Instruments: Celestron 14-inch SCT, Tele Vue 101 refractor
Mount: Paramount ME
Method: Go To
Phil had his refractor. Millie had her 8" RC. Both on the Observing Pad. Dietmar was in the Geoff Brown Observatory with his large RC imaging rig. (Later in the evening, Katrina arrived with her GOTO Dobsonian.)Mount: Paramount ME
Method: Go To
I started off with MallinCam on Venus. Tested the new Tele Vue 2" Extension Tube. It worked! Then I played with the camera's sensitivity setting, the Automatic Level Control, shutter speed, white balance, etc.
Meanwhile, I looked at Saturn naked eye. Later, between wispy clouds I could see Mars (below, left). I was a little surprised to see that Mars seemed somewhat brighter. I was expecting the opposite. Stellarium said Saturn was magnitude 1.26 while Mars was 1.48. The apparent sizes 38.3" and 4.7" respectively.
Struggled a little bit with the alignment of the C14 and TV101. Slightly off. Exacerbated when operating the C14 at high magnification.
It was fairly cloudy. I was looking for large patches of clear sky.
10:51 PM. Just bumped the magnification to 301 in the C14 on Izar. It drew out the secondary star's colour: it's blue! At 145x, they were easily split but the colours seemed to be gold and white for the primary and secondary.
Heard Millie calling. She was on Izar too, at around 160x, and wanted to know my impression.
Oh. Moon's up...
My first thought looking through Millie's eyepiece was that the 'scope was not collimated; I couldn't focus on the primary without seeing coma. That said, I could see the blue colour in the companion. She however did not think it the same colour as me.
11:10. Just showed Izar to the the gang, Katrina, Millie, and Phil.
11:18. Viewed Izar in Phil's refractor, a Tele Vue 101 NP. Beautiful even at high mag, 270x. 2-4 mm Tele Vue zoom eyepiece. Good colours. Inky black background. As we zoomed out the secondary took on the colour of the primary. Neat. An immediate example of how the colours of double stars change or shift.
Millie thought the view the best of the three telescopes.
11:24. Tried for ξ (xi) Ursae Majoris. Too low. Murky, clouds.
I don't know where I got this reference from. But there's a sense of urgency to this. A fast-moving binary perhaps?
Sissy Haas, in her book double stars for small telescopes, describes the showcase pair as "the fastest easy one." The stars were 1.7 seconds of arc apart in 2004 but are widening. The period is about 60 years. So that means, one can see this change over one's life...
I was forced to chase sucker holes.
11:41. Viewed M9 (Messier 9) in Ophiuchus. Looked like a globular to me. Small. Faint with this combo of moonlight and cloud. And low.
And probably a bit cut off by the south wall (in its upright position). Merits another look.
Earlier in the season...
When the wall's fixed.
Couple of bright stars nearby.
It is a glob. Confirmed.
12:19 AM. Grabbed by Cambridge Double Star Atlas. Looked at the sky. No clouds near the Little Dipper.
A few moments ago I think I saw the mag 9 companion to 5 Ursae Minoris A. That was with the 27mm eyepiece. When I bumped to 13mm, I couldn't see it. Dropped to the 18mm. Still couldn't see it. But then, I found that we were socked in! Clouds everywhere.
And the gibbous Moon was messing things up.
Dietmar (the official CAO site supervisor) shut down his RC and handed the reins to me.
I popped out to the Observing Pad. Everyone there was packing up.
Chatted with Dietmar about collimating a RC 'scope. Sounded a lot like what you do for a Newtonian.
12:30. Ah ha! The companion in 5 Ursae Minoris is easy to spot when there's no cloud.
Tried MallinCam on Jupiter. Could see a couple of moons. No detail on the planet though.
Kiron and Dipak arrived. Actually, they had been on site for some time, unpacked, set up their bedding.
Jupiter through the eyepiece at 301x was amazing!
Backed out to 145x to take in all the moons.
Ha. We were tricked! Only 3 moons were visible. The object on the opposite side of Jupiter was a star. I should have known better. It was much dimmer (mag 8.9) than than Galilean moons (between mag 5 and 6).
1:24. After adjusting and focusing the MallinCam, we viewed the Moon on monitor. Wow!
Just fit in monitor frame (when zoomed out).
Millie and Katrina headed off to bed.
1:35. Millie suddenly returned and reminded me that Tempel was up.
Checked the location in my Stellarium (which I had updated earlier in the day using the Minor Planet Center site). Was about to use a nearby star when I noticed a comet icon in TheSky6. Hey. It looked about right. Clicked on it. It was Tempel. Slewed to it but we couldn't see anything. Sky was very washed out...
1:45. After making a wifi connection, I double checked that our software was correct. I didn't see it change location in the software. Slewed again but no joy.
This cemented the remark I had made earlier in the evening: this was really the wrong weekend to try to view this comet. Next weekend will be good, with the Moon well past.
1:56. Viewed κ (kappa) Herculis (from the summer Sky and Telescope list). Easily split, wide, maybe 15" (ah, no, 30"), with the C14. Both the same colour, straw yellow.
I found a note I had made in Sissy's book: κ Her is also known as Marfik.
She described the striking pair as a "grapefruit orange" and "whitish scarlet." Apparently Smyth thought them "Light yellow; pale garnet."
2:02. Viewed 100 Her. Tighter than kappa. Fascinating.
The stars are the exact same colour (white) and brightness. Exact!
Sissy described the pair as "interesting" and "identical." She went on to say that if they are not part of a binary system, it is rather remarkable.
2:04. Tired. Physically. Mentally.
Haven't made my bed yet!
OK. Let's wrap.
§
Viewed many meteors in the evening. I suspect many were Aquarids, heading south to north, bright, low over the horizons.
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