[Chaos-l] Observing at Farrington tonight...

[Jon Stewart-Taylor]

Hi all.  I said:

> [...] , i'll  be going to Farrington tonight.  [from ] 8:30 [till]  
> 11:30 or midnight.  I'll be bringing the 10" dob, [the] new 10X50  
> binocs [and]  the Headlight Filter.


I did indeed go to Farrington, and it was a very nice night indeed.   
It was completely clear, and quite transparent.  As i said i would in  
response to Michael's "Globe at Night" message, i did a star count  
using the IMO region in Geminii.  It also gave a LM between 4.5 and 5.

The observing was wonderful.  The evening was chilly but not cold  
until the wind started to pick up at around 10:30.  I started with  
the new binoculars on the fall tourist traps before they set: the  
double cluster in Perseus was as always very beautiful.  The Open  
clusters in Auriga were easy to sweep up (M36/37/38, i believe).  The  
Hyadies and Pleiadese were glorious.  I think there's no finer sight  
in amateur astronmy than the Pleiades through binoculars on a very  
clear night.  The Orion Nebula was also very nice in the binoculars.   
while i was in the area, i picked up M41 in CMA, then headed east for  
the clusters in Pupis.  I finished my binocular session with M35,  
which was pretty much directly overhead.  Now i remember why i used  
to keep a lawn chair in the back of the car.

  I spent the rest of the night visiting the usual tourist traps.   
For some reason, tonight i really noticed the "stars between the  
stars" in the open clusters: all the very faint little stars  
sprinkled between the brighter members of the clusters. They were  
especially noticeable in the larger, brighter clusters like M41.

About 1/2 way through the night i faced my old nemesisis (nemisi?)  
M81/82.  Remember how we always tell beginners that binoculars will  
help them learn how to use telecope finder scopes?  They certainly  
helped me tonight.  I spent about 5 minutes looking back and forth  
between the star chart and the view through binoculars, figuring out  
how the dots on the chart related to the actual stars in the sky.   
When i was pretty sure i had the right spot on the sky, i pointed the  
Telrad at it, then used the 9x50 finder to locate the same star  
patterns i'd seen through the binoculars.  I was with 2 degrees of  
the galaxies with the Telrad alone, and after matching the star  
patterns, one of the galaxies was in the eyepiece (M82, the long  
skinny one, if anybody is interested).

I use the same technique to find the Clown planetary nebula in  
Geminii, although the little fuzzy round thing didn't jump out at me  
the way the galaxies did. it was a very pale blue, barely not-gray.

Since Saturn is in good position these days, er, nights, and  
becauseof the previous thread about Very High Powers i put in m 5mm  
eyepiece.  The seeing wasn't really good for that much power in my  
10": someday i need to make another off-axis aperture mask.  In spite  
of the waviness, Saturn was still "glimpseable" in short bursts, and  
even showed some pretty good detail in the bands now and then.

I finished off with the Leo Triplet before packing it in at 11:15,  
and made it home before midnight.  Not a bad evening, over all.

J.

Jon Stewart-Taylor: jcst at tripod.net
Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://rtpnet.org/chaos/
CHAOS Webmaster and Secretary: chaos at rtpnet.org

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