Astronomy, rum and no lash

After a couple of quiet drinks in the pub, where the legendary bass playing of Jaco Pastorius was discussed and Oliver Reed's cinematic and TV antics, I headed home under what even through sodium streetlight haze was a glittering sky. Bitterly cold though it was, I slipped outside with my 10x50s for a lookaround, happy that I wouldn't have to contend with the downstaris neighbors security light.

I looked at the usual suspect objects first - the Orion Nebula always being a fine sight even in binoculars, you can only see half the Trapezium! So that would be a straight line I guess! I always find sweeping through Orion a pretty sight, there are so many faint stars like pinpricks in a backlit velvet curtain you just lose yourself following the rivers of starlight round and about.

This night I was able to just about fit Messier 37,36 and 38 in Auriga into the same field of binocular view, all of them looking like hazy patches of nebulosity, with 37 the brightest looking and 38 the largest. M38, I remember, was an attractive sight in my 6 inch reflector.

I then scooted across through Perseus, through the Alpha Perseii cluster, and on to the Double Cluster, the Sword Handle. How Messier missed these pair of beauties I don't know, because they are easily visible in Binoculars and even resolve into a few stars in my 10x50s, one of the clusters being markedly more open than the other.

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6067/6115450451_63dcedb6e3_z.jpg

I always forget to look for Messier 34.

Coming back through Orion, I turned left at Betelgeuse, an angry vermillion beacon in my binoculars, and found a small but slightly resolved star cluster. Investigation reveals this to be conclusively the Christmas Tree cluster NGC2264. It looks look nebular behind the resolved stars, but this will be starlight, rather than the nebula that surrounds the cluster.

http://messier.seds.org/xtra/ngc/n2264.html

Finally I stopped off at Messier 35 in Gemini, another fine telescopic sight, before heading off into Cancer.

The Beehive Cluster M44 looks like a mini Pleides in binoculars, smaller and somehow prettier! All it's individual stars are resolved in 10x50s, and I found that once you know where you are looking, it's easy to see with the naked eye.

A little lower is Messier 67, which is easy to find with the 10x50s when you relaise the way to find it is to look  above and a little to the left of the head of the Hydra, the deadly Herculean watersnake that forms the largest constellation in the sky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_67

It just looks like a nebular patch in 10x50s.

I had another look for the Crab Nebula, I thought I had it with averted vision, but it is so difficult! Really dark skies, it should be plain to see, it's certainly easy to find near Zeta Taurii. Will keep trying! Not that I want to catch a crab on a night out.

Too freezing to stay out for long, my hands were a fetching shade of dark blue. It took a double slug of Havana Club rum to revive me! But a worthy reward indeed, another warm glow to end the evening.

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!

Running after the sun

Yesterday, headed out towards Sconce Hills, going through the hospital grounds and admiring the mobile scanner wagon they have parked up their every month or so.

I always think that perhaps one day they will be doing a really powerful MRI scan and I'll get lifted into the air and slammed into the side of the trailer by the strong magnetic field.

Maybe not.

Anyway, this run was another 330 pm effort, and the out part of the journey had me trying to run towards what was a very attractive sunset, oranges, reds and purples. I would have loved to have run fast enough after it to keep up with it and keep its glowing glory going for longer, but no, the sun always escapes from you. By the time I was running through Sconce Hills park and by the river, the warm hues had been replaced by the greys and indigos of the twilight that impends a long night.

Strangely this end of town despite the fact there ought to be plenty of roosting sites, you never get the murmarations of Starlings over on the South - South West end of the town. It's always a bit wildlife dry actually,despite the small reserve adjoining the park - few songbirds, the mallards and hybrids on the river Devon annoying the eastern european folk rather hopefully fishing for pike.

But, I always enjoy being out there, even if the sun got away from me for another day.

Starling Hunt

OK, I wasn't really hunting Starlings. I didn't have a rifle, catapult or even a pea shooter as I set off on what ended up being my longest run for a fair old while. I just had my eyes, and an ancient mp3 player with rubbish sports headphones that keep falling off my ears.

London Road lake, plenty of male tufted duck in their neat plumage, the solitary grebe, blackheaded gulls and the usual coots and moorhens. The baby moorhens are growing up. They were born late, but the winter has so far been a mild one.

Now that I've written that, I'm sure I'll be frozen to death while cycling to work, miserable, cursing, at 6am in the next few days.

I ran the whole muddy length of Clay Lane, proper cross country running that, but too twilight to see much, r indeed anything, before I headed across Beacon Hill estate and through Beacon Hill reserve; not much to be seen here either - note to self, start your runs earlier.

But on the industrial estate, things were rather more fun. The Starlings were in their "murmurations" (blame Autumnwatch if that is not a proper word...) - lots of them.

The first group, about 200 birds or so, was up by X2 Connect on Brunel Drive, there was a flock here yesterday as well. But as opposed to yesterday, when I was a bit earlier, these birds were not gradually coming up and gradually merging into one flock, these birds were commencing their first tentative dives down into the trees and bushes in which they roost.

Another flock, the largest, which absorbed a smaller flock as I ran past, was bigger, and was at the other end of Brunel Drive where it meets the main road by KFC. Turning towards town, another small flock of 100 birds was about 200 metres further down the road, and over the Winthorpe Road estate another flock was making these strange, flowing, punctuation marks in the sky.

A fifth flock - this sounds like the narrator of HG Wells' War of the Worlds meeting the dying martians in their fighting machines in Dead London - was operating over the Mace store and post office apart half way towards the bridge, and as I looked towards town in the distance, there was another flock over the new Co-Op, I reckoned.

But as I arrived a couple of minutes later, the light fading to grey, a darker grey, they had gone. They had decided enough was enough, and settled for the night! And as I looked back, the other flocks were down as well.

All the Starlings asleep for the night! Their flying, commas and full stops and brackets upon the sky, was over, so much easier for them than if I bought one of those gliders I admire so much on Brunel Drive whenever I run by.

Quadrantids? I think not.

I did have a couple of brief observing sessions, in between howling gusts of wind and splatters of rain, but alas, as I looked Northish and Eastish I can't say I saw very much. In fact I thought I saw one faintish third-fourth magnitude meteor streak through Auriga, but my eyes were watering and I'm afraid they may have been playing tricks with me.

This morning as I was about to cycle to work at 6am I had another look and saw nothing, Virgo dominating the Southern aspect of my view, but really meteorwatching on a bicycle is not recommended and is really rather stupid.

I do enjoy meteor showers though. It is the  easiest form of useful astronomy to get into I reckon, and there's always the chance of seeing a really spectacular fireball. Also, it lends itself well to istting in a reclining garden chair with some beer, wine or rum in my case, and maybe even some music.

However, at this time of year, there is a sort of frostbitey deathwish about this

Brighton runnings

Spending a few days down south, have managed to get out for several runs, 4-6 miles long.

Each and every time, it has absoloutely hammered down. I have been blattered on down the Hove Seafront, on Palmeira Square, and had the sky personally wet its pants on me as I swept (ha) by The Royal Sussex Hospital.

But it's always worth it, and it always makes me feel better.

I have run down to the Hove harbour, past the Lagoons water park, a rather unfriendly looking place at this time of year as its boats and windsurfers shiver in the watery breeze. I quested after a fish shop, and found it shut; luckily I have an excellent cook to make delicious battered whiting for me, which is much appreciated. I look out for interesting things, constantly.

Wildlife wise, the seafront isn't great really. Although today, I saw a wagtail down at the harbour and instead of the usual immature Herring Gulls that seem to comprise most of the bird life here, I saw three black backed gulls, probably lesser I guess, bobbing around on the Jade green sea as yummy families attempt to hold insane barbecues in the wet.

Rich though it is for me to speak of madness, as my drenched self ambles past.