=================================================== RAW's Astro Report, Vol. 1, No. 2, 26 December 1999 =================================================== -1. Administrivia I am now archiving these reports at http://www.raw.com/raw/astro/ I've added some other folks to the mailing list. New folks and old: if you don't want to receive this message, please reply and I'll remove you immediately. 0. Location and conditions 26 December 1999 West Concord, MA, USA [~ 42N, 71W] To start, clear skies, eventually clouding over, temps probably below freezing Moon 4 days past full 1. Polaris - For polar alignment [TECH: *Really* need an erecting viewfinder to make this easier.] 2. Jupiter - Got a brief peek at this before turning on sidereal tracking, which caused the scope to slew away. And when I finally got back towards it, it was behind some tree limbs. But I'll get back to it later. 3. Saturn - 2 satellites, no bands, no division. I'd really like to try a greater magnification eyepiece on this one. There doesn't seem to be a great deal of detail difference between 48x and 96x, but maybe I just need more practice "seeing." 4. Orion Nebula (M43) - Seems like a better look than on 22 Dec, probably due to less moonlight. Look forward to seeing this at new moon. I'm fairly certain I Identified the Trapezium, a group of 3 stars in the nebula, but I'll have to consult further sources to make certain. 5. Sigma Orionis - This is the star just below the left-most star (Alnitak, also Zeta Ori) of Orion's Belt. I was just making my way from the Nebula to Alnitak and noticed that this looked like a double star, and, indeed, it is [TECH: with < 10" separation, which was totally clear at 48x]. 6. The Road to M78...? - This object was on the chart I was using as being across from Alnitak from Sigma Orionis, about twice as far along. I tried to get there, but, for one thing, I didn't really know what I was looking for. I had highlighted the Messier objects (deep sky objects first charted by Messier, cataloged with M), on my charts, but didn't look up the type of the more obscure ones. I found a group of stars that I thought *might* be an open cluster, and I drew a sketch of it, but it didn't map onto what I could see in the charting software I'm trying out. And, looking at it now, it tells me that M78 is a diffuse nebula, which is definitely not something I came across. Oh well, I'll try for this one again next time. 7. Zeta Tauri, where are you? - This star is the tip of the left horn of Taurus, the bull (which is to the right of Orion as you face south). This star is vaguely pointed to by Orion's "head". I wanted to get onto this one to hop from it over to M1, the Crab Nebula. But I was never able to convince myself that the star I was looking at was Zeta Tau. And finally some clouds rolled in. 8. Jupiter redux - I looked towards the western horizon and realized that Jupiter was still up and now below the branches. Dialed it up fairly easily and was able to see 2 dark bands very distinctly. The Great Red Spot was supposed to be in transit this evening, but I couldn't detect it. As with Saturn, another factor of 2 or 3 magnification would be very interesting. TECH NOTES: All of the above observed through a Meade ETX-90/EC with the stock 26mm Plossl and, in some cases, using a (borrowed---thanks again Gerry!) Celestron Ultima 2x Barlow. Other comments: a. Using two chairs, one as a table, one for me, was very useful. I cranked down the tripod to accomodate a seated position, which was great except when I wanted to use the viewfinder, which required getting off the chair and crouching on the ground craning my neck sideways and up. (Gotta get a wide-field, erecting viewfinder with more visible crosshairs...) b. Bringing along a hot drink is nice. c. Red plastic bag material laid on the lens glass of a Mag-Lite makes a perfectly good red flashlight. d. Tying the pen to my clipboard would have helped. e. Next time print all the charts with the zenith straight upwards. f. Next time look up descriptions of deep sky objects before trying to find them. g. It's good to have a strict pattern for manipulating ep and barlow: first remove the ep, then the Barlow, then reinsert the ep. Don't pull both out together. (Don't worry Gerry, nothing happened to your Barlow! :-) h. The need for parfocality, esp. between Barlow and ep, is now *painfully* obvious. Needing to refocus each time I switched was a big pain. i. The FlexiFocus extended, flexible focus wheel seems like a good idea. The normal focus wheel 1) induces a ton of vibration; and 2) is completely unreachable in polar position. j. Now I see the need for a dewshield. I didn't realized the corrector was dewing up until after I was done. It probably affected my look at Jupiter the most. =================================================== RAW's Astro Report, Vol. 1, No. 2, 26 December 1999 ===================================================