Astro Log: August 10th, 2012

Equipment: 6” Orion Skyview EQ, 32mm, 15mm, 6mm, 4mm eyepieces, OIII filter.

New object observed: NGC 6910

Previously viewed objects observed: Messier 29, Epsilon Lyrae, NGC 7331

New location: Rockaway Beach, OR.

Rockaway Beach is fairly dark, but unfortunately it was hazier and damper than I realized, which made it both more difficult to observe than I hoped it would be and brought a fairly early end to the night. I did try searching around for an observing spot that wasn’t so near the ocean that might be above some of this haze, but nothing has panned out yet. I found some promising roads on Google Maps, but they all turned out to be gated dirt roads.

The new object was NGC 6910, which is some random open cluster sort of near Messier 29. Since I’ve seen nearly all the Messier objects, I’ve decided to start observing more of the NGC list as I can. While I was at it I also looked at Messier 29, split Epsilon Lyrae, the Double Double, and NGC 7331. I somewhat half heartedly tried for the Crescent Nebula, but didn’t get it. A pretty good chunk of the night was taken up by collimating the scope and getting it properly polar aligned. It’s been quite a while since I’ve used the 6” scope for anything, and it was nice to be able to take it out again at least. The night got a somewhat early end when everything dewed up, and I realized that the outside of the telescope was quite damp indeed. I tried to go out the next night, and while it was certainly very dark because the power went out, in between the time I decided “I’m going to try and go out tonight” and the time I was carrying out my lens case and the little zippy thing I store some accessories in, a bunch of fog came rolling in. Alas. I didn’t get any Perseid action either.

The big thing I tried, but failed, to do this night was find an interesting asterism I remember seeing a few times a long time ago. It was a triangle of stars with another inverted triangle inside of it. It was really interesting, and I even remember seeing it in SkySafari once, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to track it down again. I’m not even real sure where in the sky it vaguely was, except that I sort of think it was possibly near Delphinus. No success finding it yet however.

… except, I think I may have finally. Need to confirm it by actually looking at it again, but I might have found that asterism again after all.

 
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