Observation Report, 18 March 2024

     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 enough to wash out many of the fainter DSOs. I did also want to try one DSO, M1, The Crab Nebula. I knew it might not be bright enough to show up, but wanted to try for it anyway.

    The Moon is waxing gibbous at about 60% full. It is bright enough that there are very defined dark shadows, and I can almost read TLAO by it. I did a Sky Align procedure, using Sirius and Mizar. I went back to Sirius as a check on it's accuracy, and it was almost dead on. On a whim I tried M42 , The Orion Nebula,  as another test for accuracy. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible even with a full Moon. Using the 25mm eyepiece the nebula just fit in the FOV. That eye piece gives a magnification of about 81x. I could easily see three of the central stars, with a fourth just barely visible. Seeing was very steady and transparency was surprisingly good . Even with the bright Moon reducing contrast, a faint bluish tint was discernible.

At some point the scope froze for some unknown reason and I had to redo alignment. I used 2-star align, again with Sirius and Mizar. This time for some reason, it wanted to be slightly low and left of the target. By judging against M42, I knew how far off it was. I made thtee attempts to locate M1, each time using goto to get in the vicinity, then scanning back and forth. I was not able to locate it, so it's on my list for another night.

    I moved mack to M42. For some reason I hadn't looked at this target with this telescope yet. I last looked at it many years ago with the Seikanon 4.5" reflector with .965 diameter eyepieces, probably the 20mm orthoscopic. It is such an obvious easy target, talked about and photographed so much, that I think I just avoided it while I tried for more difficult objects. Boy was I wrong.When people talk about M42, they tend to use superlatives such as "breathtaking."  It is. After looking with the 25mm eyepiece, I changed to the 32mm, just for the wider FOV. The 32mm didn't really reveal any more of the nebula than was visible in the 25mm. It is likely that the Moon washed out some of the fainter feature, especially at the extremities. I wanted to see how good a look I could get of the central core, so used the 17mm eyepiece, then added the 2x Barlow. I sketched the core area using that eyepiece combination, getting more detail as I observed longer.

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-   The rest of the time was spent on the Moon primarily using TLAO for nights 7-8 and 9-10 as references and Nortons 2000 as a secondary reference. I used the 25mm eyepiece to orient myself and identify some major landmarks.  I initially thought of Copernicus, but it was still beyond the terminator. I decided to try to identify crater Manilius. It is on the observing list, and from from the references I thought it might be a good one to sketch. I searching for it I spent quite a bit of time looking at the Appennines and the gap between them and the Carpathians. The Carpathians were also just inside the terminator. I identified craters Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Plato, Autolycus, and Aristicus. Mare Serenitatis and Tranquilitatis are obviously large visible regions. I switched to the 13mm eyepiece with the 2x Barlow to look at more detail in the region along the Appenines. Paulus Putredinis ("swamp") is on the sunward side of Mare Imbrium, next to the Hadley Rille and crater Hadley. The Apollo 15 Landing site is in the valley just slightly N of the crater. 

    since I was unsure of locating Manilius, I decided to practice sketching by focusing on Archimedes and it's two companions. I ended the session at about 00:15.

 



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