The Back Bay Amateur Astronomy club holds a monthly event called Skywatch at the Northwest River Park in southern Chesapeake. Sandy and I have been out there before to just look but this is the first time I have taken my own scope.

I have been trying to learn to better navigate the sky without using the GOTO computers on my CG5 mounts. I don’t have my mobile power worked out yet anyway so I figured this would be a good opportunity to do some star hopping using just a Skymap and a red dot finder. If I got totally lost or was not able to view anything there would be others there to help me get back on track or if I got totally frustrated with it there would be a number of other scopes to look through.

Sandy, Mary Shannon, and I loaded up the Xterra with the SV80BV, the M1 mount, a cooler with a few bottles of water, a couple of camp chairs, and the bug repellent. We arrived at the observing site in the equestrian area of NWR park at about 8:00 PM and set up. I have one cigarette lighter plug in the cargo area of the Xterra so I used that to power the dew heater controller.

I got everything set up and we waited for the sun to go down. Venus and Saturn were the first targets visible well before the sky was even dark. After that I started searching out globular clusters.

We had a really good time. I did not take a count but I would guess there were between 10 and 15 scopes set up – ranging in size from my 80mm refractor to Kent’s monster 25″ dob (the views of M13 through that thing are INCREDIBLE). I learned a lot about navigating the sky. Mary Shannon had a great time learning about the different constellations and stars. Both Mary Shannon and Sandy enjoyed looking through Ted’s 18″ Dobsonian that was set up next to us.

The Skywatch event is open to the public and if you get a chance you should check one out – the schedule is here. We are already looking forward to the next one.

From my observing notes:

Venus was very easy to spot well before dark. Though the scope you could easily see the phase of the planet using both the 22mm and the 9mm eye pieces. The phase is very similar to the gibbious moon phase (somewhere between the quarter phase and gibbious phase) I am not sure if it is waxing or waning. Because of the brightness it was actually hard to observe this as the sky became darker.

Saturn was beautiful as always. The shadow of the rings across the planets surface was very easy to resolve. It was approximately 9:10 PM when we were viewing it so the sky was not yet completely dark. I was only able to resolve the moon Titan.

Below are my two quick sketches I made in my log book of the phase of Venus and the location of Saturn’s moon Titan.

A BBAA member walked by (sorry I do not remember who) and said that Albireo would look good through my scope. He showed me where to look, and he was right. Albireo is a double star, it is the head of the constellation Cygnus. The double contains one larger blue star and a smaller gold/yellow star.

Messier 4 (M4) Very faint but it was easy to find by centering on Antares and slowly moving the scope to the west using the 22mm. The 9mm brought out more detail of the bright core and was able to resolve individual stars around the core.

Messier 80 (M80) Was also fairly easy to find by centering on Antares and slowly moving the scope up to about half way between Antares and Acrab (Beta Scorpii) in constellation Scorpius. It has a bright core, but I could not resolve individual stars to the core. Also tried with the 7mm Nagler.

Messier 57 (M57), the Ring Nebula, is found in the constellation Lyra about halfway between the stars Sheliak and Sulafat. M57 resolved as a fuzzy bluish thick walled bubble with the 9mm.

Messier 20 (M20), the Trifid Nebula, and Messier 21 (M21), an open cluster. This was one of my favorite targets of the night. Both M20 and M21 could be seen in the same FOV of the 9mm Nagler. I was able to resolve the dark lanes that separate the Trifid Nebula.

Mizar and Alcor is another double found in the handle of the Big Dipper. Mizar is a large blue star and Alcor is a much smaller blue star.

I did not note any specific details about these clusters. Basically a BBAA member (Ted) was calling these off and I was going looking for them. Messier 10 (M10), Messier 11 (M11), Messier 22 (M22), and Messier 15 (M15)

Alignment Stars: Arcturus and Vega
Calibration Star: Enif

From my observing notes:

I started out observing Messier 11. This open cluster looked great in the C6 with the 22mm Panoptic. Very easy to see individual stars in the tight cluster. One bright yellow star just off center of the cluster.

Then I turned to Messier 39, another open cluster. This cluster filled the 25mm Plossl eye piece in the AT66 also looked good with the 22mm in the C6. Because of the size I actually liked the wider field of view the 66 gave better.

I viewed several other open cluster – M18, M22, M23, M28, M26, and NGC6633. When observing Messier 28 (M28) I was not able to resolve individual stars even with the 9mm, it just appear to be a faint cloud. I think the humid air and the fair amount of light pollution to the south was probably the reason for the less than spectacular views in the 9mm. NGC6633 was another cluster that really looked great in the AT66 with the 25mm Plossl, the cluster just filled the field of view.

Jupiter was easy to spot. The dark northern gas band was very easy to resolve with the 22mm and 9mm in the C6 (the southern band is missing) and the 4 Galilean moons were clearly visible in all eye pieces and all scopes. The 22mm Panoptic gave me the best views, the seeing was just not good enough for the magnification of the 9mm. Easy to see the 4 moons in the AT66, but no detail on the planet. I observed Jupiter on into sunrise, it was still easily visible in the scope even as the sun began to peek over the horizon.

When the star Capella rose to the north east I started searching the north east for Comet 2009/R1 (McNaught) with binoculars. I was not able to successfully locate the comet with my binoculars.

Very heavy morning dew ended the viewing, I was pretty surprised that I did not have more problems with dew. There was a light dew on the scope but the corrector remained fairly clear with just the dew shield. I am looking forward to getting my dew heater so that my troubles with dew will become a thing of the past.

I think Jupiter would have been visible even in full sun light.

My plan for the night was to practice getting a good polar alignment and then check out a few deep sky Messier objects.

I was able to get the scope aligned on Polaris fairly quickly, then I used Deneb and Caph as the alignment stars and then Betelgeuse as a calibration star. Alignment Success!!! I typed M42 into the Goto hand controller and the scope slewed right to it – and it was fantastic!

Spent the next couple hours checking out M42, M31, and M33. The tour button on the Celestron hand controller showed me M34 and M82.

I used my 32mm, 25mm, and 15mm Plossl eyepieces, the best views of the night were with the 25mm.

Here is a pick of the Celestron C8S-CT set up in my backyard.

Celestron C8 with Dew Shield

If you check out the picture real close you can see the frost forming on the scope. Told you it was cold! The Astrozap dew shield did a great job at keeping the scope clear up until just before I called it a night.

While I was out I saw two very bright meteors. One nearly directly over head at about 10:15 PM that was very bright and one that was in the west about 11:30 PM that was not quite as bright. Very cool.

Hopefully the cool clear nights will continue through the weekend.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!