This has been one of those weeks that well defines the old saw about “burning the candle at both ends.” Seems like night after night I’ve been able to observe both in the evening and in the morning, though I grant you it has also been quite cold and my sessions are generally just 90 minute long.
Last night I got in only half of that before clouds rolled in, but I made up for it by a wonderful two-hour session this morning with some new sights and a couple of surprises. I made a plan the night before to observe Comet Lulin, though I didn’t think it would be too interesting. Then when I got out to the observatory at 3:30 am I realized I had left my notes on Lulin in the house. No problem. A quick scan with the 12X36 binoculars uncovered it in the southwest where it’s nipping at the tail of Leo. It will overtake the old lion in the next few days, since it’s moving fast. For dates and other information on Lulin see my earlier post here. (And yes, you can see it at a reasonable hour – you don’t have to get up at 3 am.)
I must say I was a bit surprised by its size. From pictures I had seen I expected something smaller with maybe a hint of a tail. Instead what I saw reminded me of Comet Holmes, though, of course, dimmer and smaller. Holmes had a wonderful halo effect – strong core and significantly weaker, but distinct shell. (See my pictures here.) Lulin was more a blob – appearing in binoculars much as the globular cluster M5 does – only larger. It had a definite nucleus, but the surrounding matter was brighter in relation to the nucleus than was the case with Holmes. I tried, after my eyes dark adapated, to see it with the naked eye. No luck. My guess is it is roughly magnitude 5.5 which for an extended object is well below naked eye visibility for my skies – and my eyes.
But it’s nice in binoculars and real nice in small telescopes – and while I was looking at 3 am, it’s well placed in the evening sky by about 9 pm and will get better over the next week or two as it passes near Saturn and eventually the Beehive – M44. I like it because it’s dropping in from outer space and has this weird orbit that puts it on the plane of the solar system, but in terms of what most people expect a comet to look like, I’m afraid it will disappoint. What tail it has is better seen in photographs.
While Lulin was fun, my real fun these days continues to come from the new observing set up where I now have the 100ED refractor on the parallelogram mount. This is really working well. (See earlier post – when I tried this first with the much shorter 80mm Eon.) The 100mm is nearly twice as long – 900 mm vs 500 mm in focal length. It’s also a pound heavier and with the longer focal length delivers more power and smaller fields of view. These were all concerns for me. With a high power eyepiece the scope does take about 10 seconds to quiet down after you have focused or moved it. And, of course, with something like a 5mm eyepiece (180) you only get about a minute of good viewing before you have to move it – unless you’re looking at stuff in higher declinations that appears to move slower.
But I am becoming a real fan of being unplugged. Keeps you alert and aware of the motion of the Earth – and reveals to you stuff around your object you may not have noticed – a better sense of context. Bottom line – every approach to observing has its trade offs. Right now I’m really enjoying this one.
My tour this morning took me over to the Leo Triplet – M65, M66 and NGC 3628 – three distant galaxies. The two Messier objects showed easily at 70X, but NGC3628 likes to play hide and seek, but will pop out with averted vision. Hey, these are all out there in the 30-40 million light year range – don’t expect miracles when you’re looking at light almost as old as the dinosaurs. Having done that I had to take a peek into the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies just to see what I could see – a lot, but I don’t know what 😉 I didn’t have a chart handy and I was really just curious to see what was visible in the 100mm. There’s some many galaxies in this section of sky I really need to make notes to know what I’m seeing and I wasn’t feeling kindly towards taking my gloves off at that point.
I then went on to my real destination for the session, M5, a gorgeous globular cluster that many like better than even M13. I can’t make up my mind. What appeals to me about M13 is the galaxy you can capture in the same field of view – that makes it special. But M5 is wonderful both in the size of its core and in the scattering of individual halo stars that are easy to pick out. I used this to experiment with high powers, trying a 5 and 3.5 mm eyepiece. At 257X the 3.5mm really exceeds what you should use on this scope, but the image was OK. As a rule I think I’ll generally stop at 5mm.
I’m still getting the feel of how best to aim this scope and what I can expect of the 9X50 finder – and as a rule, I’m delighted with the results. I find I can intuitively point it in the right direction without sighting down the tube and usually my target is there in the finder – and the finder is accurate enough to easily put the target into even the 5mm eyepiece’s small field. I proved this to myself by quickly finding M13, M92 and M57 in succession, all with a high-powered eyepiece. Cool.
Well, downright cold, Honestly, I don’t like 24-degrees – but I wouldn’t miss these morning sessions – so peaceful. And I did get two surprises this morning. First, as I was watching M5 a bright satellite whipped through the field of view. It was so bright I looked up and sure enough, there it was easily visible with the naked eye and growing brighter by the second as it headed south – a wonderful example of an Iridium flare. (I checked the records, and sure enough, an Iridium satellite went by at 5:03 am and was predicted to reach about -1 in brightness.
Then there was a nice naked eye meteor. And then, when I was packing up and climbed the little ladder to pull the shutter closed, I saw a brilliant light in the north, moving from northwest to northeast. Had to be the International Space Station. I got my binoculars just to make sure it wasn’t a plane. Nope, it was the station – and yes, again the records showed an ISS pass scheduled for 5:33! Nothing like a little serendipity to take the chill off your bones!
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