10 August 2014

I reactivated Top of the Lawn tonight.

Passers by traffic was light as were dog walkers. I had a few people stop to ask questions but not many.

I observed Alberio and the Coathanger. It looked clear but I was having trouble locating Alberio so suspect it was a bit murky. The new lights were also a problem. The Coathanger looked nice but is really too big to be appreciated in the Mini Mak. I think it would look good in the Dobsonian with the 2" Q70 eyepiece. I looked at Saturn and Mars because they were there. With one passer by I compared Mars and Antares which are fairly close in the sky and both orange but one larger and obviously round and the other a point source.

When the Moon came up I checked to make sure the Black Cat in the Moon was still there and he was. There must be a puddle of milk in Pitatus that is keeping him there. I roamed the Moon for a good while identifying a lot of even small features that I would have thought would need some shadow to make them visible but maybe the ones I saw were young, high relief features.

The clouds started to fill it around 2330 so I headed home.

9 August 2014

It was clear today so I decided to go over to Bryant park to observe the nearly full Moon. Perigee is tomorrow at 1407 Local and the full Sturgeon/Green Corn/Red/Dog Days/Grain Moon occurs at 1410 local. This will be the largest full Moon of the calendar year.

The first thing I noticed was a black cat right above Tycho.

Moon Atlas 3D graphic

Moon Atlas 3D graphic

I have been staring at the Moon for 15 years or so and this is the first time I have seen the Black Cat in the Moon. S/he must have just walked over from the back side. I searched Google and there is no mention of him on the first page of results. His two pointed ears go on either side of Davy (the left ear, as viewed from Earth, is not as visible in the photographs as it was in the eyepiece but projects upward between Davy B and Kundt). His eyes are Alpetragius B and Lassell H and Lassell C/G/K/M complex are his nose. His long thin neck passes west of Lassell E. His body is between Nicolet and the Straight Wall. His legs are a subtle darkening of his body beginning west of Birt and ending in two feet visible just east of Pitatus. Thebit P and Thebit form his tail.

annotated Virtual Moon Atlas graphic

LunarMap HD graphic

He doesn't show up on the map but when you look at the moon and the satellite images that were used in the Moon Atlas 3D chart he is plane as day.

I tried making some pictures of the Moon over the Empire State building with my tablet but it was not cooperating. This is the only one that was reasonably sharp.

This image was made with my PHD digital camera and massaged a bit in Adobe Lightroom.

21 July 2014

I spent a few minutes on the way to the library tonight to spot a mag. -6.5 flare from Iridium 53 in Lyra. It was a little closer to Vega than I remembered it to be. Deneb was faint and the body star of Cygnus was barely visible in the glow of the City.

CalSky graphic

18 July 2014

I went to a public observing event tonight on the flight deck of the Intrepid Sea Air and Space Museum.

I hadn't planned to go this month but got a reservation in by accident as the reservation form was placed next to the description of next month's event which I was more interested in attending.  But since I had a reservation and it was supposed to be clear out I went on over.

I didn't know how scripted the event was going to be so didn't take any equipment but it turns out it was pretty much of a free for all.  There were loads of scopes lined up down the port side of the flight deck waiting for Mars and Saturn to appear in the S-SW.  Most of the scopes were Schmidt-Cassagrains or Maksutov-Cassigrains.  There was a small contingent of refractors, a couple of dobsonians and one binocular telescope.

I saw Peter Lipschutz and Mile Peoples from Adorama (who set up on opposite ends of the ship), Mike O'Gara, and Jordan.  Other than them I didn't know anyone.  Al Nagler was there next to Peter.

It was partly cloudy when I arrived, but the clouds cleared out after twilight.  After the event I observed a mad -4 Iridium flare that had a bit disk of glowing atmosphere around it so it never got really clear.

I had my binocular with me so spent part of the night searching for things that might be seen but were not.  I made some suggestions of possible targets to Jordan and to the kids on the other side of me who had a First scope that gave a nice view of Alberio.

And I made a pinhole photograph of a plane and the carrier's island.

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.

19 November 2013

Rocket: Minotaur 1
Payload: ORS 3
Launch date: November 19, 2013
Launch time: 7:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT)
Launch window: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Site: Launch Pad 0B, Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, Wallops Island, Va.

It should fly past here about 4 minutes after launch. The weather here issupposed to be cold sand clear and the weather st the launch site is expected to be perfect. But there is a solar storm of an unacceptable intensity going on and they are having issues with a local tracking site so the launch might gets scrubbed.

The solar storm is not headed Earthward so that issue is cleared. They are going ahead with final launch preparations although they still have a destruct command issue and the tracking issue, either of which is enough to cancel the launch. I am going to have to head to the park and hope they get everything cleared. This isn't much different than going out for a Shuttle launch was except that with a liquid fueled rocket they had to scrub earlier so it was hoping nothing cropped up at the last minute rather than that a existing issue gets resolved.

2 October 2013

Never memorize something that you can look up.