As I was building my "astronomy planning sheet," I captured the sunset times. Often, I use Solar Calculator and Sky and Telescope's Almanac to check this data.
Somewhere along the way, I went off by one hour. Probably because I didn't check a DST switch.
And, ironically, as I was building the document, I thought, "Oh, I should cross-check things." I do draw from different sources so this is easy to do; in fact, errors are regularly flushed out by this process. But I guess I was anxious, stressed, with the yoke of making the weather call for the RASC Toronto Centre City Observing Session, go too fast. I missed it. It was right in front of me! But I missed it.
When I shut down my email and instant messaging, grabbed my eyeglasses, and walked to the kitchen, it occurred to me: wow, it's still really light out. It can't be sunset soon... Something didn't seem right. I returned to my desk, fired up Stellarium, and simulated a sunset. Ah HA! 8:07 PM, not 7:07. Whew! Time to relax. That was my first thought. Time to review and double-check. Which, I should have done in the first place! I noted the corrected times of sunset and twilights by hand...
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I arrived High Park around 7:35 PM. Popular place in the summer! I had to drive around the ringing roads once before I found a parking spot. Even then, it was just a lucky opportunity. Somebody leaving; I backed into their spot. I was steps from our usual digs.
Soccer games were being played in earnest all around as well as a little league baseball game (with very noisy, hopeful fan-parents) on the east diamond. The large west pitch featured a girls league, bright phosphorescent orange vs. bright day-glo green. The nearby small field was in use by a group of men, every race represented, clearly playing some pick up. The goalie suggested I not set up too close, "They're a little crazy." It was immediately obvious that there were no boundaries.
I took my time assembling the 'scope. Hey! Where's my tripod triangle...
I was a little concerned as sunset neared with the scattered clouds. Tumbling in from the north-west. What had I done? Had I made a terrible mistake? Would Toronto RASCals look outside and think, "That Blake, what a goof. He doesn't know what he's doin'! Give me Guy."
Through my C8, I started to look at the 4-day old Moon, about 15° up. It was a pleasing crescent in the 36mm wide field eyepiece. A few curious onlookers mustered the courage to venture over. I served up views and gave away RASC Star Finders. The Galileo Moments had started.
Suddenly, I decided to learn about what I was seeing. I pulled the Observer's Handbook 2009 and turned to the Moon pages (152-153). And began a long process of trying to understand the orientation... I was confused.
The clouds seemed to be getting worse. Oh no.
David Z arrived at the site with his Televue 76 APO tucked away in a compact case with a bunch of high-end eyepieces. He mounted the OTA on a sturdy alt-az mount. David explained to me that the 76 did not receive the NP treatment; it was only the 101 and larger.
I corrected one party regarding the "Mars as big as the Moon!" hoax email.
Now the slow-moving clouds were completely obliterating Luna. We'd get a few seconds of observing and then it would disappear. I was getting really bummed.
We were joined by John B and trusty 8" Dob. And then there were three.
And lots of mozzies! I put on layers and spritzed my hands and face (probably too late).
Suddenly, I noticed the clouds were gone. I was very happy! I demanded a High Five of John. He begrudgingly complied. Trust in the Clear Sky Chart! Now we were able to get down to business. It was 9:28 PM, the humidity was 86% and the temp. was 16.2°C (according to the Oregon Scientific portable weather station). I reminded the crew to prepare for dew.
And I resumed my study of the Moon. I adjusted the eyepiece and mirror on the back of my cat so that it was upright. Then, atop my tall stepstool, I looked down through the eyepiece. And saw a lit crescent on the left side of the presented field. As expected. Inverted view. With the 3 (or rather, odd number of) reflections. Ah. And the craggy area, at the bottom, is south! That matched the charts in the OH. And that region was up, at the top, in my rotated view, when standing beside the 'scope. OK. Now I knew where south was.
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I flipped my Observer's Handbook upside down and everything started to make sense... Although I still had to do lateral flipping in my brain. Where's a mirror when you need one?! Or an inverted map?! Hmmm.
The medium-sized maria below the equator was an intriguing shape and kept catching my eye. Not perfectly round. My first impression was the symbol from a deck of cards for spades, with the tail heading north but toward the limb. Later, as I looked at it closely, it seemed more like the shape of a house, that classic pentangle shape, tip of the roof pointing toward the centre. After a great deal of consideration, I determined it was Mare Crisium. The Sea of Crises. John explained that to mean crisis upon crisis. Oh. I'm very familiar with that!
I could see a couple of tiny, small craters on the smooth maria. I didn't realise it at the time but one of those is Picard.
I was also attracted to the small craters near the north pole. One was lit well, sunlight falling into the floor of the crater, slightly larger; the other was closer to the terminator, such the far wall was lit but the floor lay in darkness. Following the lines of latitude. Atlas and Hercules. Very interesting!
David asked if the large crater above Crisium (he had a mirror diagonal on his refractor so he too was seeing a laterally inverted view), just above the equator, was Copernicus. I said I thought it was Langrenus. John agreed. But I remarked that I thought it looked like Copernicus, with the peak in the centre. It seemed to be about the same size. John reminded us that Copernicus was on the opposite side, the west side. My recollection was that it was also closer to the meridian.
I also identified crater Macrobius. "The Micro Bus?" John asked. He's got a funny sense of humour.
The south polar region was very interesting with craters on top of craters. Some seemed very deep.
For me, that was very cool. I've never paid much attention to the Moon before. I enjoyed learning some lava seas and crater sites before the skies darkened. No pun intended but this is a whole other world.
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I decided, for the balance of the evening, not wanting to bounce around, that I'd stay in one constellation. Cassiopeia. And I'd chase down double stars. I pulled my Pocket Sky Atlas and looked at it closely for circles and sticks.
First stop (even though I knew I had already observed it) was η (eta) Cassiopeiae, aka Achird, between α (alpha) and the wide pair ν (nu) 1 and 2. It was very different than Albireo which we had all looked at one point or another. Here the colours were burnt yellow and dull orange (Haas says brown). Those colours stayed whether I was at 55 or 110 power.
Next stop: φ (phi), close to δ (delta). I found φ to be a wide double. Pale white stars, if I remember correctly. I didn't notice it at first but there were a bunch of very faint white or blue stars nearby. Or perhaps this double was in front of the fainter stars... Hey! That's an open cluster. I reexamined PSA. Ha ha! That was NGC 457, marked with a small round yellow circle with dotted outline: open star cluster. Nice! [ed: aka The Owl or E.T. Cluster. Or Caldwell 13.]
I looked for NGC 463 without success.
OK. Over to ε (epsilon). Then from there, it was a short jump to the double star Σ (Struve) 163. Wow. Stunning. But a little challenging in the glow of city light. I saw an orange primary and very faint blue (maybe aqua) companion (pumpkin and pale sky blue, says Haas). A wide pair, their separation was about the same as Albireo (Haas agrees). That was fun.
Further away now was ψ (psi). I was expecting a tough star hop, without a lot of bright stars along the way, but I arrived on target very quickly. This double reminded me of Polaris: a bright main star but very faint companion. I could see it easily but David found it tough. Haas says this is a triple star. I'm going to have to look again now...
Finally the lights over the empty baseball diamond extinguished. It was 10:20 PM.
We turned to Jupiter. Io and Europa had continued to separate. More detail was visible increase in elevation.
I reminded the guys that Neptune was in the area. That excited John. I helped him get in the neighbourhood, pointing out δ (delta) and γ (gamma) Capricorni, 42, 44, and 45 above, then, further east, μ (mu). And that the ecliptic was nearly parallel to a line between 42 and μ. We spent the next half-hour trying to find the last planet. We interpolated the position using the Observer's Handbook chart. It seemed surprisingly difficult. Bad transparency perhaps. Light pollution. No dark adaptation. Without a computer! I think we all came away feeling unsure. I sketched my target area at around 10:45 PM.
Sketch details: 36mm baader planetarium in an SCT with mirror diagonal. That should really say "Neptune?"
At 11:01, John proclaimed he was done, offering to drop David at the subway. I noted the conditions: 97% humidity and 14.7°C.
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I believe this was the first occasion for me to use the newly affixed Velcro strips. It was a pleasure to be able to quickly stick the controller on whichever tripod leg was closest.
It proved advantageous to be able to reach between the upper struts of the leg to firmly squeeze the loops and hooks together. The controller was very secure. I never felt it was going to fall or dislodge.
Many times, when needing to use the controller, I would simply leave it attached to the leg and push the required buttons. I.e. I did not remove it. This worked quite well.
I'm happy with this new setup.
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It was a very small crowd, this High Park COS. I wondered how they were doing at Bayview; they usually have more people than we do. And I wondered how Denis was doing down at the CNE. Boardwalk astronomy!
Despite our numbers, I thought we had a good time. Over the course of the evening, we served up views of the Moon, Jupiter, and some double stars. I counted, roughly, 14 Galileo Moments. We gave out 7 Star Finders to couples and families and the odd soccer player.
We viewed the Double Cluster, the Andromeda galaxy, M13. I saw a northbound meteor which I thought was a κ (kappa) Cygnid. A park visitor rushed over to us and reported a really bright object northbound but none of us saw it... Ironic.
We helped each other a lot. John and I assisted David as he had a bit of difficulty finding some constellations and stars. So, with my green laser, we pointed out objects for him. This helped him target Albireo, Polaris, the Keystone, etc. Every time we aimed at the object, he emitted a little "Oops!" and then quietly acquired this quarry. Made me giggle.
I learned a bit about David. He started really young. He remembers getting fired up about astronomy before he was a teenager. He might have been the youngest member to join the Montréal RASC.
John was impressed with my planning sheets. I talked about how I was not pleased with any astronomy planning software, to date.
I was particularly happy with the evening. It turned out to be a decent night weather-wise. Looked like I made a good call for the RASC TC COS. Whew!
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Confirmed!
I saw Neptune...
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