Bill's Sky

 Our library ( The Darby Community Public Library ) has a small telescope available to check out. It is part of an outreach program by the Western Montana Astronomical Society . They supply small telescopes to several libraries in western Montana. The one in our library is an Edmunds Astroscan.    Telescope kit. Astroscan, 28mm and 12mm eyepieces, Rigel Quickfinder, Nightwatch  and Night Sky references and star charts. Red duffel bag to carry it all.  They are an older reflector telescope, with a design that originated back in 1976. The Edmund Scientific company used to be a ubiquitous supplier to technical and scientific hobbyists of all kinds, The Astroscan was designed as an entry level, easy to use telescope. The base is a ball and rests in a cradle with pads that allow it to be aimed easily, but it is balance so that it will stay put where it is aimed. There have been larger amateur built telescopes that use essentially this same type mount. It is a form of...

  Last night was the first time in over a month that I set up the telescope. My plan was to study  the moon. By the time I did a 2 star alignment however, it had just g one into the treetops on top of the hill to our west. The sky was very bright. The Moon was almost 19% illuminated. I had the SQM kit checked out from the library and got an average reading of 20.7.A lot of fainter stars and faint DSO's were washed out. I tried a couple of targets, and the goto was consistently off, slightly low and right. I redid the alignment using Sky-Align and it was much better. After that  I went t o Cassiopeia, specically gamma Cas. That is one of the AAVSO training stars , so I wanted to at least see if I could locate it and some comparison stars. With the 32mm eyepiece, only one star of similar apparent magnitude was in the field of view, at about the 7:30 position. Even though I haven't been doing any observing, I have been busy with astronomy related activities. I completed the ...

     I was thinking of setting up the telescope, since this looked like it would be the first clear night in a couple of weeks. I was pretty tired and needed to catch up on the AAVSO class , so I decided not to bother. However as everyone knows by now, the aurora forecast was very strong. It turned out to be t.he strongest solar event in 20 years! Given our experience from here with previous predictions I wasn't overly hopeful. I stepped outside about 22:00 MDT thinking I might be able to see a little of it to our north. My first reaction was that it was a good thing I hadn't bothered with the telescope. The skyglow was pretty bad and it looked like there was a lot of haze or high thin clouds, so only a few stars were visible. I took my small night vision scope out, hoping that might help me see it better than naked eye. Then I realized that the skyglow was the aurora, and it covered almost the entire sky! As I watched, more and more subtle structure became visible. The...

  The weather has been too cloudy since my last observation. There was one night that observation may have been possible, but I was too tired to set up that late.     Since this journal is about my astronomy journey, here are some of the things I have been doing to learn more.       I have been using the libraries inter-library loan to try out different atlases. The computer based atlases, such as Stellarium, are great. I also use the phone app version, or an app like "Star Walk" to locate alignment stars. This is actually helping me learn the naked eye sky better. However, I still want a paper atlas that I can use at the telescope, in part to help preserve what night vision I have. It is also often easier for me to visualize if the map is larger than my phone screen.     So far I have looked at " The Cambridge Star Atlas ", " Sky & Telescopes Jumbo Pocket Sky Atlas ", " Nightwatch ", and " The Observers Sky Atlas " by Karakosch...

   It dawned on me that I haven't updated this blog in quite a while. I have been making entries in my paper journal, and need to bring them over here. The paper journal stays up to date because I typically make some notes at the 'scope  and finish them up once inside before my memory gets too fuzzy. I was originally going to set up last night, since we had a clear night forecast. Unfortunately, the USFS has several controlled burns going so smoke turned the transparency to nothing.      Tonight started out clear, with the Moon at 97% full so I decided to focus on that. Concentrated on the SW quadrant trying t o locate some of the craters on the Lunar 100 checklist. Started with the 25mm eyepiece, then went t o the 17mm. Going to a smaller focal length eyepiece just magnified unsteady seeing. I was able to identify and observe Mare Nubium and craters Schickard and Schiller. Tycho is very easy to find, since it is visible from the rays with the naked ey...

                                                              31 March , 2024 (Easter) The night of 31 March started out partly cloudy, but started clearing up. I got set up and aligned using the 2-star alignment. I checked it by going to the Pleiades, and it was centered nicely. The sky was also pretty bright, even though the moon wasn't up yet. Seeing was good, and the transparency seemed about medium. I suspect there was more moisture in the air or smoke particles form small burns to account for the bright sky. The small light dome over town appeared somewhat hazy. In addition to the lights at the truss company, there was also one of the light standards at the rodeo arena or high school on. I suspect this light  interference will continue or get worse, since they are constructing a restaurant nea...

      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...