Primordial Ooze

I was able to get my telescope out tonight and do some observing of the late Winter sky. I’m not sure what the best title is for these logs, but I’ll try and be consistent.

I went out to East Moriches on Long Island, NY. This is about a 50–60 minute drive and Google Maps describes the route as follows:

The skies out there are considerably darker than they are by me. Still, they weren’t close to what you would find in upstate New York or other similarly desolate places.

We set the telescope up on my friend’s 2nd-story balcony. The balcony had a fantastic view of the Southeast sky which I thought my observing plan was focused on. Unfortunately, we needed to see the Western sky so we had to take the telescope apart and move it downstairs to his front yard. I can only attribute such a drastic mistake to my own ineptitude.

I wanted to see three main objects and a few others along the way. First, I wanted to show my friend Saturn since it’s directly overhead and easy to spot. Next came M42, the Great Nebulae in Orion. My next object was the Andromeda galaxy, M31.

Saturn came up fast and was a nearly perfect view. My friend and his wife were astounded. So was I. I had initialized and found the telescope’s guide stars almost instantly. I attribute this mainly to having calibrated the finder scope before it got dark.

I punched in M42 next and the motor drive skewed the telescope toward a fuzzy blue patch with a few bright stars in it. If I had a camera and I could do a long exposure, the fuzzy patch would have resolved into a very colorful nebulae. I really have to start thinking about astrophotography gear.

When I punched in the Andromeda galaxy, I was pushing my luck since it was only about 13 degrees above the horizon. No go. This is my second failed attempt to view our closest neighboring galaxy. I fired up Starry Night and found out why. Winter is simply not a good time to shoot for the galaxy. As you can see in the following shots, Andromeda gets higher and higher in the sky each month from June to October, 2005. These shots represent the 16th of each month, at 11pm.

11pm on June 16, 2005

11pm on July 16, 2005

11pm on August 16, 2005

11pm on September 16, 2005

11pm on October 16, 2005

We were observing about an hour more than I had anticipated so at the end of the night, were  were surprised to get the opportunity to see Jupiter. Wow, what an awesome view! The bands were visible but I couldn’t see the Great Red Spot. I figure this was because Jupiter was very low on the horizon. I should expect much better views when it’s overhead.

A small tree was obstructing our vision so my friend and I took turns observing while the other pulled back the small tree. It was interesting to see how the image didn’t get blurry as a result of the construction, which was my first instinct. Instead, it just got dimmer which makes sense once you think about it.