I stepped outside at a quarter past five o’clock to gauge the quality of the skies. Clear, but not as clear as yesterday’s crisp clean views of Venus, Jupiter, Orion and the waning Moon. Not that I complained. I keep the camera and tripod close to the front door so it’s just a matter of a minute or two before I can snap a couple of photos to share.
Waning Moon Near Venus (09/11/2012)Jupiter Near Taurus, Orion and the Dog Star (09/11/2012)
Both of these photos taken between 5:25 and 5:30 a.m. this morning, so here’s a star chart to help you identify the planets, stars and constellations from my location at that time looking east-southeast.
Tomorrow morning, the waning moon catches up to Venus in Cancer and as an extra treat, I plan to search for M44, the Beehive Cluster, found in the chest of that Crab constellation. This open cluster is visible to the naked eye and even more so to binoculars. Perhaps my camera, with the telephoto lens mounted, won’t be too shabby either.
Redundant title, but I felt the need to bewitch you by using the word ‘betwixt.’ When I stepped outside this morning, about ninety minutes before sunrise, I looked up and couldn’t believe the incredibly bright stars and planets I could see against a dark sky. Very unusual sight from my front steps. I even called my husband out to look at the gorgeous perfect visibility of the entire constellation Orion. We could even see all seven stars of the Pleaides, directly overhead. I couldn’t resist the siren call of my camera, so I went back inside, grabbed the tripod and the camera and took a half dozen photos.
Waning Moon Equidistant Between Venus and Jupiter (Monday 9/10/2012)
Waning Moon Between Jupiter and Venus (Sun 9/9/2012) – click image for larger view
I used the normal lens this morning to capture these three objects in one field of view. I also had to crank the camera back and tip it almost completely vertical, as Jupiter was almost directly overhead.
Waning Moon and Jupiter Close-up (click image for rest of album).
Fairly clear skies, so I didn’t stick around for sunrise.
I put an appointment on my calendar earlier this week with an alert to remind me to go chasing planets after sunset on Tuesday evening. I make sure to check Astronomy and Sky & Telescope magazines’ websites for their ‘The Sky This Week’ observing articles and place the interesting (and observable from my location) items on my calendar. Here’s the paragraph for Tuesday evening from Astronomy’s web site:
Tuesday, August 21 – Our trio of bright evening objects — Saturn, Mars, and Spica — forms a pretty equilateral triangle (5° on a side) in the southwestern sky after sunset. But the highlight of the scene tonight is a gorgeous crescent Moon that hangs just 4° below Mars. Binoculars provide the best view of this celestial gathering. Look closely and you’ll notice the objects’ different colors. The Moon’s color depends largely on conditions in Earth’s atmosphere and could be anywhere from white (under a dry, haze-free sky) to yellow or even slightly orange. Sunlight reflecting off Saturn’s clouds has a golden glow while Mars’ ruddy deserts cast an orange hue. Blue-white Spica generates its own light from a scorching surface nearly four times hotter than the Sun’s.
∞ ∞ ∞
Terry and Sean had retreated to the band room for rehearsal and I sat slogging my way through the 49th Parallel, a British WWII film released in the United States under the title The Invaders. I recorded it a couple of weeks ago off the TCM channel. It drags and I still haven’t finished it. So when my phone buzzed with the text message alert, I jumped, literally, at the chance to stop watching the film and start looking up at the sky.
I took my camera gear and got in the van. I couldn’t take the Bonneville because Sean’s car happened to be parked in front of the garage. I didn’t mind taking the van; it’s what I drive every weekday anyway. I left the house at 8:20, about fifteen minutes after sunset, so the western sky still shown with twilight. I could clearly see the bright waxing crescent moon, but could not yet see Saturn, Mars or Spica. I drove west and southwest from Lansing, trying to find a spot clear of trees on top of a hill to setup the camera.
I ended up driving almost an hour all over the middle of Leavenworth County and even through the small unincorporated town of Jarblo. I never did find a satisfactory location. I finally stopped in the parking lot of the High Prairie Church at the corner of 187th street and the end of Eisenhower Road. The church had blazing bright lights illuminating their building, but I parked far away at the north end of the parking lot and used the van as a shield. I took several photos with various settings for about ten to fifteen minutes. I took a few minutes to just look around at the night sky from this location, liking the clear 360 degree visibility (lack of trees and less light pollution, if you didn’t look towards the church building). I could clearly see the constellations Scorpius, Sagittarius, Cassiopeia, Ursa Major, but still only about half the stars in Ursa Minor. I could not yet see Pegasus as it still needed another hour or two to rise out of the east.
I packed up the camera gear and headed home, using Eisenhower Road to get back to Lansing. I parked the van, noting that Sean’s car still sat in the driveway. I returned to the living room, unpaused the 49th Parallel and again attempted to finish the film. Within five minutes, Terry and Sean came upstairs and Sean said his goodbyes. I asked Terry if he had even noticed that I’d been gone for an hour. He had that ‘deer in the headlights’ look that answered my question well enough.
I stopped my feeble attempt to finish the movie and instead switched to the season premiere of Top Gear, an episode featuring a battle between the three big American auto makers to produce a successor to the reigning but retiring police vehicle of choice: the Ford Crown Victoria. The Stig, driving a minivan, managed to evade all three Crown Vics, shaming the hosts (and the cars they were driving). That initial segment ended in a free-for-all demolition derby of the retiring behemoths. I made sure to Tweet the abuse to a friend who still owns (and loves) his Crown Victoria.
By the time we finished watching Top Gear, I realized I was up way past my bedtime. I retreated upstairs and crashed.
∞ ∞ ∞
I hit the snooze button a couple of times this morning, not happy at all with the shortened sleep. I made a strong pot of Irish Blend tea to take with me during the morning commute so I wouldn’t nod off and disrupt my riders with an accident or off-road excursion. I did remember to grab my camera’s memory card so I could download and review the photos I’d taken the previous evening.
Click photo for rest of album
I re-read the paragraph on the Astronomy.com web page and decided to test the equilateral triangle theory on my photos of Mars-Saturn-Spica. I used a nice clear plastic ruler to measure, on my laptop screen, the distance in centimeters between the three corners of the triangle. The distance between Saturn and Spica and Saturn and Mars appeared to be identical. But the distance between Mars and Spica was greater by 1.5 to 2 centimeters. So, technically, my photo did not confirm the observation of an imaginary equilateral triangle. Perhaps earlier in the day (or even the previous day), Mars might have been in the exact position to be equidistant visually from Saturn and Spica, but not last night at a quarter past nine o’clock.
I still hope to net Neptune this weekend, but my chances are looking slim. The weather forecast for the next few days includes thunderstorms. Ironic, that, since my next night to volunteer at Powell Observatory is this coming Saturday. This would be my third night of the public season, and if overcast, would make it two out of three times cloudy.
I couldn’t wait for midnight Friday night. The forecast for the weekend seemed unbelievable, especially after the scorching heat of the last month. Clear skies and mid to lower 80s for the high temperatures over the next several days. I came home from work to a grilled steak and baked potato dinner, prepared by Terry. Mmm-mmm good.
After dinner, Terry and I began reviewing the DVR play list and guide, deciding to delete many old recordings to free up some disc space. Our daughter called and chatted with us for about forty-five minutes. The conversation ended abruptly when her phone battery died.
For dessert, Terry blended a frozen raspberry lemonade. I read for a few minutes, while slowly sipping the drink (trying to avoid a brain freeze). I asked him to wake me up around midnight so I could scout the skies in search of the Andromeda galaxy and the planet Neptune. Apollo followed me upstairs to the bedroom to join me in my nap.
Terry woke me up just shortly after midnight. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and found my flip flops. I followed Terry back downstairs to the band room and walked out the patio door to the back yard. The skies were clear, if not what you’d call dark (why do my neighbors leave their porch lights on all night long?). I went back inside for one of my star charts and a pair of binoculars. I didn’t trust myself to lug the telescope outside in the dark, not being completely awake yet. A survey with the binoculars should be sufficient for my first attempt.
I walked out into my backyard, towards my one remaining pine tree and turned back around to face the east. What a difference a couple of hours makes! I could clearly see the Great Square of Pegasus hovering directly over my roof. In fact, my chimney seemed to be pointing a finger at the famous flying horse. I remembered what I’d read in the EarthSky post about finding the Andromeda galaxy and put what I’d learned to good use. With just a pair of mediocre binoculars, I easily found the smudge that is M31. Now I regretted not moving the XT8 outside before I took my nap.
I turned ninety degrees to the right and began scanning the southern skies. I can’t see most of the southern horizon, which is blocked by my neighbors tall trees and houses (and all the exterior lighting attached to them). I lose a good twenty if not thirty degrees of sky in all but one direction, to the southwest I can see a bit of horizon, but only through the even worse light pollution generated by the parking lot of a doctor’s office and the streetlights along Main Street (also known as K-7/US-73).
I needed to find the constellations Aquarius and Capricornus. The ecliptic passes through both of these constellations. Neptune swam the night skies somewhere between the two constellations on the invisible ecliptic course all the planets chart. The trouble in finding Neptune in this area of the sky comes from a lack of bright stars to anchor from for star hopping. I spent the next hour comparing the star atlas from my pocket guide to the stars I saw through the binoculars and eventually convinced myself I had found the southeastern tip of Capricornus. Just above those stars, I believe I found the two brightest stars in Aquarius, Sadalmelik and Sadalsuud, but those two stars were too high above the ecliptic and too far away in the field of view of the binoculars to find Neptune. I needed to do more research and next time use a telescope to help cut through the fog of light pollution.
After an hour, I returned inside and went back to bed, resolved to research better star charts in the morning.
I went back to Astronomy.com and re-read the article on Neptune, but I just couldn’t relate their star chart (shown above) to what I’d observed last night through the binoculars. I would need more magnification and a more steady mount to zoom in and match up the stars shown above to the field of view of the XT8.
I tried Sky and Telescope’s web page and found a better set of charts in a PDF format in their article about Uranus and Neptune visibility during 2012. I downloaded the document and will print it today to keep with the rest of my star charts.
Saturdays are always packed full of activities, so I’m hoping I’ll still have the energy tonight to make a second attempt at finding Neptune. My scouting trip showed me what I needed to overcome before I proceed with netting Neptune.
Very early Friday morning, I caught the waning moon approaching Jupiter and Aldebaran. You could draw a line from Venus to Moon and cross over or near Jupiter. The skies were clear and should stay clear throughout the day and into the night, with a forecasted high in the mid-80s, twenty degrees below what we’ve been experiencing for the past several weeks.
Friday at work was a whirlwind of meetings, including one held off site at another local law firm. I got home a bit early because one of my vanpool riders took the day off, but within fifteen minutes of getting home, my son and daughter-in-law arrived from their all-day road trip from North Texas. We visited with them for an hour and half, when they left to drive into Kansas City to spend the evening with several of their friends who still live in the area.
Terry cooked an excellent southern comfort food type dinner of chicken-fried minute steaks, organic green beans with turkey bacon, mashed potatoes and home-made white gravy. Too bad the kids didn’t hang around long enough to chow down with us. Terry and I let our food digest a bit, watching the Olympics until the skies darkened enough for some star gazing.
I grabbed the XT8 (affectionately known as ‘Dob’) and carefully carried it out to the lower backyard. This time I took a small table to put my charts on. I set my case of eyepieces on the ground. I brought out the Intelliscope handheld device to attempt an alignment. This device, unlike my ETX-90’s AutoStar, is only used to identify objects, not ‘go to’ them (since the XT8 does not have any motors). The Intelliscope can help you find objects with a warm/cold kind of seeking system. I still haven’t bought a stool to lean against, so my back aches a bit this morning. I did a two star alignment, finding and centering Arcturus first, then Vega.
I wanted to revisit the Double Double in Lyra to both confirm that I could find it by star hopping and to attempt to see the double within the double. I asked the Intelliscope to ID what I had centered in the eyepiece and it claimed I’d found the Crab Nebula. Hmmm. That’s in the constellation Taurus, which isn’t visible until early morning hours in the east. I must have done something wrong in the alignment process. I powered off the Intelliscope device and made a note to myself to re-read the manual in the morning. Since I’d already found Vega, I spent several minutes comparing my star atlas to what I was seeing in the finderscope. I found Epsilon Lyrae and observed it with 26mm, 15mm, 9mm and a 2x barlow (using the 26mm and 15mm). Despite the apparent clearness of the skies, I did detect some haziness and thin stratus clouds overhead. That may have inhibited my ability to split the doubles within the doubles.
I hopped over to Albireo in Cygnus, just to make sure I could find it again without referring to my star atlas. I used a trick I had read about from some artists who do astronomical sketching where you defocus the stars, especially doubles, to discern their different colors. I did this while observing Albireo and I could clearly see the red and blue for each star in the double. I stretched my back for a few minutes and stared off to the northeast, at Cassiopeia, which I could clearly see as a distinctive ‘W’ shape. I could not see the constellation Perseus, but I did see one or two meteors radiating from the space between Cassiopeia and where Perseus should have been visible (but wasn’t because of the haze and light pollution from the prison just north of my location).
I returned to the scope and began a star hop around Lyra in search of M57, also known as the Ring Nebula. This was a test, for me, not only of my ability to find this fuzzy smoke ring, but also of an 8-inch telescope’s ability to cut through the obstacles inherent at my closest observing site (my backyard). I surprised myself. I found the nebula, quicker than I thought I would, and I even saw it through the finderscope. It probably helped that Lyra was almost straight up above me and the telescope, meaning I had less atmosphere to peer through. Using averted vision, with the 9mm, I could clearly see the ring. I used the background stars to focus, because you can’t really focus well on a smudge that’s fuzzy and faint.
Since I found and saw a nebula with the XT8, I wanted to see if I could find a globular cluster next. And I just happened to know where one was. M13 in the ‘armpit’ of Hercules (see chart above) happened to be overhead, somewhere between Altair and Arcturus. I had some trouble locating the stars that make up Hercules with my naked eye. I took several minutes, stretching my back, to peer overhead, but towards the west, and Arcturus. Eventually, the star dots connected in my mind’s eye and I found the constellation. I oriented the XT8 to the general vicinity where I thought M13 would be. I think I saw it through the finderscope, although I can’t remember specifically. Using the 26mm eyepiece, I centered the globular cluster in my field of view and proceeded to observe this large dense cluster for several minutes with various magnifications.
I stared off into the northeast again, still trying to find Perseus and also Pegasus. If I could see the Andromeda Galaxy (also known as M31), I would achieve a triple crown of astronomical observing from my backyard with the XT8 (1: nebula; 2: globular cluster; 3: galaxy). I spent nearly a half an hour, roaming around my backyard, changing my point of view and line of sight to the northeast and east. I found Cepheus, but no matter how hard I squinted or averted my eyes, I could not clearly identify the box that makes up the body of Pegasus. Frustrated, and with an aching back, I decided to call it a night at about half past eleven o’clock.
I returned the telescope to the band room and replaced all the dust caps. I hugged my hubby, for he had brought me a refreshing freshly made strawberry lemonade to enjoy while bending over the telescope for hours. Off to bed and sleep, at least until the dogs started barking when Derek and Royna returned home (sometime after midnight and before five – not exactly sure as I tried to sleep through the commotion).
My alarm only fires off on weekdays, but most days I wake up fifteen minutes early. Not Saturday morning though. When I cleared the sleep from my eyes and checked the clock on my cell phone, it read 5:45 a.m. and I could already tell the eastern horizon was brightening. I grabbed the tripod and camera and went out to the driveway to take a photo of the Moon approaching Jupiter.
Waning Moon Approaching Jupiter (Sat morning Aug 11, ’12)
If I happened to live in the Pacific, today I would be able to observe the moon occulting Jupiter. But I won’t be too disappointed, since I can observe the moon occulting Venus next Monday afternoon, between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. I plan to take a pair of binoculars and my camera equipment with me to work. I will setup on the top of the parking garage and hope I have a clear line-of-sight through the buildings to the west to see the occultation as it occurs.
But tonight I plan to find a dark sky location and take in as many meteors as I can, raining down from Perseus. I better take a nap this afternoon and set an alarm for one o’clock Sunday morning. Don’t want to miss the best meteor show of the year!
I fell asleep amid visions of rainbows and towering gilded sunsets dancing in my head. I woke up to clear skies this morning. Clear enough that I drug the tripod out and stuck the camera on it for a few minutes during the five o’clock hour before the sun began bleaching the eastern horizon.
Jupiter still hugged close to Aldebaran, but the most surprising sight for me was Orion visible, appearing to be lying down on the eastern horizon. I could see most of the stars in that constellation, but the moon and Venus shone significantly brighter.
As the week wears on, the moon will pass by or through the two planets. I plan to take more early morning photos until the new moon. I am especially looking forward to the opportunity presented Sunday morning, when I may be able to capture Mercury in addition to the objects shown above.
I should probably take a nap Saturday or go to bed early, and then get up after midnight and drive somewhere, probably northwest of my home, to a darker sky location. Then, I should be able to see more meteors streaking through the sky, than if I lounged around in my backyard, peering through the local light pollution and leafy tall trees. But I doubt I’ll be able to take a nap, because I am also expecting out-of-town visitors for the weekend.
Just before one o’clock, I took a break from prepping the purple bedroom for ceiling painting and went down to the lower patio to try some solar observing with the XT8. The telescope was still in the shade (barely) but could be tilted into the sunlight out of the shadow of the house. This created the ideal observing site, for me at least, as I could stand mostly in the shade and still use the scope to observe the sun.
I removed the dust caps and installed the solar filter on the end of the tube. I selected a 28mm eyepiece, which would show me the entire solar disk. I looked down the tube to the ground and used the silhouette of the scope to orient on the sun (the smaller the shadow, the better aligned). Bingo! Found our closest stellar neighbor on the first try.
I could clearly see six sunspots. I tried the 15mm and the 9mm, but became disappointed in my inability to achieve a crystal clear focus when I zoomed into one of the sunspots. I nudged Terry away from his computer in the band room to see what he thought of the various eyepieces and how well they focused on the sunspots. He seemed to have the same experience I did. The 28mm provided the best and crispest view.
Sunspots for Sunday 8/5/2012 courtesy NASA’s SOHO site (click image for more information)
After a few minutes out in the heat, I decided enough was enough and brought the telescope back into the house, carefully putting away the solar filter in its protective cover and box.
I got stood up on my second date with Dob thanks to the clouds. I just wish the clouds had produced some much needed rain to relieve the extended drought Kansas and the rest of the Midwest is suffering under this summer. I woke myself up in the middle of the night, checked the night sky and could barely see the moon for the clouds, so stargazing was a bust.
Even later, when I work up again (around four thirty), I peered towards the eastern horizon and could almost see Jupiter and Venus through the thinning clouds. An hour later, I checked out the back side of the house and I could clearly see the moon. The clouds had left.
I eyed my small ETX-90, huddling in ‘time-out’ in the corner behind the couch. I thought about the XT8 downstairs in the band room. I debated with myself which one would be easiest to setup outside to observe the moon after the sunrise. The Meade is lighter, but requires the battery pack, Autostar hand controller and alignment. The Orion I could just carry outside and pull into position. The Orion won that coin toss handily.
I setup on the lower patio next to the hot tub. I grabbed my case of eyepieces and my Sky & Telescope Moon Map. I wanted to find a couple of more lunar features listed on the Astro Quest. With a 25mm eyepiece inserted into the focuser drawtube, I centered the moon in the field of view. Then I checked the finderscope’s alignment and fine-tuned it to match what I could see through the telescope.
Sea of Tranquility (courtesy Wikipedia)
I easily located the first feature: the Sea of Tranquility.
I switched out eyepieces, using a 15mm and a 9mm. I attempted to use a 4mm, but could not get a clear focus or possibly enough light to discern any lunar features. I returned to the 15mm to do some close observations of the Julius Caesar crater.
I eventually tried to find two other features: the Alpine Valley and the Straight Wall, but I will need to wait for the terminator to create shadows in those areas before I can confirm the observation.
I left the XT8 outside, putting all the dust covers and caps back in place. I plan to take some time this afternoon and do some solar observing as well, since we are at the peak of the sun’s eleven year sunspot cycle.
Friday evening I had my first opportunity to really dig in and learn about the telescope I borrowed from my astronomy club. A week ago, Terry and I returned to Kansas City to meet one of the club members at the Warko observatory on the roof of Royall Hall on campus at UMKC. I put in a request to borrow an eight inch Dobsonian telescope (shown at left) to compare and contrast its light gathering abilities with my own ETX-90 (a Maksutov-Cassegrain type telescope). I had high hopes since the aperture on the XT8 is more than twice as big. On the other hand, the ETX-90 is lighter. I drove the van, having hidden the middle set of seats in the subfloor, to make the initial transport of the telescope as easy as possible.
Fast forward an entire week to another Friday evening. After a quick rather disappointing dinner at the local Dairy Queen, Terry and I returned home to separate activities: he to a strings-only practice for one of his bands and me to setting up the loaner scope.
Orion SkyQuest XT8 base
I moved the base into the great room (so called because it’s the biggest room in the house and has a high vaulted ceiling with a floor-to-ceiling corner fireplace). I then re-read the instruction manual, paying close attention to the section dealing with placing the optical tube on the base. The tube weighs just a bit over twenty pounds (the base is a couple of pounds heavier). I picked up the tube, holding it vertically, and rested it gingerly on the bumper stops. I inserted the tension and retaining knobs per the directions and then tested the altitude and azimuth mobility. The base seemed to stick a bit, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome with some nudging.
I attached the finderscope to the optical tube, but did not attempt to adjust it until later, when the tube would be outside and I could find an object to orient on a suitable distance away from my site. I removed the dust cover cap for the tube and for the eyepiece in anticipation for the next phase: collimation
When the mirrors are properly aligned, the view down the focuser drawtube should look like the graphic above (for the XT8 telescope).
I peered down the optical tube, past the secondary mirror and its spider support system at the large eight inch mirror nestled in the bottom. A small faint circle was inscribed on the surface of the mirror, assumedly in the exact center. I stepped around to the side of the tube and stared down through the eyepiece opening, where I could clearly see my own eye and the small circle mentioned above. My pupil and the circle did not line up exactly, as they should have (see diagram above left).
Upon further reading, and searching through the boxes and bags that the telescope came in, I could not find the collimation cap referenced in the instruction manual: “This cap is a simple cap that fits on the focuser drawtube like a dust cap, but has a hole in the center and a reflective inner surface. The cap helps center your eye so that collimation is easier to perform.” I forged ahead, hoping I could get the mirror aligned ‘close enough’ for some test observing later that night.
I followed the instructions carefully, reading and re-reading and comparing what I was seeing through the focuser drawtube with the examples provided in the manual. I decided the secondary mirror didn’t need any adjustments, just the primary mirror. The locking thumbscrews on the back of the mirror were already loosened, so I began experimenting with small turns of the larger thumbscrews to adjust the tilt of the primary mirror. I eventually got the small circle in the middle and tightened the locking thumbscrews down. Now to move the unit outside to align the finderscope.
I tilted the tub vertical, grasped the convenient handle on the back of the base with my right hand, keeping the tube vertical with my lefthand. I walked slowly out the back door on the patio and down to the lower level of my back yard, away from (as much as that is possible) the surrounding trees (mine and my neighbors). I needed to find an object about a quarter of a mile away to align the finderscope. Because I live in a valley (Fawn Valley to be precise), everything, including the ground, is up from my backyard, and most of the horizon is blocked by houses and trees. I could barely see the road leading up the hill to where City Hall stands, a couple of blocks to my south. That would have to do. I quickly and easily got the finderscope dialed in.
Now, I had to wait for darkness to fall. I brought out my eyepieces (the three that came with the scope I left in the box with the solar filter) so they and the scope could reach a temperature equilibrium with the outside environment. I went back inside and reviewed the Astro Quest observing award object list and my sky atlas to determine a short list of objects to observe before the moon rose high enough to wash out the night sky.
At half past nine, I went back outside, knowing I’d be able to find Saturn and Mars in the southwestern sky. I did and quickly tried nearly every eyepiece I had, from a 30 mm down to a 9 or a 4 mm. I doubled a couple of those using a 2x barlowe lens. I could clearly see the Cassini division in the rings, but did not try to discern any cloud variances on Saturn’s surface.
I pointed the scope at Mars next, but again, while a bright ruddy object, the red planet still seemed just the size of a pinhead, no matter how much magnification I attempted to throw at it. I guess I need to ask some club members for assistance with seeing well enough to find the polar ice caps. Perhaps I’m just too late in the year, since Mars now sets an hour or two after sunset and I’m looking through so much thick, dirty, hazy, humid air.
I could tell the moon had risen, but still remained low in the east, hidden behind houses and my tall pin oak in my front side yard. My observing goals for the evening included three multiple star systems. The first one I had actually observed when I first got the ETX-90 back in October 2010. The middle star of the handle of the Big Dipper is actually an optical double star, Mizar-Alcor. Terry joined me in observing this popular duo.
My second observing goal could be found in the constellation Lyra, containing the brightest star in the summer sky, Vega, and one of the three stars that form the asterism commonly referred to as the Summer Triangle. Finding Vega turned out to be easy. Correctly adjusting the movement of the telescope when aimed directly overhead, not so easy. I had to run back inside to find my red flashlight and grab my reading classes and sky atlas before attempting to star hop the very short distance from Vega to Epsilon Lyrae, also known as the Double Double. In hindsight, I also had forgotten to confirm how many degrees field of view the finderscope provided me (five degrees from the spec page of the instruction manual read this morning). Because of the light pollution around my house and the rising nearly full moon, I could only see Vega and the beta and gamma stars of Lyra. I could clearly see a triangle in the finderscope with one of the three stars Vega for sure, but which one was the Double Double? I may have observed it last night, but I’m not entirely sure. I plan to retry tonight, provided the predicted thunderstorm activity fades before ten o’clock or soon after.
Albireo (courtesy Wikipedia)
My final observing objective also appeared almost directly overhead, this time in the constellation Cygnus. The head of the swan (Beta Cygni also known as Albiero) is a striking colorful double star that I easily found and observed for a few minutes. Terry also took a quick look, but opted to let the mosquitoes and chiggers feast on me instead of him. Since the moon would soon escape the defense put up by my pin oak, I asked Terry to help me carry the telescope back into the house while I held the red flashlight overhead to light our path.
I put all the eyepieces back in their cases and all the dust caps on all the openings of the telescope. I recorded two of my three observations on my Astro Quest sheets. Terry, Apollo, Lexy and I all retired to bed and left the moon to play by itself through the short summer night.
Some pros and cons about the Dobsonian telescope: I like the improved light gathering capabilities. I love the finderscope (it’s a very good quality one), but would love it more if it had a right-angle viewer. I did not like the height of the eyepiece on the side of the tube. I will need to get a portable stool to lean against. My back is still aching this morning from the constant bent over position I found myself in last night.
Overall, I enjoyed my first foray among the stars with the SkyQuest. I did not use the Intelliscope handheld device that would have assisted in identifying and locating objects. I will save that adventure for another night, possibly at a darker site.
