by Randy Muller
After a deluge of water early this morning, and for the past few weeks, it finally cleared up tonight, and I can see stars and planets from my backyard in Roseville.
I got out my 10x50 binoculars and feasted my eyes on various sights that I have missed for the past couple of months.
I began with my all-time favorite, M42, the Great Nebula in Orion. Under my severely light-polluted mag 4.3 or less skies, it didn't look nearly as good or as big as it normally does, but it looked a lot better than what I have been seeing in the sky. M42 looked pretty bright and irregularly shaped with embedded stars. With the wide field of view offered by the binoculars, it was easy to imagine that M42 is physically related with the cluster of stars at the bottom of Orion's sword.
Betelgeuse was glowing a bright and saturated orange, and offered a nice color contrast with the pale blue of Rigel, with the white stars of Orion in between.
I looked for the Flame Nebula (aka Tank Tracks; Burning Bush; NGC 2024) just east of zeta Orionis, but it was not to be seen.
Next, Saturn drew my eye, still plodding slowly through Gemini. I couldn't quite make out the rings, but it was easy to see that it wasn't round.
I then ripped through the gorgeous sequence of winter open clusters: M35, M37, M36 and the large M38. Each had its own character and uniqueness. But my impressions of them are strongly colored by my memory of how they look in 10" and 18" telescopes. But it was great to be outside and see them "live".
I looked for M81 and M82, but the sky in that direction is particularly bright and more opaque. I noticed there were only 3 stars visible in the Little Dipper, so I turned around and looked at the Pleiades. A friend of mine used to think that the Pleiades was the Little Dipper. It does look like a dipper, but it sure is little!
The Pleiades looked like sparkling diamonds embedded in velvet, and the varying brightness of the stars gave it an almost 3 dimensional look. This was probably the best view I had during my little outing.
I couldn't pass up the Hyades, with orange Aldebaran nearby. This cluster is a lot bigger than the Pleiades, and thus somewhat less impressive, but it had lots of yellow stars, in contrast to the almost uniform blue of the Pleiades.
As I continued westward, I was traveling back in time to the autumn constellations: Taurus, Andromeda, Aries, Pegasus. I stopped at the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, M31. It was a fairly bright oval, with a very bright center. I remember discovering this object for myself in the late eighties on a very dark night in the Sierras with my naked eye, and not knowing what it was. But I remembered how to find it, and showed it to a friend.
I looked for nearby M33, but the light pollution was too much for it. I probably could have seen it with a larger scope, as I have countless other nights in the late 90s from my backyard under similar conditions.
I decided to come back in after looking down past Aries into the area where I knew Pisces was, although I could see none of its stars. I remember with fondness the several weeks I spent in 1996 hunting for M74, and almost despairing that I would ever see it from my backyard.
Finally, on a spectacularly clear night, I found it -- barely but definitely visible, after three weeks of frutiless searching.
It was good to be outside under the stars again, even if only briefly.
Posted on tac-sac Jan 11, 2005 22:43:25 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 25, 2005 20:39:04 PT