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I was just interviewed by the local public radio station, WOMR out of Provincetown Massachusetts. Hamilton Kahn has a twice weekly news program and he was concerned about a news report that he had read about killer asteroids. Click here to download the mp3. I was honored to work with write and poet Jeannette Angell and poet Maria Nazos at a free presentation at the Cape Cod National Seashore tonight. They started off with original poetry and prose along with some multi-cultural history of the stories of the night sky. The sky was hazy, not cooperative at all for my part of the show, but just for posterity, here is my script. We’ll be re running the show on August 19th at 8pm. You can hear an interview with Jeannette and Maria on WOMR. Continue reading Night Sky Explorations at the Cape Cod National Sea Shore Well, this is is. I have 4 Messier objects to go to complete the list with my Canon 15×50is binoculars. I’m going to make the attempt on 3 of them tonight. The 4th, M76, needs to wait until a bit later in the year. I set the alarm for 2:45AM. Here are the field notes: 2:56am – The moon has just set and I’m out here with my Canon binoculars looking to get 3 of my last 4 M objects. It is hard to tell if the sky is hazy or not. I do see the Milky at zenith but at the horizon it is all lost in moon glow still. Actually, the moon hasn’t set yet. It has set behind the trees but not below the horizon. Jupiter is shining very brightly and I’ll be trying to see if I can find Capricorn again. I think I see it but I really don’t know. Continue reading Hoping to Finish All But One of the Messier’s Tonight Now that my Binocular Messier list is almost complete I need to start another project. This will be the Herchel 400 which I’ll attempt with my 1963 vintage Edmund Scientific 6″ reflector. I’m very new to this scope so I expect that there will be some teething problems. So actually, I plan on trying to pick up some old favorites with it, the easier Messier objects first, as practice. Here are the transcribed field notes: Eyepieces
8:43pm – Just spotted Vega, I want to get the Telrad lined up. I have very few Messier objects to complete and I’m getting excited about doing so. The clear sky clock looked good so I set the alarm, with red LED numerals of course, for for 3:15AM when the objects (M2, M5, M30, M72, M73) I cared about would be visible. Here’s the field notes: 3:19am – quarter after 3 in the morning. Milky Way is finall here, kinda nice. You can see it going from the horizon to zenith. You can see the gap. I don’t, what is that, about half way up. I think that that is next to Cygnus. I’m still disoriented, trying to figure out where things are. I see Jupiter rising in the east. When I put the binoculars on there is quite a haze, quite a haze tonight so some of these might be hard to grab. I can see M6 and M7 quite easily. They are the first objects I checked. 3:39AM - Its taking me forever to try and find Aquarius. It is a constellation that I found for the first time last summer and I remember that. I can see Jupiter and Aquarius is right above it. For confirmation I’m looking for the asterism that links the, ummm, head of Aquarius on the left or north side. Still have trouble seeing it with the haze. I found the other two stars in Aquarius and I guess that’s Beta Aquarius, Saldasaluud. I was able to find that, and the star pattern nearby it and then head on up to the globular M2. Hard to see but I did get it. At this point the haze was just too much to continue, there was no point in looking for the more difficult M72 and M73 so I headed back to bed. Yes, I set the alarm for 3AM trying to complete all but one of my Messiers with the binoculars. It was nice stepping outside already completely dark adapted. Here are my notes from my brief session. It has been rainy and cloudy here for probably the last three weeks, there has been no astronomy at all. Last night was the first good night in a long time and I went with 2 friends to Pilgrim Heights, my favorite nearby dark site, only to find that the winds were making it through the trees and my ASGT mount was broken. So tonight I figured I could solve both problems at once by using my binoculars. There isn’t a mount to break and the wind won’t jiggle my image stabilized binoculars at all. So I had to make the tough choice between bring my Gary Seronik’s Binocular Highlights out with me or Philip Harrington’s Star Watch. I like that Star Watch has more text but much of the text applies only to telescopic viewing. I do like how Binocular Highlights has exactly one set of objects per page, you get a map and half a page or less of text. So I brought Binocular Highlights out with me. I also wanted to try my voice recorder to see how that was taking notes. I was worried that it would take too long to transcribe them. It is now 11:11pm, lets see how long it takes! I was quite worried about grabbing the dim galaxy M91 in my quest to see all 110 Messier objects with my Canon 15×50IS binoculars. And this was with good reason, you M91 had alreday eluded me a short while ago, twice actually but the second attempt was pretty short. So you can imagine my surprise, when I was writing my previous blog entry, when I opened my Messier “seen” spreadsheet and found a checkmark next to M91! Continue reading M91 or Why It’s Important to Keep an Observing Log One of my current goals is to see all 110 of the Messier object with my Canon 15×50IS binoculars and I’m closing in on my last few. It turns out that I had 1 more in Virgo to find (not countly the pesky M91 which will take a special effort to find), 1 in Coma Berenices. I should have grabbed these a few days ago when I was “doing” Virgo. But I only had zoomed in chart with me, so I didn’t see the bigger picture. When my wife is away I often sleep poorly, I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t get back to sleep. One obvious advantage is that this can be some prime observing time! I knew this would happen so I planned out a few Messier object to grab and had my gear all ready by the door. If I woke I could be outside, completely dark adapted, in just minutes. Continue reading Three Messiers: Tiny, Dim and an Easy But Foggy One |
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