5 July 2014

It has been a while. I can't remember when I last used my telescopes. I occasionally look up, mostly at the Moon, an Iridium flare of an ISS pass. But I don't write about it anymore.

Tonight I went out because Ceres and Vesta were supposed to be close, as close (really last night) as anyone has ever seen them, and I wanted to see them. The first thing I observed though was Mars right on the limb of the Moon.

graphic from Mobile Observatory

graphic from Mobile Observatory

As the night progressed the Moon noticeably, especially in the eyepiece, moved away from Mars.

It took a bit of work to find Ceres and Vesta but I eventually got them, or at least there were two faint points of light in the correct orientation to each other and to the fixed stars around them.

graphic from Mobile Observatory

Saturn looked nice and I could see separation between the rings and the planet but at the magnification I was able to achieve and with the wind buffeting the telescope I couldn't see any detail on the planet or shadow on the rings.

There was a mag. -3.7 (depending on which web side you look at) Iridium flare below Deneb and after observing that I took a look at Alberio.

graphic from CalSky

graphic from CalSky

graphic from Mobile Observatory

Then I moved down to the Coathanger which is part of Brocchi's Cluster (Collinder 399 (Cr 399), Al Sufi's Cluster).

graphic from Mobile Observatory

Along the night I looked at the naked-eye double in the head of Scorpius, but was only able to see one star. I wasn't even able to see one star in the double next to Vega. I wasn't able to split Mizar from Alcor.

The terrestrial view was crystal clear

but there was some haze aloft that was lit up by the Moon and the Iridium flare that was affecting seeing and/or transparency.

They have also installed new LED lights in all the fixtures in the park and they were causing me problems with stray light hitting the occular that I didn't experience with the old high pressure sodium bulbs.

The LEDs in the lamps are up in the bonet pointing down, which is good, but there appears to be a mirrored cone beneath them that spreads the light out horizontally around the lamp and may be focusing it more toward the eyepiece glass than the old circular bulbs did.

There is a new building that has been added in the SSW that looks like it is at least as tall as the building where the crane fell over last year during the hurricane. It doesn't look like it will impinge on observing as it appears to be slab sided so is unlikely to be ligihted with upward lighting and the roof appears to have a simple block engineering space so is also unlikely to be illuminated. It can be seen in the picture of the skyline above to the left of and dwarfing the Chrysler Building and right of and also dwarfing the Four Seasons.