Friday Night Stargazing 2025-03-07

conditional_soup, 14 godzin temu (edited 14 godzin temu)

Follow up:

Got moved to tonight at my spouse’s request, didn’t get out until 2100.

Seeing was good, not the clearest I’ve seen, but not bad. The stars seemed overall dimmer than usual, but not shimmering or twinkling. Light pollution was definitely slapping though

What I managed (using 12" f5 dob, 30mm wide field eyepiece in 2x Barlow):

M65 and M66. Took me two or three tries to starhop to them. I did not manage to visualize NGC 3628, but m65 and M66 appeared as vague foggy shadows, oval in shape, both tilted to point upper left and lower right, the right above the left. Very difficult to visualize directly, almost had to visualize exclusively via averted gaze.

Bode’s Galaxy: this involved more dumb luck than I’d like to admit. I tried to starhop here by using the bear’s neck stars to form a pointer to a dimmer bunching of stars that would point to the galaxy. I tried probably four different times until I got on the same group of stars and slewed a bit right and maybe a degree down. Bode’s Galaxy has a more circular appearance than 65 and 66, the core is brighter, and it’s beefy enough to tolerate direct gaze. Still a faint fuzzy, but it left me in less doubt about whether I was just imagining it.

What I missed:

• Jupiter, Rosette Nebula, everything in Canis Major, Orion, Gemini, and Monoceros: just didn’t get out in time and my views got blocked =(
• NGC 2419: The moon stole the show here, unfortunately. It wasn’t directly blocking my view, but it was bright enough to wash out my view in this area
• M97 and M108: Tried maybe six different times and got nowhere fast. Not sure why, but trying to star hop here just showed me a bunch of fairly unremarkable stars and that’s all. Maybe I needed higher magnification?

Fourth, wczoraj

I biked out to a park yesterday with my big binoculars but I’m still waiting for my tripod to show up so I just checked out the moon some. Thanks for posting.

conditional_soup, wczoraj

The Pleiades and Hyades should still be fairly high in the sky, and make great targets for binoculars. I’m also VERY partial to the little beehive cluster in Canis Major (go to the first barely visible star down from sirius, along the dog’s spine, and move directly right from there). If they’re strong enough, the Orion Nebula also makes a great target. The regular beehive cluster is alright; it can be tricky in the city, but you should juuuust be able to see what kinda looks like a faint, blurry star just left of the angle of you make a right angle between Pollux and Procyon. There’s also a few binary stars that make good targets right now. You should be able to split the first bright star out from the cup in the handle of the big dipper into three stars.