Constellations – Page 4

Post-Mercury Telescope Tuning

While I scanned the early evening skies for Mercury, Terry stayed at home, installing a secondary finder scope on my telescope. I bought the red LED finder scope months ago because the original finder scope attached to my ETX-90 becomes unusable at near vertical viewing orientations. Only the larger ETX-105 and ETX-125 came with a right-angle view finder.

ETX-90 with new red LED finder scope installed

Now all I needed to do was dial it in. And I had at least two (if not three) easily seen objects to do it with. I took the telescope out on the lower patio and set it up. I opted to do an easy align this time with the Autostar handheld device and thankfully it picked Sirius as the first star to align upon. Sirius was the first non-planet object I saw after sunset earlier in the evening during my hunt for Mercury. After Jupiter, I saw Sirius appear about thirty minutes after sunset. The Dog Star was clearly visible through the bare branches of my mulberry tree and the Autostar got within five degrees of it on the first try. So, I at least had oriented the telescope to it’s home position on it’s mount correctly this time.

The second star for the easy alignment was Pollux, the twin to Castor in the constellation Gemini. Since my house is over two stories tall and I had setup the telescope ten feet west of the tallest part of it, seeing the constellation Gemini was quite a challenge. The two brightest stars (Castor and Pollux) had just peaked over the roof. Then I had a moment of panic. Which one of the two is Pollux? I knew Castor was brighter (because it’s actually a binary or double-star that I hope to one day see separately) so I zeroed in on the less bright star. The Autostar reported a successful alignment. Incidentally, Castor is the ‘star of the week’ over at Earthsky.

To test how successful the alignment might or might not be, I told the Autostar to go find Venus. Since I could clearly see Venus shining brightly next to the Moon, I knew I would be able to further tune the alignment of the telescope and the new finder scope using it as a guide star. The Autostar again got the telescope within five degrees (or less) of Venus so I proceeded to update the red LED finder scope’s focus. I had been so focused on my finder scopes that when I put my eye to the telescope’s eyepiece I realized I hadn’t even gotten one out of the case yet! I grabbed a 26mm eyepiece and quickly focused on Venus, but it was so bright I couldn’t get a crisp clean focus. I at least centered it in the telescope’s field of view and let the Autostar slew for a few minutes. Venus kept creeping slowly out of the center (nothing new but something I need to look into). Next stop, Jupiter.

What I saw last night through my telescope looked very much like this photo.

Again, the Autostar got close, but not quite. I’m beginning to think I need to recalibrate and retrain the drives in the ETX-90 mount. Jupiter in all it’s glory with four moons visible (two on either side). I grabbed Terry out of the band room to take a quick look, but he retreated back inside because of the cold. I hardly noticed it, having stood outside during sunset for over and hour and now observing from the backyard in just a t-shirt and jeans (the house provided a substantial windbreak).

At this point, I was happy with the installation, configuration and usefulness of the new red LED finder scope. What could I attempt observing before packing up everything and returning it to the band room? Ah! Something in Orion. Thankfully, Orion appeared high in the sky, almost due south (just a bit to the east). Since I suffer from an extreme light pollution epidemic in Lansing, the higher up an object, the better to minimize the amount of light and atmosphere I need to peer through. Having a clear cold night to make the air dense also helps. I searched the Autostar’s object database and found the Great Orion Nebula. Fetch! I said and off the telescope went.

The telescope stopped in the general vicinity of the belt of Orion. I didn’t think that was the exact location of the Orion Nebula, so I grabbed my Sky & Telescope Pocket Star Atlas and confirmed the location as being in the sword, not the belt. Using both finder scopes, I slowly got the telescope oriented on the objects in the sword. Using the eyepiece, I slowly scanned the much smaller field of view and saw a grey cloud like smudge pass by. I stopped. I returned to the smudge. This must be it! I put in a stronger magnification eyepiece and spent several minutes taking in the sights of a nebula. Only long exposures with very sensitive camera equipment equatorially mounted … or the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit (outside of our dirty atmosphere) … can produce stunning color images like this one:

I hope it was the Orion Nebula. I am almost convinced it was, but since my telescope is a reflector (not a refractor), the image I view in the eyepiece is not only upside down, but reversed right to left, and almost always black-and-white (or gray). When I compare what I see to a star atlas, I have to do mental spatial gymnastics on the fly. I did get Terry to come out one more time and view the smudge that was a nebula before packing up the telescope and putting astronomy to bed for the night.

I woke up before sunrise this morning (no surprise … I always do that with or without an alarm). I fed the dogs and when I let them out the back patio door, I noticed to bright objects in the western sky. They both had to be Saturn and Mars. I went to Terry’s computer and logged in to my Astronomy.com account (since I subscribe to the electronic edition of Astronomy on my Nook Color, I get ‘extras’ on their website). Using their StarDomePlus Java application, I confirmed the contents of the sky at that exact moment from my location in Lansing. Yes! Mars was the bright spot in the western sky and Saturn appeared just up and to the southwest of it. If only I had gotten up an hour or so earlier, I could have set up the telescope (again) and looked at Mars and Saturn both. I think I just found my next astronomical hunting expedition.

Tonight’s highlights include, for early evening viewing, more of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus (and Mercury if I wanted to leave my backyard, but I’ll pass on that tonight). For a headsup on what to expect in the coming week, visit Sky & Telescope‘s This Week At a Glance site.

Bright Evening Star at Dark Moon

I got home from work yesterday before 5:15 p.m., leaving me plenty of time before the sunset to walk Apollo. Terry got him so excited, whispering the word ‘walk’ in his eagerly raised ears. By the time I had changed my clothes and laced up my walking shoes, Apollo was whining and jumping around the living room. I grabbed my water bottle and the leash and off we went for a quick forty-five minute walk.

Once back home, I dashed down to the basement and unburied the telescope equipment from last week’s water heater install which necessitated a redistribution of the junk languishing down there. The last thing I brought up to the band room was the large tripod. I took it out the patio door and set it up on the strip of concrete patio just south of the hot tub. I took the case of lenses out to the hot tub wooden steps as well as the box containing the hand-held device that controls the telescope, helping to align it and find objects in the night sky.

I took the telescope out of its box and secured it to the tripod’s base. Something didn’t look quite right. I dug out the manuals for the telescope and the tripod, but nothing would focus. Ah, I needed my reading glasses! I ran upstairs and grabbed them off the kitchen table. Much better! I refreshed my aging memory on the finer points of placing the telescope correctly on the tripod. I disconnected the telescope, turned it 180 degrees and re-secured it to the base. Then I aligned the tripod legs more-or-less on a north-south orientation. Finally, I was ready to connect to Autostar hand-held control device and the 12-volt power supply.

I looked over my shoulder to the southwest and could already see Venus and Jupiter in the still lit dusky sky. I plugged in the power supply and the Autostar and flipped the switch at the base of the telescope to the on position. The Autostar woke up and warned me not to look through my telescope, ever, at the sun directly. Well, darn, the sun had already set so I didn’t really need to worry about that.

I entered today’s date and time and told the Autostar that, no, currently I wasn’t using daylight savings time. I skipped the alignment, since I couldn’t see any stars yet, and, from past experience, the stars it would want to use for aligning the telescope would be blocked by either my house (which rose thirty feet high to my east only about six feet away from the base of the tripod) or the trees in my backyard (a very tall pine tree, tall maple tree and my neighbor’s large pear tree – all block my western, northwestern and north horizons from my backyard). Basically, I can only look up, to the south or southwest, with a mostly unobstructed view from my back yard. Oh, and there’s a large hill about a quarter of a mile to my west, so I can’t really see the sunsets either.

Using my finder’s scope, I zeroed in on Venus and then programmed the Autostar to find Venus, without actually finding it. I found it in the Autostar’s database of observing objects and then told it to start slewing (also known as tracking the object so it always stays centered in the eyepiece). I put in my 26mm eyepiece and then paused the slewing. I used the directional arrow keys on the keypad to center Venus in the field of view and then unpaused slewing. Wow! Was Venus bright! But smaller than I anticipated. I tried a variety of lenses (16mm, 9mm and the doubling one with a combination of all of those) and got brave and tried three different types of colored filters.

I quickly read through the one page reference guide for the lenses, each of which gave tips for the various types of objects you could observe and what you could expect from the different colors. I first tried the blue filter, which helped reduce the glare from the still well-lit western sky. Venus was still very bright. I next tried the orange filter, which really brought down the brightness and I believe I even saw some cloud formations. The last color I tried was the green filter, but I don’t believe that one added to my viewing experience.

After observing Venus for several minutes with various filter and eyepiece combinations, I told the Autostar to go find Jupiter. Since I had not aligned the telescope previously, I had my doubts as to whether the computer and the drives could actually find it. I knew where it was, because I could see it. The Autostar got close, but not close enough to see Jupiter in my 26mm eyepiece. I pause slewing and used the finder scope and the directional controls to center Jupiter. I unpaused slewing and was amazed at the size and clarity of Jupiter and four of its moons.

The first thing that struck me was the fact that Jupiter looked at least as large as Venus had, if not larger! Yet Venus is closer to Earth by a long shot. This really made me wonder about the sheer size of Jupiter, all those billions of miles away, out past Mars and the asteroid belt. It’s own miniature solar system. Awesome!

All but one of Jupiter’s moons were lined up perfectly on one side of the gas giant. I could clearly see the striations in the clouds, but I did not see the Red Spot. I spent several very enjoyable minutes observing them all with various eyepieces, but no filters (as I could see detail very clearly without them).

My last longshot of the night was a whimsical hope that I would be able to see one of the nebulae in Orion. I told the Autostar to go find the Horsehead Nebula. Off it went, taking the telescope generally to the belt or sword area of the constellation Orion. I hadn’t yet grabbed my Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas, so I couldn’t remember exactly where the Horsehead Nebula resided in relation to Orion’s belt. I traversed up and down the sword, but did not further investigate the belt, where I should have concentrated. However, since the skies were still quite bright (not dark) and the light pollution continued to obscure my ability to see such dark nebulae, I gave up on that hunt and saved it for another night when I could transport my entire setup to a dark sky site. Thanks to a gift from my father, the prospect of observing at a dark sky site have gotten markedly better. He repaired an old portable emergency battery and light (both white and red) device that can be used as a power source, once I find (or buy) the power cord for the telescope that includes the standard car cigarette lighter-type connector.

On a whim, I told the Autostar to go find the Pleiades, another open star cluster I could easily see between Orion and Jupiter. I couldn’t easily find it listed in the observing objects database, so I looked it up in my Sky Atlas and determined it also had the M45 designation. The Autostar took the telescope to the general vicinity of the Pleiades, but I could not confirm this from the eyepiece. And, since the Pleiades were very high in the night sky, I could not use the finder scope to manually re-align the telescope. Why? Because on the ETX-90, the OEM finder scope becomes unusable at vertical or near vertical angles when using the Alt/Az mount (instead of the Equatorial mount). I have a replacement finder scope, but have not yet installed. Terry volunteered to give it a go this week since I left the telescope on its tripod smack dab in the middle of the band room last night.

I may or may not be able to participate in Sky & Telescope’s Moon Mercury challenge this evening. Tonight, about thirty minutes after sunset, the tiniest sliver of the new moon will be visible right next to Mercury. My drive in to work today produced a stunning sunrise, thanks to a mostly cloudy sky, so unless these clouds blow away before I get home, I doubt I’ll be able to see the sun, let alone the pencil-thin moon and the small bright fleeting dot of Mercury. If, by some miracle, the skies are crystal clear when I get home tonight, I will at least packup my digital camera and its tripod and find a spot on a hilltop with a clear unobstructed view of the setting sun.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3khO8uMg4?feature=player_embedded]

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas

Second workday of the new year. Gearing up for all the projects slated for 2012. Busier (which makes the time go faster) and only one meeting (that went longer than scheduled, of course). Basically, I survived another day at the office.

Hump day (also known as Wednesday) is also double-punch day at Planet Sub. Since one of my New Year’s resolutions is a healthier lifestyle, I reviewed the Nutritional Information on their website before calling in my order. While my second favorite sandwich (the Planet BBQ) had fewer calories than my first favorite sandwich (the Super Hero), it had gobs and gobs of sodium. So it was a toss-up between the Tuna (without mayo) and the Roast Beef (without mayo or cheese). The tuna won because it was the lowest in sodium. Beautiful walk to and from Planet Sub thanks to the unseasonably warm weather we’re enjoying during this first week of January.

Even though Terry’s right hand is in a splint, WolfGuard will meet tonight to practice with the new drummer. We decided to skip a home-cooked meal by Chef Rachelle in the interest of saving time. We ate a quick supper at Mr. Goodcents (yeah, I know, two sandwich places in the same day). I reviewed their Nutritional Information brochure and couldn’t find a single sandwich (besides the veggie one) that had less than 1,500 mg of sodium. Way, way too high for my diet. The lowest calorie and lowest sodium item that appealed to my appetite ended up being penne pasta with marinara.

On the way back home, we took a side-trip to Dillons to pickup a prescription for Terry and grab a few items. We made it back home with plenty of time to spare before the band members started arriving.

As the band started rehearsing, I left to take Rachelle to visit some friends. On the way home, I admired the constellation Orion, the waxing moon and enjoyed the unfrigid temperature.

Now that I’m back home, I can wrap up a couple of work projects while being serenaded (several times because practice makes perfect with a new percussionist) of vintage Rush (Finding My Way Home). I’ve still got to squeeze in some cardio before slipping upstairs to read myself to sleep again.

Tomorrow is the final day of the Twelve Days of Christmas. If it was a Friday or a Saturday night, I might be tempted to host a Twelfth Night party. Instead, I’ll probably be attending the local city council meeting, since one of the agenda items tomorrow night deals with the recent appearance (and disappearance) of ‘no parking’ signs in several cul-de-sacs around Lansing (see my previous blog posts for further enlightenment). I can only hope an Epiphany of policy is forthcoming. (Feel free to chortle if you fathom my irony and/or sarcasm).

On the Sixth Day of Christmas

I learned something today. I try to learn something every day, but I am not always successful (translation: distracted by the practical side of life). Today I remembered to peruse the ‘front page’ of the Wikipedia web site. I like the serendipitousness of the daily featured article as well as the ‘On this day …’ section.

On this day . . .

1924 – Astronomer Edwin Hubble announced that Andromeda (pictured), previously believed to be a nebula, is actually another galaxy, and that the Milky Way is only one of many such galaxies in the universe.

The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. The image also shows Messier Objects 32 and 110, as well as NGC 206 (a bright star cloud in the Andromeda Galaxy) and the star Nu Andromedae. This image was taken using a hydrogen-alpha filter.

The second thing I learned came from the ‘Today’s Featured Picture’ section:

Pure (99.97+%) iron chips, electrolytically refined, as well as a high purity 1 cm³ iron cube for comparison. Iron is the most common element (by mass) on Earth, forming much of the outer and inner core, as well as the fourth most common element in the Earth’s crust.

Who knows what else I’ll stumble into learning today? I have an entire afternoon to explore since my employer will set me free at noon.

You’ve been warned.

Oh, and just in case you missed it last night, here’s a snapshot from my cell phone of the sunset:

Only two more sunsets left this year!

Dog Day Doldrums

Mid-August usually simmers, steeping the Midwest in heat and humidity; yet we’ve been graced with temperatures in the 80s and relatively low humidity. Daily (or nightly) thunderstorms greened up the lawn, found a leak in my new roof (or old chimney) and delayed the second major home improvement project to replace our disintegrating driveway.

My daughter and her boyfriend fled the persistent Texas drought and constant triple-digit temperatures to bask on the beaches of the Bahamas this week. They returned to the Heartland yesterday, making a brief layover at KCI in the early evening. She called us as we were driving to a friend’s 50th birthday party. No word yet if they made it back to Texas (but I’m assuming they did and were just too tired to call).

Roxy, one of our Rottweilers, made a trip to the vet this week, ostensibly to have a stubborn tick removed from her inner left thigh (and also for some advice for her mobility as she ages … she’s over seven or eight years old now). Terry and I found the ‘tick’ Sunday evening. We tried several times to remove it, but could not find the head or legs (only the ‘body’). The vet got a chuckle when he explained that what we thought was a tick was actually a skin tab … it just looked a lot like a tick. I really should have put my reading glasses on Sunday evening and saved poor Roxy the abuse.

Looking east/northeast from Parallel and 110th near the Legends.

I only got to ride in the van one day this week. I took Monday off, rode Tuesday and then drove the van the rest of the week. I saw some fantastic sunrises and tried to snap a few photos with my cell phone (while driving). As we near the autumnal equinox, the sunrise coincides (inconveniently for eastbound drivers) with our commute from Leavenworth to Kansas City. By the time we reach Parallel or State Avenue, the sun sits just above the horizon, so a bit of cloud camouflage eases the eye strain and makes driving safer. Finally, after nearly ten days of driving a loaner van, the vanpool returned our van to us from the repair shop. I opted to swap the vans Friday morning after dropping off the other two riders at Hallmark. I got almost all the way to the Plaza before I realized I’d left my cell phone in the loaner van. The guard at the KCATA garage probably thinks I’m blonde or something.

I missed the Perseid meteor shower, like most of the rest of the United Stats, thanks to a full moon (and hazy clouds or even thunderstorms). My husband sat outside one night this week, but he reported the moon lit up the atmosphere so much, he could hardly see the brightest stars. In fact, he had trouble finding the constellation Cassiopeia, normally very easy to spot as it looks like a W or an M (depending on it’s current rotational position around Polaris). I did spy the waning moon one morning approaching Jupiter and snapped a photo with my cell phone since I was headed to the van and running late (so couldn’t setup the good camera on a tripod for a more professional-looking amateur photo). Saturday morning (early early early), if the clouds had been absent, would have shown Jupiter within five degrees of an even thinner moon.

Wednesday night, WolfGuard auditioned a drummer to replace the drummer/lead singer who recently moved to New Mexico to pursue better employment opportunities. Thursday night, Terry and I ventured into North Kansas city to the other Sears store (as opposed to the one down south on Metcalf). Sears seems to be the sole remaining tenant of the dying Antioch Center shopping mall. We’re still wrangling with Sears over a refrigerator we purchased in May, so we went looking at different, hopefully better models. We also stopped at two office supply shops to look at shredders, during which a beautiful sunset occurred and once again I only had my cell phone camera with me (sigh).

We wrapped up the week spending some time celebrating the life of a good friend at his 50th birthday party. We had a great time visiting with old friends and heckling the over-the-hill dude. I’ve still got a couple of years to catch up with him.

I Spy the Night Sky

I stepped outside just before 9:00 pm to let the dogs out and shocked myself with the sight of actual stars, something I haven’t seen in weeks (it seems) with the unrelenting cloud cover, rain and thunderstorms plaguing the Heart of America this month. I grabbed my camera and tripod and setup just east of my mailbox, hoping to capture photographic evidence of the overwhelming light pollution saturating my neighborhood.

Bambi Court Due North (from in front of my mailbox)

Not only does everyone on my court leave every outside light on, they feel compelled to illuminate their driveways, fences, sidewalks, trees, boats, etc., etc. The clouds in the above picture are actually illuminated by the glow from the Lansing Correctional Facility (just a half mile north of my neighborhood).

Turning around 180 degrees on the tripod, and flipping the camera 90 degrees to the horizontal, I snapped a shot of my new ‘bright night light’ recently installed at the corner of Bambi Court and Fawn Valley:

New 'Bright Night Light' (Installed at the corner of Fawn Valley & Bambi Court)

Again, the neighbors to my south, on the south side of Fawn Valley, seem to be in competition with the Bambi Court Extreme Illumination Foundation.

I could barely see the handle of the big dipper, so I thought I’d try experimenting with long exposures using the Pentax K100D. There was no wind where I was standing, even though I could see the thin wispy clouds moving casually from west to east across the backdrop of the Big and Little Dippers. I set the camera to Shutter Priority Mode and selected a six second exposure for a half dozen shots of the northwestern, north and northeastern skies. The most dramatic shot, after autocorrecting with basic photo editing software (and I apologize for the greenness of the resulting photo), follows:

Bits of Ursa Minor and Draco (behind the clouds)

I packed up the camera and tripod and thought about heading to bed. I tried to read more from the Backyard Astronomer’s Guide but gave up around ten o’clock. I got up to let the dogs out one final time and, as I always do, I looked up when I stepped outside. I always look up. The clouds had cleared away more and I could clearly see the Big and Little Dippers from my back patio. I grabbed the tripod and camera again for some more experimental shots using an exposure of fifteen seconds. The following two photos show Ursa Minor and Major in one shot:

Ursa Minor and Major (Polaris is at 1 o'clock compared to the tree sillouette bottom center)

And there I will leave you to dream of the stars.

Good night and sleep tight!

All Dogs Go To Heaven or Is That Heavenly Dogs?

I rode the astronomical roller coaster yesterday. I started Wednesday with an e-mail from Celestron warning me of a week delay in shipping my new finderscope. Since the forecast for the rest of the week looked thunderous, I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. Later, in the afternoon, I received the first of many calls from my father, reporting he had received the ‘new’ ETX-90 base motor drive he won on eBay last week. He hooked up the optics from the other ETX-90, trained the motors per the manual, and happily reported smooth, quiet operation. He trained the telescope on the Moon later in the afternoon to study the tracking capabilities of the drives.

Astronomical Society of Kansas City — ASKC

I found one of my expected shipments when I arrived home from work. I ordered the Meade specific cable and serial adapter for the Autostar from a telescope/optics supplier. I also found a large manila envelope from the Astronomical Society of Kansas City. It included details about my new membership, upcoming meetings, local observation sites and other benefits and learning opportunities. The next general meeting, open to the public, is a week from Saturday (April 23rd at 7:00 pm), held in room 111 of Royal Hall on the campus of UMKC, about a block west of 52nd Street and Rockhill Road. A talk on Solar Astronomy entitled “Solar Observing Basics,” will be presented by Neta Apple.

My husband and I ate a quick easy supper of frozen pizza (yeah, so healthy, and we forgot to start off with a salad!). The band started arriving, so I settled down in the great room to catchup on three days worth of missed Jeopardy! episodes. Monday’s game, first round, included a tricky River City category that stung one contestant several times, since the first four of the five answers were ‘What is the Rhine?” Other fun categories were Homer (Simpson)’s Odyssey, Ends in “SS” and Measure This! which included the clue “Contrary to its name, this signature cowboy accessory would actually hold about 96 ounces.” Monday’s Double Jeopardy! round had some great categories, some of which I cleaned up on, including “EU” first, Blue Literature, Amendment Highlights and Ancient Egypt. Final Jeopardy! round: Goegraphic Adjectives stumped me but all three contestants answered correctly. Tuesday’s game had some tough first round clues in A Capital Idea? and the Autobahn Society. Double Jeopardy! Round fun categories included Fictional Movie Bands and Men in Pink. Final Jeopardy! Round: Baseball & The Presidency again stumped me and one contestant.

Midway through Wednesday’s game, I received my second call from my father, crooning about the moon. I knew I had some work to finish remotely last night and some more DVR cleaning to accomplish, and I thought the forecast for last night included increasing cloud cover, so I declined his invitation to come join him in lunar observation. Even though I had paused the replay of Jeopardy!, I didn’t really pay much attention to the first round, besides the categories Thinking Green and Virgin Berths. I paid more attention to Double Jeopardy! round including the fun category Lost Texts from Ben Franklin, Picture “D”is and You’re So Colorful. Yet another difficult Final Jeopardy! Round category: Nobel Peace Prize Winners, where all three contestants and myself could not guess the correct two Prime Ministers.

The band took a break from rehearsing and I decide to forgo working remotely. I changed clothes, hopped in the car and phoned my dad. I arrived at his house around half past eight o’clock, with a sky still showing after sunset glow and the moon diffused by some scattered thin clouds. I had brought the box with my cable, the USB/Serial converter cable, and a couple of Astronomy books with me: a small throw-it-in-your-purse Field Guide and a large lift-with-your-legs-not-your-back full-color Backyard Astronomer’s Guide, which I hadn’t even cracked open yet since I checked it out from the library a few days ago.

Rather than traipsing through his house, which appeared to have many bright lights on in the living room, dining room and perhaps the kitchen, I slipped through the east side gate and made my way cautiously past the thorny rose bushes to his backyard. Even though last week was the ‘official’ Global Lunar Week, we gazed at the moon, watching the clouds pass quickly in front of it’s bright surface, still giving us ample detail to review. I noted the quietness and ease of movement in the motors and looked forward to attempting an actual alignment, if the clouds cooperated. Eventually, the northern celestial hemisphere cleared enough for us to dimly spy Polaris (the clouds, the streetlights and the US Penitentiary conspire to enhance the glow north of my father’s house). Once we could see Polaris, we adjusted our polar mounting and attempted an alignment (as best we could since Arcturus was obscured by thin clouds and trees to the northeast and Capella was the only star visible in it’s constellation, making it difficult to determine if in fact, it was Capella).

To test the alignment, we told the Autostar to “goto” or find Sirius, colloquially known as the ‘Dog Star’, the brightest star in the night sky in the constellation Canis Major, and a near neighbor to our solar system at a distance of only 2.6 parsecs (or 8.6 light years). Considering we were unable to confirm the actual alignment through Arcturus or Capella, the Autostar still managed to get Sirius in the viewfinder scope field of view, allowing us to fine-tune and center Sirius in the eyepiece of the telescope. We had difficulty finding Orion, not usually a problem since Sirius and Orion’s belt ‘line up’ in the night sky. Dad finally spotted Orion’s belt, among the trees to the west and partly obscured by the clouds. So, continuing our alignment test tour, we selected Betelgeuse as our next stop from the Autostar. Again, the viewfinder held the image of the star, but not quite in the eyepiece. We centered and synced again.

The only other star visible to us, thanks to the moon’s continued brilliance, was the last point of the Winter Triangle, Procyon in the Canis Minor constellation. Yes, in honor of my two Rottweilers, Roxy and Apollo, we spent some time in both the ‘greater dog’ constellation Canis Major and the ‘smaller dog’ of Canis Minor. While we were in this section of the sky, I pulled out the Field Guide to see if there was anything worth hunting to test the telescope and Autostar alignment further. Using the red flashlight, I found the appropriate star atlas and read the accompanying paragraph of local attractions. The Beehive Cluster, also known as Praesepe (and so listed in the Autostar, but we used it’s Messier objects number (M44) in the menu system). This cluster, in the constellation Cancer, can be viewed under dark skies with a low power telescope or even binoculars. However, the Moon’s brightness and the hazy thin clouds were conspiring to grey-out everything in the area, except lone Procyon.

By this time, Saturn had risen high enough in the east-southeast, and the clouds had receded, for us to observe it. Again, the Autostar successfully re-oriented on the ringed gas giant and we spent quite a while and several eyepieces basking in the glory of it’s rings. Using the 9mm eyepiece, I was able to see the shadow of the rings upon the surface of Saturn and the gap between Saturn and it’s rings (but not the gaps between the rings). A large tree limb interfered for ten or fifteen minutes with our further observation, during which I never really did find Titan. In checking Sky & Telescope‘s web applet for Saturn’s Moons this morning, and subtracting about twelve hours, Titan may have been behind Saturn or it’s rings for me to find it in my telescope.

We returned triumphantly to the lunar landscape, glowing gloriously almost directly overhead by this time (sometime after ten o’clock or even half-past ten). I again used the Field Guide to locate a map of the moon so we could identify some of the craters near or on the terminator. We gravitated towards the craters around Mare Imbrium, spotting Plato (the dark ‘spot’ in the upper right-hand portion of the picture), Archimedes, Artistillius, Autolycus, Copernicus and Kepler (perhaps … not completely sure and it’s not strictly near Mare Imbrium). As the clouds were closing in on the moon, Dad and I started tearing down the telescope and relocating all the equipment, lenses and books inside and I finally headed home for a mere six hours of sleep, dreaming about rings, impact craters and distant binary stars.

Second Saturday Saturn

Despite a pre-weekend forecast for thunderstorms, Saturday stubbornly stayed humid (to the point of Midwestern Mugginess), windy (gotta love that Gulf air from the south) and sunny (well, more hazy than clear, but not really overcast). After walking Apollo shortly after sunrise, I resolved to remain indoors and further test my new central air conditioner. I wiled away the day with housework, reading and movies (three of them, or was it four?).

I finished watching Centurion via Netflix streaming (aka Watch Instantly) around nine o’clock. I relinquished the remote to my husband so he could watch either UFC or F1 and headed north to my Dad’s house for some moon and Saturn observing.

I left the Meade ETX-90 with him last week to see if it needed a tune-up for it’s drive mechanism. I found some helpful websites and he did crack open the case to confirm everything looked in good shape (nothing obviously broken or breaking). So, tonight’s experiment involved attempting an accurate polar (or equatorial) mounting of the ETX on the field tripod. Before the sun set, he had leveled and oriented the telescope per the instructions for the telescope, tripod and Autostar computer controller.

I arrived to a darker sky with less haze than I observed last week. The moon had about a third of a crescent. Dad had the telescope tracking the moon (for several minutes) so I enjoyed reviewing the craters visible along the terminator. Absolutely stunning! I really should have grabbed the digital camera out of my car and snapped a few photos.

Somehow, we disrupted the Autostar and lost the date/time and tracking as we fumbled in the dark. We spent some time realigning the telescope using the Easy align feature of the Autostar, first confirming and centering the telescope in the ‘home’ position with Polaris visible through the eyepiece. Unfortunately, the stock viewfinder that came with the ETX-90 is unusable in the polar mount ‘home’ position because the telescope is 90 degrees to the base. You can’t get your head between the end of the telescope and the top of the drive mechanism! I have a remedy for this coming soon. On Friday I ordered a red dot finderscope from Celestron that I hope will eliminate this problem.

The first star on the alignment procedure was Arcturus (in the constellation Bootes), easily found in the northeastern-eastern sky by following the arc of the Big Dipper, and the brightest star in the northern hemisphere and fourth brightest star in the night sky (only Sirius appeared brighter last night in the southeastern night sky). The second stop on the alignment tour asked for Capella. I used the Field Guide to the Stars and Planets that I checked out from the Kansas City Public Library last week for a star chart containing that star. I learned that Capella is one of the brighter stars in the constellation Auriga (and later at home I learned Capella is also the sixth brightest star in the night sky and third brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere.

Even though Capella is bright, with the moon in the same region of the sky, with increasing haziness and wind, I could only see with my naked eye one other star in Auriga — the beta star in that constellation. I hesitantly told dad, who was steering the telescope with the Autostar and the viewfinder, that the right-most bright star above the moon was probably Capella. He centered it and we were ‘aligned’ again. Then we told the Autostar to ‘go to’ Saturn. The ETX got close, or close enough for us to find it through the light pollution (courtesy of the southeast sky and Leavenworth, Lansing and Kansas City), the increasing haziness and the tree limbs of the tall trees along the eastern edge of dad’s property.

We observed Saturn for fifteen or twenty minutes, trying various eyepieces and barlows. I had forgotten to check before leaving my laptop the location of Titan in relation to Saturn so I can’t confirm or deny whether I actually saw the moon Titan. What amazed me about this observation period was the ability to continue to observe Saturn through the telescope, even through tree limbs and clouds! I often couldn’t find Saturn with my naked eye, yet the telescope tracked it nearly flawlessly (so long as I didn’t use too high a magnification eyepiece).

We packed up the telescope once we could no longer see any stars with our eyes. Even the moon was shrouded in haze and thin clouds.

Once I returned home, I re-researched polar mounting the ETX on the field tripod. My dad had read and thought the latitude adjust on the tripod meant you had to subtract your current latitude from 90 degrees. So, instead of setting the adjustment equal to our latitude (of 39 degrees), we tried setting it to 51 degrees. I did notice that when the telescope attempted to find Arcturus, it was pointed northeast but down below Arcturus by quite a bit. So, I re-read the field tripod’s user manual (via PDF from Meade’s web site) when I got home and confirmed that you set the tripod to your actual latitude, no math necessary. We’ll just have to try it again later. We also plan to re-train the drives in the ETX-90 per instructions in the Autostar manual.

Sunset, Sunrise, New Moon, Old Stars

With the return to normal time (sans daylight savings time), the commute home last night included a typical Midwestern autumn sunset. Clear blue orange sky streaked with white vapor trails of the jets filled with people from the coasts who hop over the Heart of America and rarely pause to visit. I kept my eye out for the waxing moon’s sliver, since the new moon occurred around midnight Saturday. After the sun set I finally spied it, much higher in the sky than I anticipated.

Terry had dinner nearly ready when I returned from my errand to WalMart where I invested more money in Hallmark than I do the rest of the year combined. Terry had prepared pan friend pork chops with some glazed carrots that were yummy. I ate my sourdough as an appetizer, although three slices may have been a bit much. We retired to the great room to watch the new episode of House, after which Terry entered his food coma and I read myself to a similar somnolent state.

When I woke up this morning, I realized I had forgotten to contact my father, who was on the road to Virginia. My uncle had remembered to call his brother last night and confirmed he’d finally stopped forging east in Coventry, Virginia, only about three hours shy of their home. I call him this morning during my commute to work and we chatted for a few minutes as he once again headed east into the sunrise over the mountains in Virginia. I used the same sunrise to continue reading until the van arrived at work.

Another aspect of the change in time, I don’t see as many stars when I leave the house in the morning. By 6:15, the eastern sky is already a pale yellow, and I can barely see Sirius or the stars in Orion’s Belt. Some stratus clouds were also interfering with stargazing this morning.

If Only I Had a Retractable Roof Over My Bedroom

I couldn’t sleep. Not surprisingly, insomnia occurs more frequently as I age. Sometimes, an external force interferes with my snoozing, but I refuse to point fingers.

Laying in bed, staring at the vaulted ceiling in my bedroom, I wished I could wave a hand and temporarily retract the roof. Then I’d be mostly above the treeline and able to setup the telescope for more comfortable viewing.

Sighing, I slipped on my clothes at 3:30 a.m. and retreated downstairs to the vaulted great room, grabbed the telescope I left mounted to the tripod there and took it outside. I quickly realigned it roughly on Polaris and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I surveyed the northern sky, quickly found Cassiopeia and Perseus, but the light pollution from the Lansing Correctional Facility and the tall trees in my northern neighbor’s yard didn’t help find Comet Hartley 2. I think a field trip to Perry Lake may be in order for this weekend.

Turning to the southeast, I quickly spied Orion directly over my chimney. I aimed the telescope at Orion’s belt and may have seen a monochromatic glimpse of the Orion Nebula in his sword. Both Orion’s belt and sword contain many nebulae, but I need a darker sky to view them properly. I survey Rigel (beta Orion – brightest star in Orion (left foot) and sixth brightest in the night sky); Betelgeuse (alpha Orion – 2nd brightest star in Orion (right shoulder) and 12th brightest in the night sky); and, Bellatrix (aka ‘the Amazon star’ (left shoulder).

If you draw a line through Orion’s belt, it points to two of the brightest stars in the sky: Sirius (aka ‘the Dog star’ – the brightest star bar none and only 8.6 light years away) and Aldebaran (alpha Taurus and the 13th brightest star).

I turned the telescope to the west, where I found Jupiter peaking through the branches of one of my pine trees. Yep, it was still there and still had moons, although one of the four I observed earlier was hidden behind Jupiter.

I forgot my sweater so after about thirty minutes I brought the telescope back in and should probably retreat back to my quiet dark bedroom. Nah … my alarm goes off in two minutes (it’s now 4:58 a.m.)

Good morning!