/
>CHAOS webmaster: chaos at rtpnet.org
>
>_______________________________________________
>Chaos-l mailing list
>Chaos-l at rtpnet.org
>http://rtpnet.org/mailman/listinfo/chaos-l
>
>


Mark South
500 Market Street Ste. 204
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
http://homepage.mac.com/md_south