Saturday, May 10, 2008

IAD star party (Don Mills)

Today was International Astronomy Day! Woo hoo! I helped—with another 20 or so RASCals—at the evening star party held at the Ontario Science Centre. The skies were not great but we got fair views of the waxing crescent Moon as well as Saturn and Titan. I'm pretty sure I say Dione; Tom thinks I was seeing the brighter Rhea. I turned to Algieba (γ or gamma Leo) for a time.

Late in the evening, I decided to try the double star Izar (ε or epsilon) in Boötes. Not an easy star-hop through the murk. And there are not a lot of bright stars around Arcturus. But I persevered, checked my charts, corrected my orientation, and I found it! Wow. A worthy target.

When I checked Haas's book, I noticed there was no check-mark beside it. What?! Is this the first time I've seen this star?! I thought for sure I had viewed it before.

(On checking my blog, I found it documented. It's just that I forgot to tick the row in the book...)

John B took a look through my eyepiece. He described the faint secondary as deep blue. Wow. I do not see that colour...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How well do your solar lights work? We are on a journey to blog people's experience with different kinds of lights!

bla said...

They work great!

With the red LED, they might even work better than with the white LED. Red LEDs draw a bit less power.

Certainly they are very unique.