Nov 5th – 11:00am (or so) (again!) Well, heck I don’t make notes on what time we got up! After cleaning up inside and getting everything outside set up to dry we wandered over to the final swap meet. Lots of really cool stuff for sale, tried to find a tripod for the Coronado (yeah, I’m tired of waiting, I was going to make an ‘executive’ decision and buy one) but I don’t know enough about that to do it on my own (we’ll discuss this at the next meeting, for sure!). I’m tempted by a couple of things: software (but hey, I just got an older Starry Nite for free and haven’t finished exploring that all the way yet); another astronomy book (I’m currently reading only 3 right now!); the whole set of Will Tirion’s sky charts (Sky Atlas 2000?), in good shape, white on black & laminated for $50 or black on white, laminated & in slightly better shape for $75 (it’s 2 guys to 1 saying the white on black is easier to read at night & I think the set new was $119 at S&T the other day); some other interesting trinkets but I decided on the sky charts, I just liked the look of them and what the heck, if I decide to go for more AL Awards, I just might need them. There, I managed to spend some money and I’ve impressed myself!
Time for the door prizes, Jeff and I tell Juanita it’s her turn, because in 2003 I won a Nagler eyepiece and in 2004 Jeff won one. But no such luck this time for TAS, lots of kids won things and it was great to see them get so excited. Two telescopes, lots of books, eyepieces, software, charts, tons of redlites, etc. kept us there for almost an hour of suspense.
We decided to buzz uptown for some pizza, even though we had brought enough food and had enough variety of things for an army, we just wanted pizza. Besides, somebody else got to clean up!
This evening’s Twilight Talk was on the Search for ET, an official NASA Ambassador was our speaker, he spent most of the time getting us to think about why we are doing this, what we will we do if we FIND someone, etc. By the time he was done, it was dark enough to take my ‘Man & Lady’ Photo – the moon and Venus. See it posted in the photos section.
I played most of the early evening, looking for a few NGCs in Perseus and doing more study of nebs and things in that constellation. It’s previous attraction for me was, of course, the double cluster, but there are lots of dust clouds, dust blobs and small clusters in there. I actually looked at Algol and played around that area, just wandering. J went to do her thing for a couple of groups of kids, she and they both had a great time and then she spent some time on some more Messiers with the StarBlast. We quit for a nap and got up again about 3:00am to go hunting for my final galaxies. I found M109 and then the ground fog came in lightly and wispy about 4-4:30. M101 and M 51 are my final targerts and I take back everything nasty I ever said about M1. It was a breeze compared to these Ursa Major Monsters! I had found an article earlier that afternoon about how you could be RIGHT on them and not ‘see’ them. So I stayed with it, frustrated but determined to find them. I could find only faint globular clusters where 101 and 51 where supposed to be, I checked to be sure I wasn’t ‘dewed up’ and then went back to each to be sure I was seeing a galaxy – averted vision helped a lot in both cases (the globs got bigger and more elongated!) and I still wanted to check a book I had at home to be sure. Which is why I didn’t jump up and down and scream when I found the last two. ![Party!!! [<:o)]](/CS/emoticons/emotion-19.gif)
(Well… that…. plus it was almost 5:00am! ) The book I have was written by Phil Harrington, who drew pictures of quite a few of the Messier objects through his 8" reflector. My M101 was just about like his – smaller & fainter, of course, and my M51 was crummy, I saw a hint of a tail (or was it my imagination?) but I never could resolve NGC 5195 to where I would say I saw it. In any case, I finally let J go back to bed. And we truly had a good time – she’s a good roomie, and a great cook!
So, my Messier observing log comes to the next meeting for Joe to approve and order my pin…..see you all there.