Bill's Sky

      My friend Doug had read about Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks and asked if I could see it. I was doubtful since I had read it is fairly low in the west. Our hill blocks off up to 30degrees above the horizon. Using the Sky Tonight app on my phone, I was able to see where it would be in the sky. By backing up almost to our pump house, i could catch it just above the trees with my 12x50 binoculars. I was able to see a small fuzzy ball with a very faint green tint. No tail was visible. The time was about 20:30 MDT. just a few minutes later it went behind the trees. Given it's appearance, it is easy to understand why Messier wanted to make his list of DSOs (Deep Sky Objects). It would be very easy to confuse them at first observation. If you didn't already know what it was, it would take several nights tracking it to verify that it wasn't a comet.        My rough plan for the night was to work on Moon targets from the observing list, since it was bright e...

       We finally had a clear night so I could get in at least a little observing. I really wanted to get a chance to use my new sketching tools, I took the pad of black paper, white and grey Prismacolor pencils, and some regular sketching pencils to use in my journal.     I was able to start observing around 21:45MDT. I used the SkyAlign alignment process. For some reason the goto function was consistently off low and left. Using the ed dot finder brought targets into the field of view (FOV).          The Moon was at about 39% full and already pretty bright, high in the west. Transparency I would rate as about a 6 out of 10, and seeing was pretty steady. Since the light from the moon was washing out a lot of stars, and I am still working on my Lunar list, I decided to observe the moon first. I settled on the group of craters Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharina. Theophilus is the northernmost, then Cyrillus, then Catharina...