Bill's Sky

   Just a quick note: I am way behind on posting my observations. that means these are posted way after the observation and notes were made in my journal! Venus and Jupiter are getting low in the western sky, and supposedly visible even in daylight. I thought I might be able to catch a quick look before they went behind the trees, so at about 19:00MDT I took the 12x50 binoculars out for a quick look, but was unable to see either one. However, the Moon was about 22% full. Went back out at about 20:45MDT. I did a solar system alignment on the Moon and put the DSLR on the piggyback mount for the 8SE to get a few pictures. The camera is a Canon EOS Rebel T7, using a 75-300mm lens. The first image is at 75mm, just to get a good general idea of the sky. There were some high thin clouds. The second image is with the 300mm zoomed in. Unfortunately, I didn't think to write down all the info on the settings. Just got too excited I guess.      Looking at the Moon in daylig...

    The sky cleared off nicely tonight. NELM is about 4-5. I can just make out all seven stars of the little dipper. The  There does appear to be some particulates or a little moisture in the air. The skyglow is pretty bright, with bright light domes from Hamilton and Darby. I set up about 22:45MDT and did a SkyAlign using Vega, Polaris, and Spica.    My first target was M53 , a globular cluster in the constellation Coma Berenices . Using the 25mm Plossl eyepiece (81x) it appears as just a small fuzzy ball. Not able to make out any individual stars. There is a small triangular asterism just below and right of the custer in the eyepiece. Adding the 2x barlow gives 162x and I can occasionally make out some indiviual stars on the clusters periphery using averted vision. At this magnification the core is fairly bright and fades out to the edge. One of the things that makes M53 interesting is that it is one of the furtest known globular clusters.NASA shows it as 59,7...

     I am trying to take advantage of as many clear nights this year as I can. That doesn't always mean they are the best for observing, but just getting out and trying to learn and see more is very gratifying in itself. 2 May 2026  2 May was a day past the full Moon. I was curious about how bright it actually made the sky so I checked out the Starry Sky kit from the library to use the SQM (Sky Quality Meter). These are made by Unihedron and measure the sky in magnitude/arcsecond. It is an objective measurement as opposed to the subjective Bortle Scale that is widely used by amateur astronomers. The SQM uses the same magnitude scale that is used for stars. Therefore, the higher the number, the less bright the sky background is. The brighter the background sky glow, the lower the number. At 22:15 MDT the Moon was  about 40 degrees above the horizon. Standing in a spot shaded from moonlight by a tree, I got an average reading of  19.17 with the ...

The full Moon is tomorrow, tonights is at 98% full. I haven't bothered to look at it because this full there is low contrast with no shadows. Most features are harder to make out. Common wisdom is that there really isn't much to see like this. However, I had read that sometimes when the surface is this bright you can see hints of the faint mineral colors. Professional Astronomers use filters and processing images to bring out these faint colors.             " Even if the moon really were made of green cheese it probably wouldn’t look this bizarre. Still, this mosaic of 53 images was recorded by the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft as it passed near our own large natural satellite in 1992. The pictures were recorded through three spectral filters and combined in an exaggerated false-color scheme to explore the composition of the lunar surface as changes in mineral content produce subtle color differences in reflected light. Image credit: NASA/JPL "...

  Got set up about 22:15 MDT. IJust did a SkyAlign using three bright stars. First was Arcturus, but I forgot to note the other two. That's something I need to be sure to do from now on. NELM was about 3.5-4. Stars not twinkling very much st zenith, but twinling more as you looked lower. Transparency was about 3/5 and got worse as the night progressed. I initially thought it was possibly moisture in the air, but humidity was only about 34% and dew neve formed on any surfaces. It turned out to be smoke haze. By 08:00 the next morning the smoke in the valley was thick enough to smell and there was a haze over everything. The Moon was about 17% waxing. I wanted to observe it before it went behind the trees to  the west so it was my first target. I started out using the 25mm Plossl eyepiece (81x), and worked north along the terminator from the south edge. After getting a good overall view I went to Mare Crisium. While scanning around it a detail I hadn't noticed before caught my e...

I first went out about 21:15MDT to see what the sky was like since the forecast wasn't too promising.  I thought I saw a possible Aurora to the north and northwest. I got the night vision scope out to see and it turned out to just be skyglow on some thin clouds.  It was about an hour after sunset and several hours until moonrise. The sky glows from Hamilton (about 16 miles north) and Darby (1 mile south) were quite a bit larger than usual. There were also high thin clouds to the west but Jupiter was still clear of them. The stars weren't twinkling very much at zenith, but transparency wasn't very good. NELM was about 4. Haze made larger than usual halos around lights on the truss company just under half a mile away and on lights in town a mile away. I would rate the transparency about 3/5. I decided to try it anyway. A quick note about those lights. They are south of me and the walls of my observatory are 5ft tall so I can get as close to the southern horizon as practical f...