Across the Sky by Rum

And we are not talking Scottish islands here either!

Once again, 3am found me outside with a Rum and Coke and my 10x50s, and this time forarmed with a far better idea of where to look for things.

Sure enough, Messier 5 was found a little way at 4 o clock from Alpha Serpentiis, close to a brightish 5th mag star, and almost as prominent as Messier 13 if harder to find. Tick one off, give a little "whoop", take a drink! As I wrote on twitter yesterday, I then confirmed that it was the cluster IC4665 I found in Ophicuchus, surprised something as prominent and easy to find has no NGC number let alone a Messier one.

Really on a roll now, I then managed to find Messier 3, which kind of makes a roughly equilateral triangle with Arcturus and Rho Bootes. Last night I reckoned M5 looked more impressive, but other sources rate M3 the better cluster.

New targets are now Messier 10 and 12 in Ophiuchus, and Coma galaxies.

This morning had a run out to Willow Holt. Gorgeous day, ended up rather too hot really for an 8 mile run, and a chiff chaff - I think - was singing loudly by the Wyke Lane entrance. Further along the river saw Reed Buntings and another finchy looking bird with a black and white tail, and seeming red patch on it sforehead.

Now I'm out of the sun, which is hazing now, and recovering!

Cuba Libre Astronomy

With the moon well out of the way, decided to head out last night with my 10x50s for a spot of stargazing. This time of year the spring skies seem rather bland and empty to someone who hasn't got a telescope, so I thought I'd just float around for a bit as well as trying to target particular objects.

It was a cold night, so I took out a rum and coke with me, just to fend off the chill a little. I wasn't expecting it would help me see more stars though. That would be stupid.

If anything, it must have done the reverse. Messier 5 was still totally elusive, although today I found out I've been looking in slightly the wrong place due to my faulty memorization of wiki starmaps. Messier 3 I didn't even bother, I always end up with a sore bloody neck for nothing.

But in the East, the Milky Way and the Constellations of summer were rising, so I got a good look at Messier 13 - very impressive in my 10x50s on this night - and Messier 39. Omega 1 and 2 Cygni make a fine pair in binoculars, and although you can't see it's companion, Albireo was a lovely gold colour.

Had a sweep through the bowl of Virgo for galaxies, but I think they are all well out of reach of my 10x50s.

Rum or no rum.

A Murmuration of Wagtails!

The other night, relieved after surviving another day at work but depressed because the next day would bring another one, I left the building and sorted my bicycle out, only to be assailed by a veritable battery of familiar sounding bubbling whistles.

Long tails in the sky and a deeply undulating flight path revealed a large flock of 100 plus wagtails had decided the sickly looking trees by the lorry park at work was the best sort of place to consider roosting and weren't at all worried that sitting on the road, tails-a-twitching was also the best place to be flattened by a 18 wheeler.

They circled in the sky, whistling furiously and full of the joys of a beautiful evening. A looser less organised roosting display than starlings, but still distracting to watch when wobbling along on a bicycle!

Today, been out running. Great Crested Grebe at London Road lake is in full on summer display colours, but no idea who it might display to, while Peacock and Small White butterflies made their first showing to me today.

Tonight, had a look at the Venus, Crescent Moon and Jupiter trio, a long thin triangle in the sky that a bat flew as I watched.

Venus is so bright it looks it has been punched through the sky from another dimension.

Comet Garradd

After my busy day on bike and on foot yesterday, thought I'd have a little look for this comet in the vicinity of Ursa Minor and Draco last night - heard it was visible near the bottom end of URSA Minor so had a little look with my 10x50s - think I might have picked it up with averted vision as a misty patch with a noticeable tail at about 2 o clock from Kocab - Beta Ursa Minoris - and about the same distance away as gamma is from Kocab.

But my eyes weren't properly adapted and they may have been playing tricks as usual. Will keep an eye out, but I think it is going to be a difficult object under my skies with my 10x50s.

Kocab by the way, is a gorgeously orange star in the binocular view. Like a lollipop!

Probably because its name is a bit like Kojak.

Ladies and Gentlemen...Mercury!

The words of Captain Kaneda of the Icarus 2 were in my head, the beautiful music of the film Sunshine in my ears, and smack in front of me, floating on the top of a layer of jade green twilight, was planet Mercury.

The fact that given the window related shenanigans I had gone through to see it the night before, the fact I was watching it on my bike ride home from work seemed crazy.

It was about 3 and a half times the distance from Venus to Jupiter, and rather below an imaginary line connecting the two. It was about half a hand span above the horizon - say 8-10 degrees and plain as day, nothing anywhere near it in the sky.

It was a hell of a distraction as I cycled home, luckily it was still there visible through my bedroom window for a short while, sinking towards the cruel all swallowing horizon.

Can't belive I found it so easily after so long, although without the Venus Jupiter conjunction I think I would have struggled. But even at my ok not so collosal age, I'm glad I can still find new things to wonder at.

And I didn't share Kaneda's grim fate after he saw Mercury!

Multiple Astronomy Fails

I've spent the last few days utterly failing to see things.

A couple of nights ago, sat inside but every so often having a look at the sky...was I looking out at 940 or so when a once in a lifetime fireball as bright as the moon went over? Nope. I was watching some god knows what crap on TV and trying to write.

Great. Bloody great.

And then last night, my best chance to easily see Mercury? Nope! Not a chance. Everywhere I went or stood it would have been just below the rooftops or a bloody great tree was blocking the view from an upstairs bedroom. Grrrrr. Double grrr. And tonight, when I might have had a chance on my way home of finding a good vantage point up the hill, it was cloudy.

Sod it. I'm a rubbish astronomer.

The Scorpion Rises

Was up very early for work as usual - left the house at 0610 to find a spot of indigo-green twilight in the sky (hooray!) and the thinnest slice of a waning moon glowing orange scraping a rooftop.

Virgo and Saturn were visible, but are already starting to set. What I could see, low in the South South West and red as a hot coal, was Antares, Alpha Scorpii, sat viciously beneath his claws. Alas from here, his sting is never visible.

To quote Death in Vegas, "Scorpio Rising". Signs that winter is perhaps on the way out. A sign of a chance to hunt star clusters and the centre of the galaxy low down. Fat chance in he orange smog above the rooftops!

Have just had a little stint with binoculars. Despite the neighbours security light, the starfields of Orion, Monoceros, Gemini and Auriga were beautiful. Had a look for Messier 41 and Messier 50, but low down, and no joy I think. Luckily the sky in this part of the universe is one massive star cluster.

The Beehive

A couple of nights ago, before work and lack of sleep took me away from my blog, I had a long thoughtful session of naked eye astronomy under a clear sky, Sirius blazing white from amongst the birdfeeders on the baby oak tree, Orion's belt skirting the rooves of the crumbling 19th century outhouses that belong to my downstairs neighbours.

Mars was visible twixt the Sycamore branches, this late at night always making me worry about dreaming of HG Wells style martian invasion and blood drainings - Damn you Jeff Wayne! - as has happened on a fair few occasions.

My attention was drawn to the left of Gemini's bright twins Castor and Pollux, into the faint constellation of Cancer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_constellation

I tested myself out on its Messier Objects.

The famous Messier 44 Beehive Cluster is easily visible to the naked eye as a misty patch almost as large as the full moon. I'm able to spot it easily these days, I must have better skies than my old house. Binculars resolve it beautifully of course.

Where I was really trying my eyesight was out was in seesing if I could spot the less well known Messier 67, which doesn't resolve in my 10x50s really. I think not. Above the head of the Hydra and slightly eastwards. I think I was convining myself I could see it, but my eyes were playing tricks. Wiki has its mag at 6.1 so under urban skies, not a chance in hell!

But as ever, I enjoyed my stargazing, despite the cold.

How to get (back) into Stargazing

Hi

I write this as someone who has always followed astronomical events, but pretty much gave up on observing a long long time ago, when I was heading into my A-Levels. I'd always follow the big time astronomical stories, but never really pay much attention to the sky, except for maybe the odd meteor shower.

Well, I'm nearly damn 40 now, and gradually over the last year or so I have been getting more and more back into it. Last month, I dug out my old 6 inch F8 Newtonian from my parents spare room, and found that 23 years out of use, you could still actually look through it and see something. I even took a really cruddy picture of Jupiter and its moons at x60. It was fun!

But it was also clear the old scope was very tired, mirror dirty and needing silvering, the finder out of alignment and the collimation shot to hell. I'm as clumsy as anything, and figure a resilvering job as expensive.

So it was with great delight that I got a pair of 10x50s for xmas, ostensibly more for birdwatching which you can probably tell I write about my hopelessness at elsewhere on this here blog. But I'm loving them for Stargazing. So, for someone who feels his love for the sky coming back big time, here's a few things I've learnt, and wish I'd learned back when I was 16.

1) Before you do anything - learn the sky! It seems obvious, but really knowing the constellations and principle stars will make things a ton easier later on. Nowadays folk are lucky with the new applications for phones and ipads. The Starwalk for Ipad is so amazing. Feels a bit like cheating really!

Some sort of good star atlas or planisphere will also be useful.


2) The sky is beautiful. Love it with the naked eye first.

3) When you want to try actually looking through something at the sky, binoculars 7-10x50 or so are best. Chances are you have access to a pair already, and they are a ton better than the nasty cheap telescopes you see in some camera shops and department stores, as well as showing stuff the right way up. But if like me you don't have super steady hands, don't go bigger than 10x without a tripod. Any less than a 50mm objective won't show enough stars either.

With binoculars, you will see lunar craters, jupiters moons, phases of Venus, and more stars and open clusters than you can imagine. The sights are beautiful, drink them in! I can find loads of Messier Objects with my 10x50s.

4) Oh did I say before? Don't buy cheap telescopes from non specialist outlets. Don't don't don't. They will be crappy. Do your research.

5) I see a lot of advice saying when it comes to your first telescope, spend as much as you can afford, aperture is king etc etc. Me, I don't buy into this. If you spend a lot of money, like I did back in 1987 - £600 for a 6 inch Broadhurst Clarkson and Clarkson reflector like a length of drainpipe. Spend a lot of money, you find yourself starting to force yourself to use the thing when you don't feel like doing so. You burn yourself out. This is not a good thing. It's what happened to me after a couple of years.

Nowadays, with decent quality telescopes at lower prices, if the kid gives up on the hobby, well, no harm, no foul.

These days, good quality small telescopes are much cheaper. Even big name proper telescopes like, say, Celestron, do good quality small scopes that don't cost a lot. Look at review sites, Cloudynights, Amazon, ebay, whatever!

6) Make sure that it has a good steady mount that isn't too heavy. If it shakes, its useless. But if the mounting is too heavy, you won't be bothered to take the damn thing in or out. Telescopes get heavier much quicker than the aperture gets bigger! Another reason to stay small.

7) As a very general rule, refractors - lenses, you look straight through them - tend to be better at looking at the moon and planets, than newtonian reflectors - mirrors, you look into the side of them - which tend to have wider fields of views and be better for star clusters and galaxies. What are you interested in looking at.

8) I like wide fields! Lower magnifications mean lots of pretty stars, and make it easier to find your way around. Higher mags make it easy to get frustratingly lost.

9) If you have a telescope, make sure it has a good finder or other method of homing in on an object so you see it in the main telescope. Optical finders of less than 50mm aperture are useless. I had a 6x30 on my telescope, and it was useless. It made it very difficult to find stuff from an urban back yard and drove me mad.

Nowadays some small scopes have laser pointers, I've never tried them! Sounds kind of fun.

10) Have a simple non polar aligned alt-azimuth or Dobsonian mounting. It's much more intuitive for the beginner to use and find stars and planets with, and at lower magnifications and wide field views, the tracking problem is not a major one. My equatorial mount frustrated me, you need to know what you are doing to properly align them, and it makes it awkward to find objects quickly and easily. This gets worse if you throw in those worm gears.

Equatorial mounts are heavy as hell as well. I'm not sure they are neccessary for smaller telescopes.

11) Make it social! Throw star parties. I plan to! I hate the fact that stargazing can be lonely.

12) Don't expect to see glorious colourful galaxies that you would see on a hubble picture. Our eyes aren't as good as that, alas!

13) Just love what you are seeing. Always! Even if you can't put a name to it!

A Messy Messier Update

So, I found darker skies, but no Dark and Stormy alas, before the waning halfish moon rose, and got the 10x50s out to try the Auriga open clusters again.

M36, M37 and M38 were all easily seen, or rather 37,36 and 38 as that is the order they kind of appear in. I could get two of them in the field of view at once, but not three. The Perseus Double cluster looked great - in binocular terms, and the Orion and Monoceros corner of the sky is a fantastic starfield. I reckon I'm deceiving myself, but I swear I can pick up nebulosity around the Pleides.

Don't know what the limiting mag of the 10x50s is under urban skies, probably about 8-9 I guess.

General sweeping reveals all manner of little knots of stars and fuzzy nebular blobs that could be anything - I have no star map to hand nor my OHs StarWalk I pad app, but I reckon I spotted two open clusters in Monoceros low over a neighbours rooftop - M50 would be one, the other, Christmas Tree cluster???

I am as bad with deep sky objects as I am with birds! But I guess, why does anything have to be anything? In some ways, it's pretty enough just being there without having to know exactly what it is!

However, Messier 1 Crab Nebula was not doable - it might be too small to show at 10x. And by then my badly out of practice eyes were beginning to tire. And my fingers were beginning to turn a fetching shade of purple!

PS - I think talking about "Messier objects" is getting folk excited who are looking for sploshing fetish stuff online! Messy Messy Messy! There you go. It puts my blog stats up and makes me think people care!

Messier Hunting

Or rather two sessions.

First was midnight last night, where a waning gibbous moon was the target for my 10x50s. Too bad I've got a fearfully shaky grip, which makes seeing details really difficult! Two big craters were easily defined on the terminator though, perhaps craters like Langrenus or Petavius. The moon made deep sky viewing difficult, and air conditions weren't great either.

So, earlier tonight, shivering and fresh off my bicycle from yet another unrewarded day at work, I got the binoculars and went on a  deep sky object hunt.

The three open clusters in Auriga were my target, and I reckon I picked up Messier 38 despite the neighbours deploying the outside light to scare away non existent demons of the early evening. These Messier objects in Auriga are always a bit of a confuser for me, I remember looking at M38 in my 6in reflector years ago, supposing it was M38 as it was the brightest! For all I know I was looking at reflected nodules on my retina or something.

Messier 35 in Gemini was also easy to find, as was The Andromeda Galaxy - the satellites are a bit much for my shaky hands. The Double Cluster in Perseus is an easy view, and The Alpha Perseii cluster looks great in binoculars, like a half Hyades. Didn't even know that was such a thing until fairly recently. Looks cool though!

With clearer skies and darker non terrified neighbour settings, wondering infMessier 1 The Crab Nebula is possible, or Messier 33?

What is possible, a whole lot of whatever, is that I can have a Dark and Stormy or a Cuba Libre, or some other nice drink while I observe. And I shall!

Late Night Astronomy and Messier 44

After a pub visit last night featuring many creatures let out of their christmas cages by their keepers, I was relieved to get home in one piece rather than several, and happy to note that skies were clear enough for me to get the 10x50s out for a bit of an enhanced stargaze.


Once again had good views of Messier 42, The Perseus Double Cluster and Messier 35 (not 34 as I referred to it previously!!!) in Gemini. The main target however was Praesepe, Messier 44 in Cancer. Even on a fairly unfrosty night, the sky conditions were evidently still good and the cluster was quite easily visible with the naked eye using averted vision, and a good view was had in the binoculars...sees to be 4 or 5 brighter stars in a sort of squared off ring in the centre of the cluster, with the fainter stars surrounding. It does rather look like a mini Pleides.

Orion, especially in the belt area, is alive with stars in the 10x50s and Monoceros is rich too - possibly may have spotted Messier 50;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_50

As a nebulous patch containing 2 prominent stars. But I could be wrong.

I did find that I still struggle to really use both eyes with the binoculars, and found that after my half hour observing session my eyes were strained and I had a dizzy-ish headache, so perhaps observing when not used to it and after a fair few drinks over the day is NOT TO BE BLOODY RECCOMMENDED!!!

Last night's Geminid Report

OK, the one man member of the East Notts Astronomical Society (Meteor division) has an extrememly sore, torn, pulled and wrecked buttock and a bit of a cold, so don't expect 6 hours worth of observations. I was watching a documentary about Steve Jobs. However, at about 2045 or so I went out for a fifteen minute observing session when I spied clear skies - occasionally the clouds would roll over for a spell last night - and saw 7 Geminids and one sporadic.

Nothing was as spectacular as the mag -5 fireball I saw the previous night, but the meteors were bright, up to mag zero, slow moving and left smoky trails in some instances. Although other observers were reporting blue or pure white colours, to me they looked an ivory white colour, similar to that of Jupiter. One specimen was a long way off the from the radiant, and followed a somewhat crooked path, almost looking like it was tumbling through Lepus and Eridanus down towards the southern horizon.

At about 11pm, I had a shorter session and saw 5 geminids and one sporadic. As the moon got higher and interfered more, a 0045am session resulted in only two geminids being spotted.

It is interesting to me that The Perseids are regarded as "The Meteor Shower" by the media. For I found the Geminds generally brighter, slower moving, and easier to spot. The radiant is also much better placed for evening observing, although I suppose like lastnight, the viewing conditions vary from cold to brass monkeys!

They certainly seemed easy to spot for casual non astronomical observers I mentioned them to.

Geminid Fireball

Last night the wind was howling in, a bitter southwesterly liver slicer, that frankly made the idea of astronomical observing rather unattractive compared to stuffing yourself with tea and biscuits. The high waning moon in Gemini near the radiant made meteor watching seem an unrewarding prospect as well, so aside from the odd peak outside, I stayed in and I drank tea and stuffed myself with biscuits.

But at 0045 I stuck my head out again, and immediately was rewarded for my lack of persistence by the sight of a glorious fireball heading north through the bleak badlands beyond the pole star towards the northern horizon. Easily brighter than Venus, I'd put it at mag -5, and it was a sort of copper flame green colour, and was emitting pink "sparks" as it burnt up. It was that pretty I told my girlfriend I ought to have hung it around her neck.

Fortified with a strong rum and coke, I had a more determined watch for half an hour or so at about 3am, but the moon was virtually overhead, and I only saw one meteor of about mag zero in this period - I don't have great skies either so I was double hampered.

Will try again tonight in patches. But my god, wrap up warm. It's turn your hands purple weather.

I'm an astronomer again!!!!

Tonight, my 6 inch reflecting telescope got reborn under the stars out on the street here.

After 20 years plus of not being used.

Been looking to do this for a while now, feeling the astronomy bug of my youth coming back. When I got it many many years ago I burnt myself out a bit, and also never really got to use the thing to its best advantage - I was not good at starhopping and using the finder to accurately locate stuff, and urband conditions made it tricky to see deep sky stuff.

This time round, I will be casual, relaxed, and concentrate more on planets, and the moon, double stars, and any comets that might be in view. I will learn the constellations better. I will enjoy myself under the stars.

Tonight, Jupiter was the obvious target, and managed to find it at x60 or so in a 20mm Erfle eyepiece, very shaky view. 12mm Kellner produced a decent view, the main equatorial bands visible, and also the North was showing finer details. Or was it the South? Damn! 6mm Ortho was not useable.

The moon will be a better target and we'll get a better idea then.

Stars look occasionally good, seeing conditions from nearby houses made things crappy I think, and also all the street lights. Using my rubbish 6x30 finder which I've never found much use, managed to get the Andromeda Galaxy but again not a great view.

Meanwhile, the pretty Lithuanian girls opposite must have thought I'd gone utterly insane, as they pretended to ignore me as they parked their car with me on the pavement looking like a super powerful well equipped peeping tom. I imagine other curtains were twitching too, but I'm used to it. I've been quietly questioned by policemen while doing astronomy related stuff before.

Overall I'm excited I did it and my telescope works to some extent, even if it is difficult to see exactly how well. It is obviously a bit tired, but I reckon getting it properly looked at and resilvered will cost less more than getting a Celestron Astromaster AT70 or similar basic but still good refractor.

But I'm glad I can feel legit about calling myself an astronomer again