Coyote Monday May 29 2006

by Matthew Marcus

First up were the moon and planets. At ~9PM, the GRS was transiting and clearly visible, though not red as far as I could see. I thought it had reddened recently, but I saw no sign of that. Later, I got a clear moon shadow, though I don't know which moon it was. I said goodbye to Saturn before it set, seeing Cassini's division, some moons and the planet's shadow on the rings (or was it just the night side of the planet?). Mars was an orange dot. I didn't stay out late enough for Uranus because I had a 10AM meeting today.

I started deep-sky observing with a look at Downtown Virgo before it set, starting at M87 and galaxy-hopping my way across the chart in NSOG.

I then went to Bootes, which was high up, doing that 9th-mag glob (I don't have NGC numbers in front of me) and a bunch of galaxies of 11-12 mag. The glob was less than impressive, especially in the bright sky, but it was there.

After playing with some eye candy, I went to CVn to look at the objects discussed in the Sky&Tel (Astronomy?) article. These included a wide quadruple star (67, I think), a double in the field with 4117 (?), and a bunch of other galaxies, including the Hocky Stick and 4631 (I think - working from memory - anyway, the one N of the Hocky Stick). 4631 has a 12.4mag companion which I had logged in 2001.

I couldn't see it this time.

I don't know if it's the 5 years catching up with me or the crappy sky. I hope it's the latter and will try again under better sky.

Then, it was back to eye candy, a last look at Jupiter, then packing up at 12:30 - a short night for me.

Posted on sf-bay-tac May 30, 2006 11:12:19 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 Jul 19, 2006 11:46:30 PT