The HAA hard-core observers (Keeners) were out at Binbrook last night in full force in spite of the horrible seeing and the gibbous moon washing out all but the brightest of deep sky objects!
We had various kinds and sizes of telescopes trained on Saturn and the Moon. At one point, Jackie & John used Andrew?s 12? Lightbridge to project an image of the moon onto a sheet of white paper. I think that was the best view I had of the moon all night. Later, when Jupiter rose above the trees, everyone had a chance to view it through the 12? Lightbridge which was pointed at a very shallow angle to the ground and subject to many ?occultations? as Heather can attest to!
Jackie asked if anyone knew of any carbon stars and, by luck, I had a list I?d printed off a year ago. Kerry found Mu Cephei, Herschel?s Garnet Star, using the Muller?s 4? Starblast dob (borrowed for the night and a real fun scope to use). The star was a blazing orange beacon! Next, John located Y CVn, ?La Superba?, using his 80 mm refractor. This was followed by U Cyg which was very dim and not as colourful. The red star tour ended with T CrB. All of these stars are labelled with a (c) next to their names in the Pocket Sky Atlas which made it quite easy to locate them. I look forward to hunting down the remaining carbon stars from my list which I got from this website: http://www.bpccs.com/lcas/Articles/coolstar.htm
Jim Wamsley was tracking down double stars and shared zeta Lyrae with me. I had never viewed this star before and when I ?Googled? it on the web, I found this link which offers fascinating info on zeta Lyrae: http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/zetalyr.html
Meanwhile, Andrew was splitting epsilon Lyrae, the ?double-double? star in Lyra with his 12? Lightbridge.
Don Pullen was giving his camera and new Photosharp focussing device a workout with promising results. I hope he?ll be able to post a photo or two here. To check focus before photographing M13, he was using Vega which is so bright it appears almost bluish to me.
Kerry had the best idea of the night: sitting in a lawnchair and sweeping the sky with a pair of binoculars!
We finally packed up and left the Binbrook Conservation Area about 1:30 a.m. . Thanks, everyone, for an entertaining night!
Cheers,
Ann Tekatch
Ann working so fast at drawing the moon…. she’s just a blur…
Ok… the moon wasn’t really in this shot – but it is the moon taken last night with a digitally added darkside.
