The astronomy season has just begun! At soon as ‘Daylight Saving Time’ ends my ability to go birding after work ends with it.
The astronomy season seems to naturally kick in as ‘Cheshire Cat’ starts rising face up. Central Park is where I do most of my observing and this is where I wound up on Thursday night.
All of ‘team’ TotL eventually showed up at the top of the lawn. I arrived a bit early at 7:30p followed by Charlie, Peter and then Kin. We were fortunate enough to have clear skies for the whole time. The air was a bit damp but not too saturated. The objects sitting out in the open didn't moisten up too badly. On a bad night an unpacked book will start to look like a sponge.
A number of objects were observed over the course of the evening. One of the first was an asteroid Charlie picked up with his tripod mounted 15x50 Canon IS binoculars. I didn't draw the field but did display the object and surrounding stars on the PDA program ‘Planetarium’. An almost straight line was formed by two lower stars (HIP 15552 & HIP 15380) along with a dimmer star (HIP 15181) just above the asteroid. Iris was bright at mag. 6.9 and I will definitely check it out next time in the Televue-76. The time of the observation was around 9pm.
I get a kick out of spotting and confirming minor planets. I've spotted 6 asteroids to date. There's a write-up of the sightings on my blog which doesn't yet include 7 Iris if you have the energy after finishing this post.
A couple from New Zealand were walking their dog and stopped by to talk and to take in the views. They enjoyed the three standard showpieces of the night. The Double Cluster in Perseus, the Pleiades and the Moon.
At the time Peter was observing a distant open cluster in the Tak-102. I didn't note down which one he had but the New Zealander's noted the hazy appearance of the grouping. It was a nice view in the 4" refractor.
I didn't catch their names but the woman had just run the N.Y.C. Marathon. This was the reason the came to the U.S. but I was surprised to see they were walking a dog. Was it their dog? No! Dog sitting was part of the deal of renting the apartment. Luckily it was a good one. The dog didn't treat our equipment roughly. We're pretty strict about dogs raising their legs near the gear.
Tammy with the lights in her hair stopped by shortly after and stayed around for a bit. She arrived via bicycle and had passed team TotL many times in the past but never stopped to take a peek through the optics. She thoroughly enjoyed the views of the standard three and she and Peter got to witness the lone meteor of the night moving away from M45 heading northward.
I noticed that the heat from the lights in Tammy's hair created a warm cloud of aroma that engulfed Peter. All I could remember after this encounter was that he kept talking about mountains and flowers. Go figure! ;-D
During the flowers and mountains discussion I was deep into a locating a multiple star in Auriga. I made nice use of a black towel that's used to protect the Televue-76. The towel blocked out the surrounding lights and also allowed me to keep my left eye open while viewing with the right one. This was a tremendous help.
The star in question was omega Aurigae A.K.A. 4 Aurigae or STF 616. Locating it was easy enough since it is close to the short side of The Kids in Auriga. A 21 arc minute wide double points the way to 4 Aur which is the apex of a 2° long isosceles triangle. See the chart for a quick star hop to omega Aurigae.
I spent quite some time on the surrounding field to test how deep I could see with the 22mm Nagler Type IV versus the 12mm Nagler Type IV. After spending a few minutes viewing with both eyepieces I was able to see stars down to mag. 9.9 with the 22mm NT4 at 22x. With the 12mm NT4 at 40x stars to mag. 10.8 were visible.
While studying the star field I noticed a group of people gathering around. The double star field couldn't be that exciting for first timers so I interrupted the session to show the Moon to a group of four young girls. The got a kick out of the views of the nearly 19 day old Moon.
After this I returned to omega Aurigae and viewed it with at 80x with the 6mm Radian. The dimmer secondary was sitting practically on the lone diffraction ring created by the primary. The dimmer star appeared blue to me and Peter mentioned the same. I've read that some see the secondary as red but this wasn't apparent in the TV-76 at 80x. I'm sure we'll get to see this star in the Tak-102 in the future. The separation is 4.7 arc seconds (WDS 2004) and the magnitudes are 5.0 and 8.2.
Overall it was a satisfying night out with a great group of amateur astronomers at the top of the lawn. Sharing conversation and views with the public is a highly recommended way to spend a Fall evening.