Blogs

Report - 09/15/2007

First observing session with RASC, and essentially another night of familiarization with additional perks from the other members.

Basic plan was to follow through with my Autumn Grand Tour, Skills Practice and Bino Viewing that I pulled together from the RASC Beginner's Handbook.

Planned and saw the following
Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Draco, Hercules, Casseopeia, Cepheus, Auriga (didn't start showing until 22:00 or so, and then only partially), Cygnus, Sagitta, Aquila, Scutum, Summer Triangle, Teapot of Sagittarius, Corona Borealis, Delphinus, Aquarius, Piscis Austrinus, Pegasus, Pisces, Andromeda, Cetus.

Planned to see Camelopardalis, Lynx, Taurus (partial), but they weren't visible due to the northern latitude. I also wanted to see Capricornus, but didn't get around to it.

Lastly, got to see Vulpecula, even though I hadn't planned on seeing it.

In terms of bright stars, I saw, Polaris (ursa minor), Algol (perseus), Mira (cetus), fomalhaut (piscis austrinus), altair (aquila), Deneb (Cygnus), Vega (lyra) and Capella (auriga). Unfortunately, northern latitude prevented seeing Aldeberan (Taurus).

Also I saw the following: M11 (scutum), M31 (andromeda) and M33 (triangulum), and 90% certain that I saw M15 (Pegasus).

I did get to see other things that I had never planned on seeing: M45 (Pleiades), the double star at star #6 in the Big dipper, a complete view of picses, the double cluster (between perseus and casseiopeia), M103 (in casseiopeia).

Alos, Darrin (from RASC) had his Dobsonian scope there, and I got to see the following: M20, M27, Jupiter with it's four moons. Lastly, Darrin had pointed me to look at Albeiro (head of Cygnus), with the binos, I couldn't hold them steady enough to split the double-star, but Darrin, let me look through his scope. One star was orangy-red, the other was greeny-blue. Very Cool!!!!