Paul Cézanne's Astronomy Observing Reports

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.

3:00am – Well, I did spot Capricorn. Algeebi (???) next to Bassheera (?????), epsilon Capricorn and I’ve got it. I’m going to head on over to the M’s I need.

3:07am – I think I have M73. I need to confirm. I found the cross shape pair, uh quad, uhh, FOUR stars just below it. But I dropped my flashlight and it is turned off so I gotta find it and then look at the charts.

3:09am – very hard to get a positive ID so I’m going to stop looking at the charts and look at Astromist instead and see what its charts say.

3:13am – Okay, I got it, but it was really, really hard. I looked at the quadrant of four, and the up and to, you go in a straight line form the top one and the leftmost one and it should be equidistant up there but next to that are three stars that I can see, very very dim stars. (Ed Note: probably the 10.0, 9.25, and 8.85 stars in Stellarium) M73 is right to the left of them in a straight line with the 2 from the quadrant but I could only see it with averted vision. At times it seemed to come and go, it was a phantom. With averted vision looking at the middle of the set of those three stars then it could be seen but that was it. That was a really, really hard one, M73. Off to M72 now which shoud be much, much, easier.

3:17am – Well, nothing is jumping right out and screaming M72 at me. I’m in the right spot of the sky but it is time to look at the detailed charts. The Pocket Atlas is certainly not good enough for this case.

3:19am – Yeah, its a grab on M72. It was really hard to spot. I can see it with direct vision but it looks completely stellar. (Ed Note. There is a mag 9.4 star really close to M72, I’ll want to reconfirm this later.) I know it is in the right spot from looking at the deatailed charts in Astromist.

3:20am – M30 was a super easy grab. I started at Jupiter then through Deneb Algebi (?????) then head down through epsilon then 36 and another greek one. 36, 33 and two others are in a line sorta pointing over at 41 and M30 is cleary a fuzzy spot to the right of it.

At this point I heard what I thought was the well pump turn on in the house. I had just fixed the sprinkler system that day and I had forgotten to turn it off before coming out to observe. I dashed inside so I wouldn’t get wet. As I got back in bed I realized that it was still way too early for the sprinklers but my night was over.

I was happing that I had grabbed all but one but now in typing up these notes I realize that I have to try for M72 again, just to be 100% certain that I have it. This is the same problem I had with M76. I had that in Florida but when looking at the charts later I saw a dim star near it. So for my last two I find that I’ve “seen” both of them already but I need to get confirmation sightings. This could be hard at the very low power (15x) that I’m using.