3:00 AM and all's well...

by Paul LeFevre


I hauled my tired behind out of bed this morning at 3:00 AM, to see some Perseids and some of the early fall arrivals. Before going to bed, I set up the 12.5" dob on the patio, so by 3:00 it had equalized to the outside temperature. Notice I didn't say it had "cooled down" -- at 10:00 PM it was still 85 deg. in Escondido, and at 3:00 AM it had only dropped to about 70!

As soon as I got outside, I looked at the zenith, wondering if I would see any Perseids in my somewhat light-polluted neighborhood. The question was answered quickly, as several bright Perseids zipped across the sky within 5 minutes, all obviously coming from a radiant in Perseus. Within 30 minutes I had counted 28, with about 1/3 of those leaving a trail visible for at least a few seconds, and about 40% of them being brighter than about mag. 3. The show was on!

My home skies have a limiting mag. of about 4.5, sometimes 5.0 when conditions are good. Quite a few Perseids were detected out of the corner of my eye as just a faint splash of light, vying with the skyglow for attention. By 4:00 AM (one hour after going out), I had counted 51, and considered that quite a good number for the location. I wished I had had the energy and time to drive up to Palomar, where the mag 6.5 skies would certainly have shown more!

At 4:00 AM, I took my naked eyes off the skies for a while, and swung the 12.5" scope over to Jupiter and Saturn. Juptier was putting on a wonderful show, with a double shadow transit in progress. When I first looked at it, I was somewhat disappointed to only see 3 Galilean moons, but as I watched over the next 15 minutes one of the moons turned into two, as their aspect to each other changed -- very cool! Seeing the moons seperate and the two black-eye shadows march across the surface kept my eye glued to the scope. At 300X, Jupiter was showing off quite a bit of detail during moments of good seeing. The North and South polar areas seem to be lacking as much detail as they did last year, and both equatorial bands seem darker than last year in contrast. No sign of the GRS. The double shadow transit had one moon just above the Southern equatorial belt, and another just below it. Fascinating!

On to Saturn...I never get enough of this beautiful orb, whose view got me into astronomy in the first place. Saturn is presenting a quite extreme angle to us this year, with the rings tilted quite a bit North, and the entire Southern hemisphere visible. The deep shadow the planet casts on the rings behind it gives it a very three-dimensional appearance. Ring divisions were clearly visible, and there appears to be more surface cloud variation than was visible last year on the planet itself. Saturn was flanked by three dim moons, spread around in a triangular shape both above and below the planet due to its aspect to Earth. Wonderful!

I finished off with a quick look at the Pleiades, and a few minutes looking at M42 as Orion rose out of the muck. Nice to see you again, old friends!

This morning reminded me of times back in Northern California, when I would get up at 2:30 AM and go into work early, bringing my 6" dob to set up in the parking lot above work to catch views of Jupiter and Saturn...after concentrating so much on astrophotography lately, it was good to just observe for a while, and I felt like a budding astronomer again. Can't wait until Sunday morning now...:)