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.

Rough Script

Thank you Jeannette and Maria!

Welcome to the second part of tonight’s presentation.

I am Paul Cézanne, amateur astronomer, vice president of the Cape Cod Astronomical Society and the self proclaimed official astronomer of North Truro.

One reason I wanted Jeannette and Maria to read and recite was of course that stories, myths and poetry are important, important to the understanding of the night sky. But the second part was actually a trick. I wanted to give your eyes time to adapt to the dark. You eyes’ pupils open fairly rapidly, in about 5 minutes they are fully open in a dark room. But over the next 30 minutes a small chemical change occurs that makes them even more sensitive to the dark.

I want to go over a simple rule for tonight about the dark. I’m going to say something that will probably cause half of you to want to reach into your pockets or bags. But I don’t want you to move. Cell phone. Don’t touch your cell phone! Don’t. I don’t care if it rings, but what I do care is that when you use it, it will glow, and it will glow brightly. And that bit of light will ruin that chemical change that happened inside your eyes over the last half hour.

If you think you might need to make or take a call, please be courteous and move away from the others, and do that now before your phone glows.

<pause for 10-30 seconds>

I’m going to guess that right now you are seeing more stars than you see at home, possibly more stars than you have every seen before.

In the Outer Cape we are far from big cities. Oh, you can see a bit of sky glow from Provincetown and maybe the airport behind me. But this is the best dark for hundreds of miles around.

And the dark skies let us appreciate the beauty that the ancients saw, and let us appreciate why stories have been written for eons about the patterns of lights that we see in the sky.

<show big dipper, show ursa major>

The big dipper, also knows as Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, is a tremendously important and useful constellation. It is large and bright and tells us how to find North. When black men and women where escaping from slavery in the south, they used what we called the Big Dipper and what they called the Drinking Gourd to find North, which was to find freedom.

There is a song called “Follow the Drinking Gourd” which both instructs and celebrates the escapees journey.

When the sun comes back,
and the first quail calls,
Follow the drinking gourd
The old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.

<show how to use the big dipper to find North, and hopefully find the little dipper.>

<Tell about how the little dipper was used a night time clock in the renaissance.>

<attempt to show Corona Borealis> arc to Arcturus, to Bootes the herdsman or plowman. To the upper left of Bootes is Corona

If we can see Coma Beranices…. Coma Berenices is one of the few constellations to owe its name to an historical figure, in this case Queen Berenice II of Egypt, who wore to the goddess Aphrodite to sacrifice her long, blonde hair, of which she was extremely proud, if her husband returned safely. Curiously, this constellation is also called Ariadne’s Hair.

Some sky features are easy to find if it is dark enough. Notice this band of light?

<show the milky way>

That is the Milky Way. It is made up of the light of the billions and billions of stars that make up the galaxy that our star, the sun, is part of. In greek mythology, it was caused by milk spilt by Hera when suckling Heracles.

The term Milky Way first appeared in English literature in a poem by Chaucer, called The House of Fame

“See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë
Which men clepeth the Milky Wey,
For hit is whyt.”

If you have a pair of binoculars, and some bug spray, just lie on a blanket some summer night and scan the milky way and see what you can see. Concentrate on Sagittarius, way to the south. (If you live a great deal south of Ptown, you’ll find that Sagitarius is much higher in the sky and you’ll see even more details.) And if you can’t find south, just use the Big Dipper to find North and then turn completely around.

Sagittarius was the Archer to the ancients but today we know of it as the teapot.

<show the handle, lid, body and spout>

And for a bit of fun, you can see that the Milky Way is the steam rising from teapot’s spout!

You might notice that the Milky Way is brightest around Sagittarius. That’s because as we look towards Sagittarius, we are looking towards the center of our galaxy. Indeed, there are so many stars and dust clouds there that astronomers can’t see past it. We can only guess what is on the other side. Of course we can see other galaxies and we’re pretty sure that our galaxy is much like any other.

And just like Provincetown is out on the end of a piece of land, our Sun is located near the end, about 2/3s of the way out one of the spiral arms. So I guess if the Cape was an arm of the Milky Way, the Sun would be in Eastham!

To Sagittarius’ right we see Scorpius, the scorpion. This is a constellation best appreciated in a dark sky. A few years ago I lived in a medium sized city. I could only see one star in Scorpius, the red star Antares.

<show Antares>

I was amazed when I moved to the Outer Cape and first saw Scorpius, it was so beautiful, so full of life and motion, that it was inconceivable that a story hadn’t yet been written about it.

<show claws, curved body, stinger at the end>

Here’s a star pattern you can disagree about. I can show you these five stars, and call it Cygnus the swan.

<show Cygnus, stretched out head>

This is also known as the Northern Cross. I think that is because Northern people were jealous of the Southern Cross and wanted their own. That’s just silly, I’ve seen the Southern Cross and this is far nicer.

But others, especially those with light polluted skies, won’t be able to see the cross but instead will talk about the Summer Triangle.

<Show, Deneb, Vega, and Altair>

This is a good example of why different cultures have different stories. Some will see a triangle and make up a story about that, others will see a cross, or a swan and make up a story about that.

The ancients also noticed that also the stars were fixed in relation to each other, but there a few that moved, they wandered. The greek’s word for “I wander,” planōmai, has changed over to time, in English, to be “planet.”

There really aren’t any planets in the sky tonight. If you were to climb up out of the bowl you just might see Saturn setting in the west and Jupiter rising in the east. Indeed, on you way home driving on Route 6 tonight the bright star you’ll see through your windshield will be Jupiter.

And finally, I’d like to show Queen Cassiopeia, She’s been slowly rising as I’ve talked. Her distinctive W shape is easy to find in late summer, fall and early Winter. She’s W shaped because she’s always drawn sitting on a chair, or her throne. In this area of the sky, in the fall, we can see Cephus, her husband and king, Cetus the sea monster, their daughter Andromeda, and Perseus who rescued her.

If you are interested in continuing along with astronomy, I urge to you look up an astronomy club online. Just google your state’s name and astronomy club. Odds are pretty good that there is one nearby.

The Cape Cod Astronomical Society meets monthly at our observatory at the Dennis/Yarmouth High School. I’m the Vice President and I’d be happy to answer any questions about the organization. And if you are here next week, please stop by the observatory, they have free star parties all summer long. You’ll get to look through their 16” and 18” scopes. And you might see me there also.

One more thing, If you are wondering why your skies at home don’t look like this, look around you at all the lights you have. Does that car dealership really need to be that bright? Do the streetlights in your neighborhood cast some of their light upwards?

You can do you part by turning your lights off or putting them on motion sensors, and getting educated about safety and light pollution. They are not opposites. You can look up the International Dark Sky Association for more information.

Thank you.

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.

Eyepieces

• 9mm TMB/Burgess Planetary.
• 6mm TMB/Burgess Planetary II.
• 40mm Scopetronix Plossl
• 32mm Erfle

8:43pm – Just spotted Vega, I want to get the Telrad lined up.

8:57pm – A neighbor stopped by, so that was a bit of a delay, and I found that dew is going to be a real problem. But still, I got it centered in the Telrad and looked through the eyepiece and only had to move it around a smidge. So the initial alignment was good. Centered Vega, then centered it on the Telrad so things are looking good so far.

8:58pm – I found the double double almost by accident. Both are easily spilt with the 9mm Burgess. It is kind of fun having an undriven scope watching them slide around the viewfinder.

9:00pm – Saturn is just gorgeous!

9:29pm – With the 9mm it is amazing to see how fast Saturn scoots across the field of view. I’m constantly having to nudge it. I was also thinking about the 15km high wavelets that we read about on the net the other day and looking at the rings know that that is going on there right now. Of course I can’t see it, but still, it is interesting to think about it happening.

9:32pm – It is taking the 6mm TMB/Burgess really well but obviously scooting out of view very rapidly now. It is very very hard to focus because there is so much jiggle and the focuser is so sticky. It is absolutely clear at times. I can even see the gap where the ring moves around the back. It is just amazing that I can see that. They are so edge on. (Ed’s note: the rings were 3.5 degrees from edge on.) It really makes me wish I had more power available, I don’t. This is the shortest focal length eyepiece that I own. I do need to buy a 4mm and 5mm Burgess but they are not available at the sale price that I can see. (Ed note: the 9mm was giving 135x, the 6mm was 203x.) I have to look around though, clearly. (Ed note: I did look around, they are not available at the $40 sale price.)

9:34pm – The Burgess is sharp out to the edges, which is nice, but I have to take my glasses off to do that. If I look through the edge of my glasses they introduce significant distortions.

9:39pm – Certainly can see the North and South equatorial bands. The part of Saturn nearer the equator is brighter. I see one bright moon and on the other side I sometimes get a second moon. It comes and goes. And with averted vision the bright moon really looks like it has a companion so maybe there are two moons on that side.

9:42pm – With the 40mm Scopetronix plossl I cannot get enough infocus to observe without my glasses. With my glasses obviously Saturn is much much smaller. It is even hard to tell that it has rings. It is hard to get it crisp. There is some sort of bleed or something going on here. Probably my eyeglasses. The 32mm Erfle gives a certainly pleasing view. Saturn’s ring is quite easily seen and I can see it without my glasses which really helps. I think that this will be the “finder” eyepiece, not the 40mm. It looks bad when you get to the edge but who looks all that much at the edge anyhow?

9:45pm – It looks like the outer 25% is a bit smeary.

9:51pm – Well, I got M57 pretty easily with the Telrad. This is using the 32mm Erfle. I placed the Telrad approximately where I thought it should go. It is hard to tell with dew and those 2 stars at the bottom of Lyre are kinda dim. It makes me really wonder about using the Telrad. I may need to use a finderscope on this. But sure enough as I move the eyepiece around a little bit I see those two bright stars and it is a 1.73 degree field of view for the Erfle and it puts M57 at the edge of the eyepiece along with one of the stars, so…

9:53pm – Yeah, its confirmed. M57 at the edge, one of the bright stars at the edge. I think it is halfway between those two and I think that they are 4 degrees apart.

9:54pm – I locked down the axis and I caught the Telrad with the sleeve of my jacket so clearly the blue tape will have to go. I’ll have to screw it in but I’ll use existing holes.

9:56pm – I hear an owl in the neighborhood, hooting. That’s kinda cool. With the 9mm I can make out the dark center of it. It is quite fuzzy it seems but the stars are nice and sharp so I know I’m focused. Much, much larger than a star I guess.

10:00pm - Just went over to Virgo, starting over at the star that Ed Ting wants you to start at. Without a star chart I just pushed in to see if I could see galaxies and yeah, I can see galaxies. It is kinda cool. I don’t know what they are, but it is kinda cool.

10:06pm - Been looking for M3 now for a few minutes. I even have trouble find that with the binoculars for some reason. It is clear that just pointing the scope in the right direction and just moving it around randomly isn’t the wait to do it. I’m going to have to figure out how to do this.

10:08pm - I’m going to start a hop at Arcturus and when I went up there to th next bright star the scope kept moving. A little heaving on the counterweights so I had to rebalance it.

10:17pm – I’m star hopping, looking at Astromist trying to find a hop either from Coma Beranices or Arcturus. It is just driving me batty, they are so far apart. I’m not too sure how to find it so I kept on putting the Telrad back to where it shoud be and of course I eventually found it, but that’s hardly a good way to find the harder ones.

10:21pm – With the 9mm I still can’t resolve any stars. It certainly looks grainy but nothing really pops out. It very well could be a focus issue, it is so hard to focus on the dim stars nearby, I’ll keep on trying.

10:24pm – I undid the clutches and get it focused on a nearby star and then when I came back, sure enough, on the outliers you can certainly see stars, and if you are patient, I guess waiting for the sky to cooperate, you can see some stars in the middle. They seem to be sitting on top of all the fuzz.

10:26pm – So far I’ve just been randomly bopping around to things that I knew were fun. I guess now I should head into the books and see what’s in Star Watch. The page I was on did start at M3 so lets see what else is in that Sky Window.

10:34pm – Well M53 was certainly an easy grab. I left the 9mm in accidentally and I centered the star in the Telrad but of course I couldn’t find it. So I got the Erfle again. While focusing the Erfle I jostled the scope some and then of course I saw M53. I confirmed it was M53 by looking at a nearby double. I do see “R Asterisk” (Ed, what the hell is that????) then I follow down to the bright pointer star, I think tha thats alpha Coma.

10:36pm – Through the 9mm it is clearly much dimmer and smaller than M3 was. I don’t think I have a chance of resolving any stars. I’ll look some more but I really doubt it. The double that is nearby, the widely spaced, certainly, is kinda fun, it kinda adds to it.

10:38pm – No, there’s nothing, I’m not resolving anything at all, not even at the outer edges. Maybe the conditions… It is extremely humid today, everything is dewing up.

10:57pm – I think I really do need to get a finderscope on this, this is extremely frustrating. It is hard to even see the allegedy bright star. I’ll try on different targets.

10:58pm – Antares is still below the light pollution screen, the scope is so close to the ground. To me it loooks very high above the horizon but I guess not.

11:29pm – I just got in from a little break, it was getting kinda cold. Had some tea, looked up what I would be looking at next. In my Pocket Atlas I saw that NGC5053 is really close to M53. I figured that rather than give up I’d go back into there again but now that’s all down in the trees. I’ll have to go somewhere else.

12:02am – Finally after trying all sorts of star hopping I got to M5 but star hopping isn’t what I did. I tried coming in from various bright stars over in Serpens and following patterns like I do with binoculars and that’s just really impossible, loolking the eyepiece of the telescope just isn’t going to work it seems. A finderscope might be the better approach. We’ll see. But I got there, essentially by being patient using the Telrad and pointing it exactly where it was supposed to be in the sky and then adjusting that. This is pretty uncomfortable also, it is so low to the ground even though it is pointing high. It must have crossed the meridian, I’m not even sitting on the chair, I’m kneeling. The Erfle dewed up so I’ll be using the 40mm Plossl for awhile. But now the 9mm and lets see what happens.

12:04am – I just completely snagged the Telrad, stretching its tape so who knows if it is aligned.

12:07am – I was able to get it focused in th 9mm. The nearby bright star was far enough away that I had te declutch, move over, find the star and focus and then come back but that’s nice. Its uncomfortable down there on the ground, I’m not going to do much observing. Clearly not as bright as M3 and it appears to be somewhat brighter than M53. I didn’t even bother trying to see if I can resolve stars, hey, its on the ground.

12:09am – Its fascinating to see that the Telrad was not jostled. I’m going to try and do a meridian flip and see if I can see M5 a little more comfortably.

12:11am – This is far far more comfortable. I need to be careful about that to make sure I’m on the right side.

12:16am – Yeah, I’m not resolving anything at all with the 9mm and M5.

12:19am – So the next Sky Windows is Hercules. Its one that I can see when I find it but I have trouble finding it. So I gotta find Hercules and then I’ll find M13.

12:24am – M13 is a quiet easy grab, I’ve seen it before. I put the Telrad on it, the 40mm and then I had it.

12:27am – I had focused on a nearby star. When I declutched I jostled so I had to put the 40mm back in but I won’t focus, I just get it centered.

12:32am – M13 is very grainy, I’m not sure I can say I’m resolving stars but it doesn’t look like an amorphous blob. It has a texture to it.

12:41am – I can certainly now see individual stars in M13 on the outer edges and towards the middle. In one moment of clarity I was able to see individual stars covering the entire area. It has not come back, I’ll look some more.

12:44am – It did not come back. I’ll but the 40mm in and try and get over to M92.

12:47am – The Telrad is completely dewed up, it is way too close to zenith, it is very uncomfortable and frankly I’m tired so I’m going to call it a night, and a very good night also.

12:50am – I can see Jupiter now just peaking over the neighbor’s house. I can’t use the scope, it is way too low to the ground but it will be Jupiter time soon.

12:54am – The Milky Way has not descend yet, it is quite spectacular. It is the first Milky Way of the year. You can see the giant gap, or rift I guess going off into Ophicius and a nice dark spot in Cygnus also which is high in the sky. And of course I’ve stayed up late enough that of course all the remaining Messier objects that I need to complete the full set with the binoculars are up. I’m going to pass for now, I gotta get going to bed. And the hard over (Ed’s Note: M76), over in Casseopia, its not high enough yet. Its going to need to be a lot higher before I attempt it, so we’ll see that in another month or two.

12:59am – I couldn’t resist getting the binoculars and looking at Sagitarrius. I’m just really pleased to see that M7 is a naked eye object which makes sense since it Ptolmy’s Cluster. So then I went to M6 and up to I think it 8 and 20 in the same field of view which is stunningly gorgeous. There’s something to the lower left of the bottom one. And then up to M24, the Saggitarius Star Cloud, and it is just spectacular. Off to its right is something, I don’t remember. And then above that is another one.

1:01am – Then I went over to M4 and Antares. M80 I’m pretty sure I got but without a star chart it is hard to tell. I tried to get M5 with the binoculars but I didn’t get it. I’m tired, I’m going to bed.

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.

3:43AM - M15 was a very easy grab to go from Beta Pegasus up to Enif and Epsilon Pegasus and continue on a straight line and a little bit more and its right there. M15 was harder to pick up than M2. The sky is hazy tonight. I’m also 100% certain that I had grabbed M15 last summer so my list was in error but hey, it doesn’t hurt to go again.

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.

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.

3:43AM – M15 was a very easy grab to go from Beta Pegasus up to Enif and Epsilon Pegasus and continue on a straight line and a little bit more and its right there. M15 was harder to pick up than M2. The sky is hazy tonight. I’m also 100% certain that I had grabbed M15 last summer so my list was in error but hey, it doesn’t hurt to go again.

At this point it was clear that the haze was getting worse so I headed back to bed.

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!

9:41 — As a warmup, grabbed, from memory M51 easily, M13, M92, M13 obviously much brighter than M92. Went down to where I thought M57 was, saw a dot there, without looking at a chart I’m not sure, over to M81 & M82. Got them much faster than I thought I was going to. Looked for M108, M109 and M97. Not sure I saw any of them. Thought I saw M108 but I’ll have to pull out the star charts to check and I’m also just waiting for my eyes to dark adapt. Very very windy.

9:47 — Clear sky clock has very clear skies, great transparency, but lousy seeing for tonight. I thought I saw 108 but not even a sign of 97. Not sure why, I’ve certainly seen it before.

9:56 — From the charts, M109 is next to a mag 9.6 star which is actually really hard to see tonight. But 109 is in a line of 4 stars one of the ones next to it is 8.6 and if I look at that one, with averted vision I can see a slight haze next to the 9.6 one. Extremely hard to see.

9:58 — I forgot to say, I started off by looking at the Engagement Ring around Polaris, always a beautiful sight.

10:02 — You can follow a trail of semi-bright stars from Mizar/Alcor pair all the way down to M101. It is suprisingly large, I guess thats after looking, large and bright compared to 108 and 109. I guess it is even larger than M13, though not nearly as bright of course. It covers a lot of sky.

10:04 — I went to M101 because I’m on that page in Binocular Highlights and he mention that it is 22 million light years away and curiously, if you were on a planet in that galaxy looking at our Milky Way, our Milky Way would be even less impressive. It would be a tiny dim galaxy. That’s what’s so cool about M101.

10:05 — Still getting an occaisonal car down Route 6A which is annoying but I can hear them coming and shut my eyes, but they still light up the roof of the house sometimes and there is no warning on that.

10:08 — M51 is clearly irregular and with averted vision I can see 2 cores. But I don’t know if I would be able to see 2 cores if I didn’t know that they were there. I might just think it was irregular. It is certainly differently shaped from M101 which is very smooth, very oval, and this is definately irregular.

10:10 — Just spotted a very large naked eye cluster. I’m wondering if it is Melotte 111. I’m looking it upside down on my back, it is impressive, like I remembered. It must be Melotte 111. (Ed note, it was Melotte 111.)

10:10 — I was looking for Canes Venatici. I could only see 1 of the stars. Now I can see both.

10:11 — And if you draw a line from the end of the handle of the Big Dipper through Canes Venatici it goes directly to that cluster. Probably Melotte 111. I’ll enjoy that a few minutes from now.

10:16 — Tried to find M106 by sweeping down from the dim star in C. V down to the 2 stars that make up part of the bowl of the dipper and looking back and forth was not able to find it. So I looked at the Seronik star charts. When to the 2 stars that form part of the bowl of the dipper and headed inward and sure enough I got it. It’s, I won’t call it dim because I’ve seen other dim stuff but it isn’t bright like 101 and 51. Pretty nice grab. Much harder to star hop to than some of the other ones. You had to go a great distance and I needed to look at the chart.

10:20 — Got M94 but I want to confirm it by looking at a chart but I wasn’t sure which side of the line of Canes Venatici so I looked on both. And 94 in tiny, almost stellar, but I’m pretty sure I got it. On the other side, further away from the line, there’s a littly tiny cluster, maybe 5 bright stars, 8 stars total. Must be an NGC, I’ll have to look it up.

Ed Note: The asterism is easily seen in Stellarium but doesn’t have a designation. The brightest star of the group is HP 61424. It doesn’t show at all in the Sky and Telescope Pocket Atlas. But googling 61424 gets me to a paper called “The Nature of some doubtful Open Clusters as revealed by Hipparcos” by H. Baumgardt where I find it in a Table 2: Suspected members of Upgren 1. And that leads to to this Cloudy Night article, Small Wonders: Canes Venatici by Tom Trusock which mentions that Upgren 1 is Harrington’s Touring the Universe With Binoculars. That is a great reference book by the way.)

10:25 — Well I looked at M94 a second time. Immediatly it was clear it was non-stellar and looking at the detail star charts from Astromist it is in exactly the right space. So there is no doubt at all in this grab.

10:27 —Next I’m looking for M63 which is almost childishly easy to find. There is an L shaped asterism of 4 stars, fairly bright, within about 3 or 4 degrees of Alpha CNV, that sorta points to it. And it was right there.

10:29 — I’m looking at 63 and 94 trying to compare and contrast them and I took a brief flash of a car headlight to the eye which stinks and now 94 is hard to see again. Big surprise but this explains why it was difficult before. One of the neighbors had turned a light on in her cottage and that was enough to wreck my night vision a little tiny bit. I moved my chair to be closer to the house to be in the shade from it. Presumably in a few minutes more I’ll be able to see M94 and 63 again and compare and contrast them.

10:30 — That L shaped asterism that points to them is naked eye. I’m not able to resolve them and there’s another car driving by.

10:34 — M63 seems to be about 3 times larger than M94. 63 is also brighter. It is also next to a star, almost on top of it. Need to see what that looks like on an actual chart.

Ed Note: The star shows in Stellarium’s image but that means it isn’t clickable. Astromist identifies this at Tycho 302400814, mag 9.3.

10:40 — I seem to always have trouble finding M3. I guess it is in the middle of nowhere. There’s no stars to point to it. It’s hard. I’ve been trying to practice. So… I found it like I usually do by meandering randomly. It is interesting seeing M3 and M13 in the same night. I went back and forth between the two. I guess M13 is much much brighter so it was kinda cool to see them almost simultaneous with each other.

10:43 — I guess that’s why I always have trouble coming up from M3, I’ve been coming up from Arcturus and, well, that’s hard. It is much easier to go from Melotte 111 to the other star in Coma Beranicis and keep on going in a straight line and very quickly you come across it.

10:46 — I just spend a few minutes in Melotte 111 trying to find the double that Seronik menitos, Coma 17. There’s so many stars how can you tell what’s a double or not, I don’t know. I saw something that could have been a double and probably was. I don’t get doubles, some people like them. Then down to the other corner for M53. Super super easy grab.

10:48 — As globular clusters go M53 isn’t all that impressive, we have M3 nearby  and M13 and M92 over there. But hey, it’s there. I should get one of the telescopes out and compare M3 and M53 since they are so close to each other in the sky. M3 will be bigger but it would be interesting to see what M53 has to say for itself.

10:49 — It is so windy that the motion sensor light on one of the cottages keeps turning on and off. It is really annoying.

10:52 — I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get M64 beacause of the light pollution from the cottages. It is visible with direct vision but going to averted makes it both larger and brighter. I wouldn’t call it a bright one but it isn’t a dim one either. I believe it is a galaxy but of course it is really hard to tell just by looking at it. (Ed note: M64 is the Black Eye Galaxy, named for the prominant dust lanes that gives the appeance of an eye.) But it is certainly not an open cluster, a big open cluster, or a globular. Definately not a glob.

10:53 — Been watching Antares rise, just over the trees and I just stood up and now it is above the trees so I tried for M4 and it is right there. I remember looking for that last fall when it was setting and getting it, but m80 elluded me. It would be nice to get a telescope on that. It looks impressive. It seems very very large. The other one, which is M80, I failed, but I also really failed to try. I know it is in there but it is no longer getting fun so I’ll go inside and I’ll come out another night.

That’s my last note. It is now 12:13pm. Yikes! I know the digress for Upgren 1 took some time, call that 10 minutes, so that’s about 50 minutes to transcribe an hour and 10 minutes of observing. That seems excessive. I love the level of detail that I have. I’ve never done that before, but I may have to cut down on the chatty nature of my notes.

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!

I immediately deleted it and went about writing the entry. Later on, that evening, I was thinking about it. How could that be there and then I remembered. I actually had seen it! It was the same week as the previous blog entry, perhaps even the same night. I couldn’t remember. Everyone in the house was asleep, except for me of course, so all the lights were out and I just bundled up and went outside and kept on trying. It was about 45 minutes to an hour later than I first glimpsed it. And glimpse indeed, it was dim, perhaps the dimmest object I had ever observed, I could only get it with averted vision and even then it would come and go. It was clearly non-stellar and actually a tiny bit larger than I expected.

As with any dim sighting, I needed to confirm it. So I would look away, actually put the binoculars down, and star hop back to it. I probably did this 4 or 5 times until I was able to convince myself that I had actually found it.

So this is great news, I now only have 7 left and this was one of the two difficult objects left.¹ But what went wrong? How did I make this mistake? How could I make an “important” observation and not even know what day I made it on?

I don’t keep a written observing log.

I know, I should, but I tried it once and I found it hard to both write in the cold and hard to keep the paper free of dew. I have a voice recorder that Jeannette would sometimes use for work but I don’t use that either.

This whole episode shook me a little. (Just a little, really, I’m not crazy.) So I promise now to always keep an observing log. I’ll read up on it and ask my club members and the folks at CloudyNights.com for help.

__________

¹ M76 is the other object that I’ve worried about. I had a very difficult time with it at the WSP but two highly respected binocular astronomers on CloudyNights have told me not to worry about it. So I won’t.

To grab M61, in Virgo, I did not start at Vindemiatrix, like last time. When you start there you go up and to find M61 you need to go down, way down. Instead I started at Zaniah, or Eta Virginis, moderatly bright star with magnitude 3.85. I like starting points that I can easily see with my naked eye and this one was close to M61. I then followed the patterns showing in Astromist until I reached M61 vicinity and M61’s smudge was easily seen. (And yes, it really helps to have dark skies!)

Way up high in the sky was Coma Berenices, the first “new” constellation to me from Truro. I remember seeing Melotte 111, naked eye,  one night when we first moved here and and wondering just what was that? I’m in Coma B to find M64, the “Black-Eye Galaxy,” called such because of the great dust cloud obscuring the center. This was a hard hop. I moved down and towards the center, looking for the two counter curving lines of stars. Once I found those I went up to mag 5.0 star, and then located the line of 3 mag 7 stars above M64. M64 was quite easily seen between these two guideposts.

Next was the globular M68, which is almost in a straght line from “left” two stars of Corvus. To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of Corvus until I went to find M68. And what’s up with Alpha Corvii being dimmer than Beta? And to be completely honest, M68 isn’t even in Corvus, it is in the sky hogging constellation Hydra. But, back to M68. It was bright and easy to find, a tiny dim smudge in the binoculars.

And my last target for the night was M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. I also started in Corvus but when up. This is a very easy grab folks. Corvus is dim, but easy to spot. Then you go up to quite a distinctive Y-shaped pattern of stars, ending with a small cluster of 3 or 4 stars. Then a tiny jump up to a big mess of stars, with 3 in a straght line that point almost directly at the pencil thin line that is M104.

And then, just before shutting down for the night, I found M5 again, this time without the fog. My, that’s a bright object, quite nice.

I now hav 102 Messier object, only 8 more to go!

I woke at 2:30 and went into the backyard. The sky was crystal clear. When I lifted my binoculars to my eyes and scanned around some I was amazed at just how many stars there were. I live in with very good skies but I often have to deal with brief flashes of white light from car headlights, so consequently I rarely get fully dark adapted. The difference is stunning.

My first target was the old telescope favorite M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra. This is normally a pretty easy Messier object, it isn’t all the dim, it is easy to find, and its ringed appearance is unmistakable. However, with only 50mm of aperture and 15x magnification, I was in for a challenge.

I knew I’d see it, and actually I thought I spotted it almost immediatly. I thought I saw a dim, non-stellar object in the right spot. But when I went to confirm it against the detail star charts on my Palm running Astromist, I wasn’t so sure. I eventually got out my magnifying glass and really examined the charts, and the back to the sky, then back to the charts over and over again. I finally convinced myself that I was seeing it and I was also almost certain that it was the same object I initially saw. I guess I should go with my first instinct sometimes!

Next was M102. I was completely unfamiliar with this one but the spreadsheet that I had prepared awhile back said that it should be an object visible now. So I went to the index, looked up galaxies, open clusters, nebula, globulars. It wasn’t there! Then I remembered. It is one of the controversial Messier objects and Sky and Telescope has decided that it isn’t a real Messier. I guess they are allowed to do that, since that is essentially what controversial means, that people disagree. But I found it extremely annoying that here I was in the field with a field guide and it wasn’t helping me. Anyway, there is a wonderful writeup on the controversy over on the seds.org site. Most sources that I read believe that M102 is the same object as NGC 5866. (The other candidate is M101.) NGC 5866 is an edge-on lenticular galaxy, which is a new type for me. I didn’t know what one was until I just looked it up now! It was also a fairly easy grab once I oriented myself to the dim constellation Draco. I used the Little Dipper and turned the sky chart to match the sky.

Next on my list was M5, a honking bright globular. It lies between Virgo and Serpens Caput so I headed out to the front yard. Uh oh! I’ve never observed this area when Virgo is setting. I was all turned around and backwards and completely disoriented. I really needed my Planisphere but I didn’t have it with me and I didn’t want to go inside to turn on a light to locate it! But Astromist was able to help me, by using various levels of zoom on its Horizon View mode I could make out just where Spica was in relation to the charts. That was the frustrating part. I could see Spica as plain as anything, but I could match the sky to the chart. This took me a good 15 minutes it seemed and now the sky was hazing up fast. (This happens in the Outer Cape a lot.) But still, I knew M5 was bright and even though I could barely see my pointer stars with the naked eye I was able to hop down with the binoculars and I made the grab in the haze. This certainly wouldn’t have worked with any dim object.

I spent about an hour outside on three objects that all presented some unusual difficulties. I was quite surprised about how disoriented I was with Virgo setting. I need to work on that. But in any case, I’m glad I made the grabs. I’m especially glad that I have now found 98 Messiers with my Canon 15×50IS binoculars.