Bill's Sky

   Just went out for a quick session. I haven't been able to observe Jupiter since opposition. It was very bright (as always) not long after sunset. I started out with the 32mm Plossl, then the 17mm Plossl. The 10 and 8 were to unstable, so I tried the 25mm with a 2x Barlow. That gives an effective eyepiece focal length of 12.5mm, yielding a magnification of 162.56x. The view was still wavering some, but had periods of stillness. This turned into one of the best nights viewing Jupiter in quite a while.Besides the north and south equatorial bands, I was able to pick out faint bands between them and the poles. There was also a very obvious bright white band just under the south equatorial band. When the seeing would steady down  could just make out some of the turbulence along the equatorial bands. More so in the north than the south band. Seeing came and went throughout the session.  At its best it  was about an Antoniadi III. Transparency was probably a 3-4 out ...

  Just stepped outside to see how the sky looked, and  Orion was  in the southwest. Got out the binoculars instead of messing with the telescope. I was pretty amazed at how well this showed up in the 12x50 binoculars. Seeing was pretty steady, and transparency just so-so. There were also scattered clouds around. M42, the Orion Nebula, is one of the most photographed objects, by both amateurs and professionals. The Horsehead Nebula that has been shown a lot since Hubble Space Telescope imaged it is actually part of this complex Original sketch was made on white paper in the sketchbook I am using for a journal/log book. I then take a picture of it with  my phone camera and email that to myself. I download and save the image in a folder for astronomy sketches. The file names typically include the object and date. Those downloaded images are then inverted using graphics software. With this new computer, I have been using GIMP to perform the inversion.

  Bulliardis and area . North is up and slightly to the right in this sketch. This is the view through the eyepiece, so East is actually to the left. The sketch was made with pencil on white paper in a sketchbook, photographed, and then colors inverted using GIMP . I was able to get out and observe for about an hour, The Moon is 9.9 days old, and about 75% illuminated. No plan other than to find some interesting areas and then identify them. I started at the southern end of the terminator and slowly worked my way north. I was able to identify several features using Sky and Telescope's Mirror Image Field Map of The Moon. this map is really handy. it is large and waterproof, but folds into quadrants. The mirror image matches the view through the eyepiece for my Celestron 8SE with a diagonal. I started out using the 32mm Plossl eyepiece, moved to the 17mm and finally 13mm. The craters I identified were Clavius, Blancanus, Scheiner, Klaproth, Moretus,  Montanari, and Wilhelm. I al...

 I finally have the C8SE set up on a permanent pier and covered with a Telegizmos 365 cover. The months of October and November have unfortunately provided proof that the cover lives up to its reputation. There have only been three possible nights for observing and I was unable to take advantage of them. The forecast for November 11 was looking like it might be possible to do some observing but it started clouding up enough I decided not to try. There was also a possibility of the Aurora showing up. I went out and looked just after dark, but didn't see any. Later in the evening I got an email from the Western Montana Astronomical Association that the Aurora was visible north of us. The clouds had cleared enough to get a view of most of the sky, except south. I went out again and the Aurora was covering most of the north and northeastern sky. There were areas that had a pink color visible. These waxed and waned, sometimes showing almost red color to the naked eye. In images taken w...

 There were four targets fro "Turn Left At Orion"  that I wanted to try for this night. M92, M56, M39, and the double star Albireo. By the time I was aligned and ready to observe, I  only could observe M56 for a short time before it went behind the hills and trees to the west. I moved over to M39 . This is an open cluster in  Cygnus. I spent quite a bit of time looking at it, using 32mm and 25mm Plossl eyepieces. I wasn't able to positively identify it at the time. The next morning I looked it up and was in fact in the right spot. Unfortunately, I didn't think to sketch it since I wasn't sure at the time. Next I moved to M92 , a globular cluster in  Hercules. It is approximately 27,000 light years away and contains about 350,000 stars. It is what is referred to as a metal poor cluster, which means it contains few elements heavier than Hydrogen or Helium. I spent about 10 minutes just observing and trying different eyepieces to see more detail. I spent 10-15 min...

      August was pretty much a bust for observing. On many of the days the sky would start out clear and then by mid afternoon clouds would start building, and not dissipate until well after midnight. Thunderstorms and lightening with high fire danger sparked a lot of  (thankfully) smaller wildfires that were out or controlled quickly. There were two large fires south of us about 30-40 miles that kept the sky smoky for a lot of the month. An occasional thunderstorm would clear it for a day or so. The few clear nights we did get, I didn't bother setting up the telescope, but would go out just naked eye observing or maybe carry binoculars out with me. I did observe M31 with the binoculars a couple of times.  These nights helped preserve what sanity I still possess.        Tonight was different. The sky was clear, but transparency wasn't real great. NELM was probably 3-4.  I had done a small astronomy presentation the night before at the ...