my astronomy club had another set of observing sessions this weekend and mother nature was kind enough to give us some clear skies. i ended up getting out about 9 pm and was slightly worried because there was a very large cloud front in the west. fortunitly it stayed west and seemed to be a north/south moving front as it stayed clear most of the evening. there were a few straggler clouds but other than that the seeing was great. i had a few things planned for the evening and while i didn’t hit everything on my list i hit most of it.

  • jupiter — the staple planet of the early summer sky was out in full bloom tonight. jupiter’s moons were strung out like pearls of varying sizes against the velvet black of the sky. ganymede, callisto, io, and europa were all out tonight. i tried my new 5 mm nagler again but the seeing wasn’t steady enough. i’m beginning to see that this eyepiece is great for those once a year moments of perfect seeing but otherwise it’s pretty much unusable. maybe since i’m planning a few high end trips this year i’ll actually get some nice views out of it. the view in my 9 mm was much more pleasing.
  • neat (c/2001 q4) — this was an early point of interest for the club this evening. you can always tell when there is something new and interesting in the sky when you walk up and the field of telescopes (8 - 10) are all pointing at the same object in the sky. i found the comet pretty quickly and really couldn’t take my eyes off it for a while. i had my 35 mm in and the view was amazing. the core was bright and highly visible and the tail was extremely long. this was the first comet that i’ve observed with this telescope or any telescope for that matter. i’ve always looked at them with binoculars but have never had the opportunity to use a telescope. needless to say the views were amazing with my 12.5” light bucket. after watching it for a while i wandered over to a few other club members scopes to see what kinds of views others were getting with their telescopes. it was clear that visual observing really takes center stage with larger aperture telescopes.
  • m44 aka beehive cluster — i caught a glimpse of this open cluster on my way to seeing comet neat. the stars in the cluster were bright pin points of light. unfortunately i didn’t linger long as i was comet hunting.
  • t lyrae aka hip90883 — this is a bright red carbon star near vega in the constellation lyra. with my wide field 35 mm in, this star pops out of the field of stars. it’s kind of foreboding being bright red in a field of white and blue stars. this is a must see if your in the lyra neighborhood. just center your finder on vega and then scan right a few degrees, you can’t miss it.
  • m104 aka the sombrero galaxy — this spiral galaxy was a last minute object that someone wanted to view through my telescope. having not planned how to star hop there it took me a while to find it so i fumbled a bit. i still haven’t mastered the skill of hopping right from a star atlas to the eyepiece. i looked at this in my 35 and 9 mm eyepieces. this is definitely something i want to return to. there was a lot of detail in dust lane around the galaxies halo. a definite must try at high and mid powers when i get an eyepiece to fill my middle range gaps.
  • m53 — this globular cluster lies within coma berenices which lies north of virgo and west of leo. this was an amazing globular that had so many stars i was at a loss for words. i dropped in my 35, 9 and 5 mm and the stars were jumping out of the eyepiece. i can see why earlier astronomers cataloged these objects and mistook them for nebula. on a lesser telescope this would definitely look like a single entity. there are few deep space objects in the sky that do their images justice but most globular clusters can do them justice and then some.
  • m13 aka hercules cluster — this globular cluster lies within the constellation hercules. this was another amazing globular that had a sea of stars to look at. again i cycled through the array of my eyepieces and each had a better view than the other. there was a binocular viewer in our club who was having trouble finding m13 and asked me where it was. i had printed out a few charts this evening and this was one of the objects i wanted to look at. after telling him where it was i spun the portaball around and in less than 10 seconds had it in my eyepiece. upon telling him this he could believe it and had to see. needless to say the portaball’s versatility and nimble motions were impressive, almost as impressive as the views of m13. nothing truly compares to the blanket of stars that these globular clusters frame.

that was about it for last evening. i spent about 30 minutes fiddling with my collimation. i was having a hard time getting it to collimate regardless of how i placed my laser in the focuser. as long as i always placed it in the same way everything was fine. as soon as i put it in at a different angle or alignment it said that my collimation was out, which made no sense and still doesn’t. it shouldn’t matter how the laser is in the focuser, what matters is the path of the light. anyhow, i’m going to have to send an email off to peter or the yahoo portaball group on this one.


anyhow, it was another great observing session with low temperatures, no bugs, and clear skies. i had a great time and called it a night around midnight.