Equipment: 16” Dobsonian, 55mm, 6mm, 12mm TeleVue, Paracorr, plus looking through some other people’s telescopes New objects observed: NGC 5907, NGC 4631, NGC 4656, NGC 4627, NGC 5273, NGC 5557, NGC 5529, NGC 7000, NGC 7217, T Lyrae Previously viewed objects: Messier 57, Messier 81, Messier 82, NGC 3077, NGC 7331, Messier 51, NGC 5195, Messier 7, Neptune, Messier 8, NGC 5866, NGC 7318, NGC 7320, NGC 6940, NGC 6910
Equipment: 16” Dobsonian, 55mm eyepiece, Paracorr. New objects observed: none Previously viewed objects: Messier 81, Messier 82, Messier 3 Not a good night, it turned out. Mt. Rainier looked pretty good from my window, so I thought I might be able to pull off some quality observing, but it was not to be. I initially tried looking for some Herschel 400 objects, but wasn’t having any luck there. To get a feel for the overall quality of the night, I looked at Messier 81, 82, and 3, since they would be in pretty good positions and should be fairly easy to find.
Equipment: 16” Dobsonian, 55mm, 32mm, 12mm TeleVue Nagler New objects observed: Messier 78, Messier 48, Messier 93 Previously viewed objects observed: Messier 81, Messier 82 This last winter ended up being remarkably brutal. There ended up not being a single night I was able to go out. There were a few nights were it looked like it might be clear, but it ended up that it wasn’t really because while there weren’t any clouds, it was very hazy.
Equipment: 16” Dobsonian, 55m, 12mm Tele Vue eyepieces. Also looked at M13 & the Veil Nebula through someone else’s telescope. New objects observed: NGC 7335, Stephan’s Quintet (NGC 7317, NGC 7318 (a & b), NGC 7319, NGC 7320), Mayall II, Maffei 1 Previously viewed objects: NGC 7331, Messier 31, Messier 32, Messier 110, NGC 3077, Messier 81, Messier 82, Messier 13, NGC 6960, Messier 45, Messier 33 Location: Sunrise Point, Mt.
Equipment: 16” Dobsonian, 55mm, 12mm TeleVue Nagler, 32mm, 6mm eyepieces, OIII filter. New objects observed: Messier 107, Messier 23, Messier 24, Messier 109, Messier 108, Messier 55, NGC 2976, Messier 25, Messier 15, Messier 75, NGC 6946, NGC 6939 Previously viewed objects observed: Messier 8, NGC 6530, Messier 97, Messier 51, NGC 5195, Messier 13, Messier 92, Messier 81, Messier 82, NGC 3077, NGC 6960 (Western Veil Nebula), NGC 6995 (Eastern Veil Nebula), NGC 6974, Messier 31, Messier 32, Messier 110
I've fairly diligently kept up keeping records of what I've been observing, either by tweeting about it or noting it in the notes on my iPhone or in SkySafari (also on my iPhone). It's been a pretty brutal last year and a half or so, weatherwise, so I had surprisingly few chances to even get out and observe anything. Plus, once you've fallen behind a bit it's hard to pick yourself up and get caught up.
One in a series of entries catching up on a serious backlog of Astro Logs. Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ New objects observed: M63, M92, M29 Previous objects observed: M81, M82, M94, M5, M13 Notes: Catching up on a massive backlog of Astro Logs I let develop. Unfortunately, all I have are the notes I left on Twitter about what I saw.
Equipment: May 5th, Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, 32mm, 15mm, 6mm, 4mm eyepieces. May 6th: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, 32mm, 15mm, 9mm, 6mm eyepieces, OIII filter. New objects observed (all May 7th): M97, NGC 3077, M89, M90 (maybe) Previous objects observed: May 6th: Venus. May 7th: M81, M82, M87 Notes: May 6th: Went out in the evening and looked at Venus some, but unfortunately observation was hindered by the branches on a tree it started going behind while I was looking at it.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, using the 32, 25, 15, 10, and 4 mm eyepieces. New objects observed: M51, M64, M87, M49 Previous objects observed: M81, M82, M53, Saturn, Titan Notes: Pretty good night. Very productive, given the four new galaxies, although the north still showed a lot of washing out from the lights of downtown Tacoma and the Port, which is usually a sign of some transparency issues. I also set up the viewing shelter, though, and wore an eyepatch for a while before hand, so that may have helped.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, using the 32, 25, 10, 6, and 4 mm eyepieces, and the 2x Barlow with the 6mm. New objects observed: M3, M53 Previous objects observed: M81, M82, Mars, Saturn, M94 Notes: Probably the last good night for a while. Weather's supposed to turn cloudy again, and the moon's rising later and waxing anyway. M81 & M82 weren't particularly bright, but they were visible. Found M94 again without too much trouble, but while I spent a good fair while trying to chase down other galaxies, I didn't have any luck.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, using the 32, 25, 15, and 4 mm eyepieces. New object observed: M94, M44, M67, M41, Saturn, Titan, Tethys, Phoebe Rhea Previous objects observed: M81, M82, Mars Possibly glimpsed (but likely not): M51, M65 Notes: It's been a brutal couple of months. The night of the 18th was the first clear night in about a month or so, and the first good night since December.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, using the 32, 15, 6, and 4 mm eyepieces.
New object observed: Mars
Previous objects observed: M42, M81, M82
Possibly glimpsed: NGC 3077 or NGC 2976
Notes:
It was still a cold night, but not quite as brutal as the last night out. It was a fairly short session as well, since the sky clouded up, but after using the eyepatch before I went out I was able to see both M81 and M82 again (also, I looked in the right place for M82 this time -- d'oh!). I may have also seen one of the nearby NGC galaxies, either NGC 3077 or NGC 2976, but I ended up not being able to find it again so I'm not claiming it as seen at this point.
Other than that, I looked at the always lovely Orion Nebula, and just as the clouds were starting to come in I moved the telescope and looked at Mars briefly. Unfortunately between the transparency issues that night, the clouds that were showing up, and poor seeing, I couldn't get much out of it.
Using the hair dryer for the purposes of defogging worked pretty well though this night, though. That was nice.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, using the 32, 15, 6, and 4 mm eyepieces and the ultrablock & OIII filters.
New object observed: NGC 2392 (Eskimo Nebula)
Previous objects observed: M42, M81, M45
Notes:
It was a brutally cold night, at about 12°F, but I was able to stay out for about an hour or so until my feet were too cold to go on. It turns out that at that temperature, extension cords (for hair dryers) are extremely stiff, and my stool that I sit on was frozen stiff. Couldn't turn it or make it go up and down.
At the beginning of my observing session, I was able to find M81, but not M82. I think, in the future, when I try to find them I'm going to need to make sure that I put my eyepatch on ahead of time to give myself a fighting chance of seeing them better. I would have gone back to it later, but didn't find the time before I was freezing too much.
The big find of the night, and an appropriate one given the weather conditions, was seeing the Eskimo Nebula. While the OIII filter didn't help with it at all (not sure because of conditions or what), the ultrablock did some. They weren't really very necessary, though; just looking at it with the naked eye, though, was enough, and I was even able to discern some detail from it, in that I could see the center being brighter than the dimmer outside. It didn't look like the pictures, of course, but I could see how it looks like that from what I saw. Not too bad.
The Pleiades and Orion Nebula were, as usual, stunning. Mars was not quite far enough over the house to look at last night; by the time it was high enough that I could see it standing up but still too low to get with the telescope, I was having to defog my eyepieces with the hair dryer (which worked nicely) and the oddly frozen extension cord, and I couldn't feel my toes anymore. At that point, I elected to go back in.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, using the 32, 15, and 10 mm eyepieces and the broadband, ultrablock, and OIII filters. New objects observed: M42, Betelgeuse Previous objects observed: M81, M82, M31, M32 Notes: The Moon was not out, and the clouds parted, for the first time in weeks, so I went out for a brief unplanned session with the telescope. Unfortunately transparency wasn't real great and skyglow was fairly bad, so it wasn't the best night.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, using the 32, 15, and 6 mm eyepieces. New objects observed: M81, M82, M33, M110 Previous objects observed: M31, M32, M57, M13 New Location: Sunrise Point, Mt. Rainier National Park Notes: This was a pretty big day, observing-wise, but very short. The weather and moon had been very uncooperative for the last couple of weeks, so I hadn't been able to do any observing at all.