Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri

Wow!

Just got back in from viewing this. To me, it is easily 3rd
magnitude, if not brighter. Similar in brightness to both delta
Persei (3.0) and Megrez (uMa).

So, it was easily a naked-eye object, even with the nearly full moon.
To the eye it was only ’stellar’. In binos, it was ‘bright’, but
still stellar to my unsteady hands.

I had to haul out the 16″ to my driveway for a better look. In my
10×50 finderscope (steady) it was noticeably non-stellar. In my dob
at 60x, it was a very pretty YELLOW comet, with a very bright nucleus.
It seemed somewhat like a globular, such as M15 (only a little
bigger and notably brighter). Of course the yellow color was also
different.

No tail was seen. I sketched what I saw at 1x, 10x, and 60x. I tried
a few photos from my tripod. One shot is shown below.

It was worth getting the scope out for! (Next time the 8″ will do fine)

Jim Twellman

Jim Roe, Bob Judd and myself ran some trials on the Al Kelly scope tonight in its’ new
(temporary) home at Moscow Mills. Not everything is perfect just yet. A few
hardware items, along with familiarity with software (and no doubt some
“live-ware” also) need to be fixed/learned/accomodated. At times the tracking
worked perfectly, other times it didn’t. That said, we still had some good views.

[ Final Site Prep - Yvonne Roe, Todd Freund, Jim Roe, and Bob Judd “at the wheel”]

My overall sum of this scope is: bigger. Not just the scope itself, but the views
thru it. To get images that big in your eyeball in a smaller scope (say 16″),
you’d have to have a night of perfect seeing, and even then the resolution
wouldn’t be as good. The views were mostly awesome and jaw-dropping
on most every object we tested.

[ Thank God it Fits! ]

We started off with Saturn. I could easily make out the Cassini division everywhere
but dead straight-on. The planet appeared a bright yellow. The sometimes-
prominent band on the planet’s surface was not as dark tonight, but was
easier at lower powers (we were doing 400x).

[ Yes, the doors DO close. ]

The next target was M13. The ‘familiar’ glob looked a lot different. Many more stars
were resolved and the glob looked looser (= bigger) as a result.

Next we did M51. Spiral arms (especially one) were prominent. Can’t
say I saw “the bridge”, but at that time we were taking turns up the
ladder and patience to wait for moments of best seeing weren’t kosher.

We continued with looks at the Leo Triplet, NGC 4565, M3, Izar double,
the Owl, M108. Of these, I was most impressed with M3 and 4565.

[ View from behind, with rails. ]

The scope is fairly easy to manuever, although familiarity is
definitely needed.

I’m looking forward to becoming more familiar with this scope and
helping to work out the bugs. It is truly awesome!

Jim Twellman

[ Ready for some Action ! ]

Tom Richards started it all. After all, it was a Monday night. A “school night”!

I had started the day at 5:30 AM, and I knew I would be tired going out, much less coming back. But the skies were looking so good, and the forecast was smiling upon us. Only a bunch of real nerds starving for photons would care to go out in the dark after a hard day at work, and then get up early AGAIN the next day after being out late!

Of course, after reading Tom’s post, I jumped on the opportunity. Soon, other lemmings were joining our race to the cliff.

In addition to Tom and myself, at least 4 others from SLAS joined us at the White Conservation Area: Jim Trull, Jerry Loethen, Mike Malolepsy, and Jeff Heckencamp. Tom was earnestly working his spring Messiers, and I believe that Jerry was working the tail end of his Herschel 400 as well. I was mostly goofing off, enjoying the splendors, but I managed to bag a couple of ‘new’ Caldwells anyway.

It was a WARM, CLEAR, and MOONLESS night (did I mention that it was WARM?), something we had not had in quite a while. Temps were mild, in the 50’s starting out, and the air was crisp and the atmosphere was nearly glowing at dusk.

Jerry and I fought the dusk for a while trying to pry dim Comet Encke from the sunset. Alas, there aren’t many bright guide stars in western Aries, and the cause was forfeit after about 45 minutes of effort.

I’m sure that others had great views, but I can only report mine. The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) was absolutely spectacular. No bridge, but the spiral nature was easily seen. Also, NGC 4565 in Coma, an edge-on spiral galaxy, was breathtaking. I also enjoyed viewing “the Intergalactic Wanderer”, NGC 2419. These were all near the zenith, and thus offered their best views on such a clear night.

Most of us had originally planned on quitting at 11pm, but hardly anyone left until midnight. It was such a good night and there had been so few like this in the past few months. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a great observing season to come.

For those that have not experienced their telescopes in a non light-polluted environment, you really ought to come out and join us. Hopefully, on a weekend and not a school night!

Jim T

.Whiteside Parking Area
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Tom Richards & Jeff Heckencamp
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Jerry L. and Jim Trull
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Jerry Loethen hamming it up
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Jim Trull and Jim Twellman

Comet McNaught C/2006 P1 




 Sony DSC-075, 1/9/2007 5:44pm, f/3.5, 21mmFL, 1.3sec @ ISO 100  

This is a 2002-vintage 3.3mp camera, and yet it still delivered a decent shot of McNaught!

Jim Twellman