It was a Saturday night and the sky was clear! The weather has been rather cloudy lately, the last time it was clear enough to take the telescope out was on the first of the year and then, I had to dodge clouds. I had looked at the moon, it was nearly full and its brightness had hidden most everything else. Still, I had gone out for awhile on the first day of the year.
ANYWAY, it was 9 days later and the sky was looking good. After the dry spells we experience here in Pittsburgh, all most anything looks good! The moon wasn’t due to rise until nearly dawn and I could see stars, lots of them! Those were the good things, a couple bad things hung over my head before I went outside though.
1. The neighbors had their porch light lit. I think they recently increased the wattage of it, looking over at their house, it was bright!
2. It was cold out there. I’m sure the wind chill was in the single digits. It was definitely glove weather!
These two things were rather easy to remedy. Of course you know how I feel about light pollution and light trespass. I had talked with the neighbors before about their light and they are usually very accommodating. Last night the lights in the house were off and I didn’t want to bother them so I went over and put a big cardboard box over their light. Other than ruining my night vision as I did it, it worked like a charm! Fifteen minutes later, after my irises opened up again, I was ready to start observing.
The second problem was even easier to take care of; I dug out my gloves and put them on. I limited my note taking to a minimum and only removed them when I changed eyepieces. Still it was cold so the session only lasted about an hour and a half.
I saw a beautiful bright meteor streaking through Cassiopeia shortly after I went outside. It went at least 20 or 25 degrees towards the west before it burnt out. I haven’t seen one like that in quite awhile!
I spent a lot of time gazing at The Orion Nebula, M42 ( a number given it by Charles Messier back in the 1700’s) The Orion Nebula is one of the nicest things you can look at in this section of sky. There is nebulosity, hundreds of stars visible in small scopes and so many other variances in brightness and textures you can spend hours if you so desire and still find new things you hadn’t noticed before. The seeing was fairly good and I was using a good eyepiece so I was able to see lots of stars that night. The nebula is located in the sword below Orion’s belt. You can see it by naked eye but it really reveals its wonders when you turn a scope towards it!
The Constellation of Orion was high in the sky when I went out and that helped my seeing also. When planets, stars or deep sky objects are near the horizon, the seeing is usually poor. The images shimmer and are blurry. The higher in the sky that the object you are observing is, the better!
Another idea to keep in mind is to take your time while observing. I try to remind people of that when sharing views through my scope, take your time, there is no hurry. The biggest problem is when the object moves out of the field of view! (My scope has no motor on it so I have to keep bumping it over to keep the object in view) The longer you look at something the more you see. There is also the chance that the seeing might improve for a few seconds. I’ve seen faint stars that “just weren’t there” by keeping watching! It is a great feeling when you spot something that is known to be difficult to see. I sat and watched for quite awhile.
I also visited our neighboring galaxy Andromeda, a mere 2 ½ million light years away. I drifted through the twins in Gemini, the Seven Sisters (The Pleiades) and a few other bright objects before the cold shut me down. I took the scope inside and wrote some notes in my log book and then went over to the neighbors house to retrieve my cardboard box.
It was nice and relaxing going outside into the dark night. All in all, it was a good day for astronomy! I started the day out by watching the space station drift overhead and ended it by visiting the stars beyond…yup, a good day!
1 comment:
Enjoyed the blog. I know what you mean about the light pollution. Same thing in my neighborhood. Don't need streetlights.
Frank D
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