[Peyton-observing] Student event successful; more observing later tonight

[Christopher J. White]

This second round was even more successful, and included a comet.

Started with Jupiter and a test of eyepieces. The new 15 mm and 8 mm eyepieces haven't been easy to get good images with (perhaps not surprisingly, given then I think 3048 mm focal length of the scope), but I decided if they would do well at all it would be with Jupiter. With the old 32 mm, I could clearly see the two main equatorial bands, with two thinner bands visible for ~50% of the time when seeing was good. Similarly with the 40 mm + Barlow. With the 15 mm I could barely catch the main bands, and only for brief periods. With the 8 mm I could semi-reliably catch the main bands, and every once in a while I thought I saw a third. This experiment should be repeated with others' eyes, on different nights, perhaps at different times of the year. There were no transits or occultations or shadows to be seen tonight.

Got to see Mars, Venus, and a nice crescent Moon. Earthshine lit up the dark side, with the maria clearly visible against the brighter background. If we ever show the Moon at public observing, we can try moving the entire lit side out of view.

Tested the limits of deep-sky targets with a mini Messier tour. Caught the obligatory 42 and 45 before heading on to 44 (OC), 3, 53 (GCs), 49, 51, 63, 64, 81, 82, 84, 86, 87, 94, 104, 106 (galaxies), and also 40 (double star) and the ever-elusive 1 (Crab, and just barely). 97 defeated me.

Finally, went for Comet Catalina, as Gaspar suggested. Sure enough, there was strongly centrally concentrated spherical object between kappa and iota Vir. The telescope placed it at 14h19', -8d17m. Unless there's also globular cluster there, I'm pretty sure I was looking at the comet. It's a bit close to the Moon, and I didn't see either of the tails, but it was more visible than some of the above Messier objects.

Chris
________________________________
From: Gaspar Bakos [gbakos at astro.princeton.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2015 11:44 PM
To: Christopher J. White
Cc: peyton-observing at astro.princeton.edu
Subject: Re: [Peyton-observing] Student event successful; more observing later tonight

Hi all,

Couple of notes.

I requested dimming the parking lot lights (Lot 14), opposite to Peyton hall.
This went well, and the sky was visibly better from the roof.

Finder scope: it will be hard to clean, as -- I think -- it has been burnt by accidental (?) pointing at the Sun. The cheap plastic eyepiece is burnt in the inside. We will need a new finder scope.

Morning sky:
you may as well try  Comet C2013 Catalina:
http://www.aerith.net/comet/catalog/2013US10/2013US10.html
If it is well visible, please let me know.

Best wishes,
Gaspar



On Sat, Dec 5, 2015 at 11:00 PM, Christopher J. White <cjwhite at princeton.edu<mailto:cjwhite at princeton.edu>> wrote:
John, Joshua, and I hosted observing tonight for the Muslim Students' Association. It was hard to count people going in and out, but I guess 25-50 showed up. Clear skies, stadium lights were off by the time we started.

We started with Albireo just before it set -- a bit blurry over the roof. Then onto the winter sky, with the Pleiades, Andromeda, the Double Cluster, and of course Orion. Seeing was better for these. We also caught Uranus -- clearly a disk, but a bit nondescript to the untrained eye.

Did we get the finder scope cleaned? It still feels a bit dim (hard to see the nebulosity in the Pleiades).

Finally, because I'm tired of not seeing planets, and because I am equipped with a dome key, and because I don't sleep at night anyway, I'm planning on heading back tonight, starting at ~2:30 or so, to look at Jupiter and maybe Mars/Moon. People are welcome to join, but ping me before in case this plan changes.

Chris

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Gaspar Bakos
Associate Professor
133 Peyton hall, 4 Ivy lane
Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University
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