In the pre-dawn sky, which I have been seeing more of than usual recently thanks to jet lag, Saturn is now well positioned in Leo. Its chief interest right now is the near absence of clear rings -- little more than a thin line is visible extending across the planet and out either side. Seeing was poor to moderate this morning, and it was difficult to get a sharp view. The 20mm lens with 2x Barlow offered moments of clarity, but it was best at 26mm with the Barlow. The angle of the rings may not be interesting to a first time observer, but in comparison with the clearer views of the ring system that were afforded even by the ETX-90 in early 2007 the change has been striking. We won't actually see the rings disappear this year because by September, when they will be exactly edge on, the planet will be too close to the sun (see http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/22dec_crazytilt.htm). But seeing the rings this close to edge on is a rare enough sight, occuring only once every 14 or 15 years. The mirror-image sketch shows one of Saturn's moon to the upper right.
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Dec 27 0530. clear, nelm around 4. meteor from gemini to horizon. A late Geminid, or this far too late for a sighting? A remarkable display to the naked eye with dim objects/asterisms from the head of Hydra to the beehive cluster and Draco discernible. The Milky Way appeared stretched out along the northern horizon above a high ridge in the middle distance.
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01/03/2009 | Fred Rains (fjrains att bellsouth dott net)
Hello Peter,
I am enjoying reading your blog. I am a long time fan of the ETX 90 and, like you, am duly impressed with this little scope. I live here in the Southeastern U.S. (33.3225°N, 86.7522°W) and, again like you, observe mostly from a light polluted site. I'm a member of an astronomy club and we have just begun a blog. Most of my entries are about the ETX 90RA, the older version. Most of the information directly applies to its more intelligent cousin, your ETX 90PE. Please give it a look at http://www.bas-astro.com/blog/ and let me know what you think. The random slewing event in your earlier post will hopefully not happen often. Your scope has great setting circles for manual operation in the polar aligned mode if needed. I'm going to be blogging about this soon. Hope it helps. Great Blog! Happy New Year! Fred |
A beautiful and rare conjunction of a thin crescent moon, Jupiter (uppermost) and Venus after sunset this evening. For those further west it will be even more spectacular as the moon draws closer to the two planets. In Europe tonight (Dec 1) the moon will occult Venus.
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12/01/2008 | Keith Schlottman (keith att xanaduobservatory dott com)
Very nice Peter! It was a beautiful sight indeed.
Keith |
A good dark (relatively speaking, that is, for the capital city of China) still and moonless night. I decided to try for M77, a spiral galaxy 50 or 60 million light years distant and perilously close by line of sight to a tree and a tall apartment building. It's billed as a relatively easy find in the constellation Cetus, but surprisingly I have no record of having attempted this before. If its position in the sky was a potential handicap, the ETX-90 itself almost proved a bigger one -- its slewing action inexplicably slowing and speeding up and landing several degrees away from the intended target. This made it very difficult to know whan the telescope was actually pointing to the right area of sky and start comparing the view with the chart. It took well over an hour of painstaking star hopping to get there, but the FOV with the galaxy slightly off center is quite unmistakeable with a line of three 9th magnitude stars SAO110719, SAO130081 and SAO130073 guiding the eye towards it. In such a small telescope and such a light polluted sky there was no chance of making out the spiral features, and it was best visible with averted vision. It appeared to have two brighter areas lined approximatly 90 degrees to the line of those three stars. But the shape of the feature was difficult to discern and it was quite impossible -- without knowing what it was -- to recognise it as a galaxy (it might just as well have been a globular cluster, except perhaps a bit bigger). Anyway, another one chalked up on my Messier list (34 definitely recorded) and probably the most distant object I've ever seen (and ever likely to see with the ETX-90? -- it's said to be the furthest Messier, but are there more distant non-Messier objects that can be seen with a small telescope?). The sketch above exaggerates the clarity of the object and the definition of its shape. It would be interesting to try again in a truly dark sky.
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Mostly cloudy skies again last night in this southern location. But Achernar, the alpha star of Eridanus and the eighth or ninth brightest of the night sky, flickered dimly through a veil of cloud in the south. Down and to its left was Alpha Hydri, visible only through binoculars. This was my first sighting of both these stars, and of the constellation Hydrus (not to be confused with Hydra). The more northerly stars of Eridanus are visible from BJ, but not the alpha.
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