Good Night at the Observatory

Tonight's public night featured the Moon and we had at least 80 people. Folks were very enthusiastic and why not... the views were great, especially for young children because the Moon was very high in the sky favoring short people looking through the eyepiece. Early arrivals also saw Jupiter, latecomers also saw Luna at 122 magnification and some of the stars of the Pleiades.

A mother visited again with her young daughters... one a burgeoning scientist. They were the last to leave the grounds. The young lady was enthralled by our views of the Moon, to be sure, but also loved the blue stars of the Pleiades. As they left I also pointed out a very few major constellations that had great stories in Greek mythology... something her school class is studying: Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, Orion.

Before heading home I checked out another potential site for a new observatory. The sky there was much "wider," being unobstructed by property line treelines. The ground was very wet, however, giving some worry. An exciting location, otherwise.

It was a good night at the Observatory.

Not sleeping in

It's a Saturday morning, a time when I normally sleep in; I need a bit of "catching up" at the end of most weeks. Looking out of the south-facing bedroom window I could see the sky had gone from thin overcast at bedtime last night to glorious clarity this morning. I went downstairs, grabbed my binoculars, and headed out to the stoop for a quick look 'round. What a nice sky, indeed! My old friend Orion was dominating the southwestern sky so I started with the belt -- the nebula (M42) glowed with glittering stars all around. Then I explored the vicinity of a very bright star to Orion's left... is that Sirius? Yes, indeed, with the beautiful open cluster M41 to his south: the heart of the "big dog." The sky was clear enough, even through the neighboring bare trees, that I could see a triangle to the southeast of M41; I later learned that was Canis Major's rump! North of Sirius was another, less impressive, open cluster M50. Of course no clear binocular autumn sky would be complete without a visit with the Seven Sisters: The Pleiades or M45. So clear and diamond-like the stars this morning. In my slippers, I stepped out on the sidewalk a bit to see if I could find Saturn. Yup! Not a good handheld binocular target, Saturn's distinctive golden cast was a giveaway. Neighbors' lights and hunger for breakfast brought me back indoors but I'd had a bit of pre-dawn stargazing which helped me feel better about not sleeping in.

Library sidewalk astronomy

Last night (Nov. 11) the astronomy club offered sidewalk astronomy experiences to visitors at the Westlake Porter Public Library. It was a chilly evening with breezes of around 15 MPH as we were setting up but the sky was clear. It was clear, at least, until we were ready to begin observing -- that's when clouds moved-- in making it very difficult for us to get stellar alignments for our computerized telescopes. No connectivity problems with my telescope and, had we a good alignment, the telescope would have performed exceedingly well. I think 6-inch is improving with age. The offering ran from 7:00 to 9:00 PM and, as time passed, the clouds did as well. Seeing, however, was only fair. Still we were able to offer decent views of Jupiter and observe Io disappear as it converged with Jupiter's limb and began a transit of the planetary disk. My scope performed well at 200X on Jupiter though the atmosphere kept the view softer than it might otherwise have been; it is very rare for me to run the scope at that power and reassuring to see how well it worked. We were also able to view --though not very clearly-- the Ring Nebula (M57), Uranus, and Neptune. Over the course of the evening we entertained around 30 viewers and we four astronomers were very eager to get packed up and warmed up at the end.