Update: moved to Monday (tonight) because transparency sucked and I was tired.
Seeing: very little or slow twinkling
Transparency / Light pollution: Polaris visible, only one of the cup stars of Ursa minor visible to the naked eye. This is actually slightly better than normal for my area.
Equipment: 12" dob, 1520 mm focal length, 2" 2x Barlow, 2" 34 mm wide field eyepiece.
What I hit: M44: sketched it from my 10x50 RACI. I love finding M44 because cancer is dim as fuck, and I’ve got a cool trick where I just make a right angle with my left hand, pointer finger touching Pollux, thumb touching Procyon, M44 will be right in the 90 degree angle.
M65, M66 again. M66 was actually readily apparent to me, for some reason, where M65 took a bit of work to resolve. Did not manage to resolve NGC 3628. I also accidentally resolved another galaxy about three degrees south of and about two degrees below Iota Leonis. Found it purely by accident, couldn’t find it again, looked very slender, stretched almost across the view in 100x (34 mm wide field + 2x Barlow).
What I attempted: Bode’s galaxy. Spent probably an hour trying to starhop to it with different tricks (I think the thing that got me closest was drawing a line through UmA’s front elbows and shoulders and following that down to the level of Alioth. That got me onto a very neat little square of stars with a trail pointing towards the horizon, which I followed again and again to nothing. Very frustrating. I tried again to hit the owl nebula and cigar Galaxy, also no dice. Not sure if I just suck this bad at star-hopping or if the light pollution is really kicking my butt.
I spent so long on it that I ran out my clock and had to choose one last thing to do. Bootes was now plainly visible in the mid-altitude east, so I decided to try and hit M3 by making a right triangle with epsilon bootes as one angle, Arcturus as the right angle, and M3 as the last angle. Didn’t work. Tried a few other spaghetti plate strategies to find M3 and got nowhere. I mostly tried slowly slewing over at 100x mag, which I know is low for globs, but I figured it would at least stand out as a kind of weird bullshitty star that I could investigate, but nothing stood out.
Report: ended up scuttling the plans. I’ve had a few late nights in a row, and the transparency was bad enough to give me a good excuse to sleep instead. We’ll get them next time, team.
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?
Each of the several choices available in run 3 for selecting records at random from a database table comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the specific requirements of the application, one of the methods can be more appropriate than the others.
Yeah, shit idea. And exactly why NASA gets shit on for consuming money with less to show for it.
Spend billions on a program set up by one administration, then some tool comes along and wants to cut costs because they want to look effective and cuts NASA’s programs. Program never completes, now it’s just a waste. NASA, being by default a scientific endeavor thar doesn’t need to return an profit other than exportation and research data, is an easy target. Billions invested and nothing to show for it. WhY iS NaSA So iNeFfeCtIve!?! Repeat for another program later.
Water scouring the surface? Or was it thousands years of wind-blown sand / dust? Dunes have ripples.
There is no water on Mars (not to be confused with liquid CO2) until somebody goes there and drinks some. Anything else is hoping for water to justify the $100billion price tag.
astronomy
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