Blogtrek

Astronomy Weekend

We had unexpectedly clear skies this weekend. It is past full Moon and it is the anti-harvest moon in March, when first the Moon is full, then it disappears from the evening sky, leaving dark skies. On Friday night I took my new 8-inch Celestron NexStar telescope to the Science Museum's skywatch. This telescope is a "go to" scope. This means that you find the object on a keyboard, then hit a key to tell the telescope where to point to to view the object. It took a while to get started, as I had to level and align the telescope to north, then aim at the two reference stars Sirius and Capella. Then I told it to go to Jupiter and it went there, and I showed the public Jupiter from my telescope. I also showed Saturn and M42. I also tested out some new equipment, such as a star diagonal, a Barlow lens, and a 9.7mm Super Plössl eyepiece. I found that the Barlow lens magnified the image two times, making it the same, nearly, as the 9.7mm eyepiece, which is a high power (about 160X) eyepiece.

The next night I went out in my back yard and was surprised to see Jupiter with five moons! Now Jupiter has 52 moons or so, but most are captured asteroids. Only four moons deserve the appellation "moon", as they are the size of our Moon. They are easily visible in an amateur telescope, and make a dramatic sight: a solar system within a solar system. On Saturday night, 2003 March 22, however, I saw five moons. Two were on the right, and three on the left. Huhh? I knew that one of them, the faintest one, had to be a background star, and it had to be the inner moon on the right. Indeed, someone in the Richmond Astronomical Society told me that the star was SAO 98075. I looked it up on the Internet and found that Jupiter had occulted (eclipsed) it on 2003 March 20. I also saw M44 Beehive cluster, M42, and made an attempt to see the two galaxies of M51. I tested more equipment. I tried something called a field reducer. That made the image smaller and brighter. With the 40mm Plössl eyepiece, that really made the Beehive cluster stand out. Jupiter was small but bright. I also tried a star diagonal and saw results similar to using my other diagonal.

Last night I went out again, this time to another astronomer's house, where we were having a telescope party. There a telescope that was willed to my astronomical society in 1957 and somehow came apart to several owners came together again when we put two parts together and they exactly fit.

So I saw several stars and gave my telescope a good workout this weekend. I hope for good skies again this weekend.