09/15/2008
After a couple of years slowly gathering the information and putting it into what (I hope) is a usable format, I was finally able to post the Collinder's Catalog of Open Star Clusters on the Cloudy Nights website. You can find it by following the link of the same title in the Favorites list to the right of this entry.
NOTE: The entry ô¼Norm in the catalog is a misrendering of "mu Normae." What you should see there is the Greek letter Mu followed by the abbreviation for the constellation Norma.
My thanks to Nancy Thomas for her assistance in getting this thing off the ground.
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08/05/2008, Tucson AZ
I took a break a little while ago to wander around in the Monsoon heat and humidity, and somewhat paradoxically, to get a cup of coffee. (A hot beverage in an air conditioned building not being that much of a contradiction.) On my way back I glanced up to check on the afternoon cloud build up. You see, this time of year in Arizona thunderstorms powered by convection are commonplace, and as humid as it was, I assumed there would be clouds blooming as I watched. And sure enough, the blue sky between the clouds that had already popped up was filling with gauzy streamers of vapor. It thickened and brightened and became a small cloud that slowly swelled in size as I watched. I never tire of this show, and look forward to it (and the storms and rain) every summer, even though it means moon watching is a moot point.
Tracing the edge of the growing cloud, I suddenly spotted something very familiar, with a solid, curved edge that no cloud can shape. It was the three day old moon, the same color as the clouds and just visible against the hazy blue midafternoon sky. I looked twice make sure I wasn't imagining it, but sure enough, there it was.
I realized today, in a new way, that I've developed an automatic search image. I'm so Moon orient that, apparently, there is a portion of my brain that comes online and filters the visual data stream for anything moon-shaped. As a result, a very young La Luna stood out for me in the steamy afternoon sky.
In a few monents the growing cumulus cloud covered that part of the sky. But that few moments, for some reason, really made my day.
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05/31/2008, Catalina State Park, AZ
31 May 2008 8:22pm through 1 June 2008 12:10am MST
(1 June 2008 03:22 through 07:10 UT)
Seeing: P. 4 to 5
Transparency: (NELM) 6.0 (SQM) 20.81
Weather: cool, calm, and clear.
Instrument: SVP8EQ
Eyepiece/filter list: 4.8mm Nagler, 5mm Stratus, 21mm Stratus, 9.5mm Lanthanum.
After getting out to observe so rarely last year, I feel like I've been constantly en route to one site or another for the past month. This time it was back to Catalina State Park, this time on a truly clear night, and quite possibly for the last time on a moonless night before the monsoon rolls in. The sun set into a lingering twilight just about 7:30pm MST and it was a long wait while that twilight finally faded away. Fourteen TAAA members gathered this time, and there was a lot of enthusiastic conversation as folks from the northwest part of town realized that they really did have a pretty good site relatively nearby. Between the visiting and gazing at Saturn there was no sense of being idle. At times the seeing was not so great (around P4) and Saturn was less than inspiring. But there were long stretches during which the image steadied and the 5mm Stratus displayed the ringed world in all its glory. The Cassini Division was a sharp black thread through the rings and I could make out traces of dusky bands on the cloudy sphere. Titan stood out like a beacon, but for some reason I never got around to taking note of other satellites nearby.
The seeing conditions improved a bit just past the end of astronomical twilight, and I turned the Newt first of all toward 38 Lyncis. It took all the magnification I could muster (the eye-scrunching 4.8mm Nagler) but I was finally able to clearly and honestly see both components as individual stars, and 38 Lyncis turned out to be worth the trouble. The primary star was sparkling white, but the much fainter companion (magnitude 6.6 vs. 3.9) had ruddy tinted blue color that brought to mind the color of grapes. A very pretty double star, and a promising start for the night.
With Virgo on it way into the west, I decided to devote most of the time I had this night to the Messier galaxies in and around it. I've hunted down the Messier galaxies in that part of the sky before, both to observe and to tick them off the list at a Messier marathon, so locating them (and sorting them out) was not much of a problem. Before I was finished, I'd gotten to four of them: M49, M59, M60 (elliptical), and M58 (a spiral galaxy.)
My first ever serious observation of a Virgo galaxy was M49, which I found easily with the 21mm Stratus by using the old fashioned geometric approach. M49 forms a nearly perfect equilateral triangle with epsilon and delta Virginis, so all I needed to do was center the Telrad where the third corner should be, and the dim smudge of M49 was almost in the center of the field of view. (The object was also just visible in the finder scope.) As often happens, I liked the view through the 9.5mm Lanthanum eyepiece best, and with it made a sketch. The galaxy was a distinct but nearly featureless hazy circle, a bit brighter at the center, with a star just off the eastern edge. Photos I've seen of this galaxy show that star well within the periphery (an illusion, of course, since the star is in the foreground), so there is more to this galaxy than the Newt could pick up.
Working in no particular order, I went for M59 and M60 next. A quick star hop from epsilon Virginis put both into the field of view of the 21mm Stratus, a two-fer that turned into a hat trick when I realized I could also make out NGC 4638 in that same field of view. Strictly speaking NGC 4647 was also there, but I could not separate it from M60 at that power. The field was an attractive one - three ghostly lights forming a squat triangle, with a scatter of brighter pinpoint stars around them. I increased the power on M59 first, and saw through the 9.5mm a softly glowing oval glow without a distinct central brightening. A good long look did not reveal any details, although this one looked pretty well-defined around the edges. At first glance, M60 (also in the 9.5mm) looked oddly misshapen, extending from a brighter, rounded portion off to the northwest. After looking for a while I was eventually able to see that I was actually looking at two objects, one much brighter than the other. M60 was a well-defined rounded glow noticeably brighter at the center, a brighter (relatively speaking of course) spot marking the heart of the galaxy, surrounded by a pale halo. It's near neighbor, NGC 4647, was a faint patch of light that was only truly visible to me by way of averted vision. Certainly the gap between the two galaxies was easier to see that way.
M58 was the next (and last) galaxy for the night. It was an easy, and short, hop from M59. This was smaller in overall appearance than M60, but very nearly the same apparent size as M59. The middle third of the galaxy seemed brighter than the rest, giving the effect of a fuzzy light patch with a barely visible halo. Although this is listed as a spiral galaxy, no sign of spiral structure ever became visible to me, regardless of which eyepiece I used.
As a 'last call' object, just before midnight, I spend 20 minutes or so gazing at the Ring Nebula (M57) using the 5mm Stratus. I used no filters at all. The Ring was clear and distinct, and every bit as fascinating as it was the first time I put it in an eyepiece.
I sat for a minute, looking up at the Milky Way. Scorpius was cruising over the mountain ridge to the south, ruddy Antares glittering due to heat shimmering up from the rocks. Jupiter was blazing bright. CSP is not quite as dark as TIMPA, and it's hard to observe southern objects from there, but it has its compensations. It is, in general, a more interesting place in which to set up a telescope. All night long we were serenaded by the night songs of the desert, hearing fox, elf owls, great horned owls, poor wills, and coyotes in the hills around us. I will not be giving up entirely on TIMPA, but in months when a choice must be made, I believe I will choose the park.
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