Due to a waxing moon with an 81% illuminated disk transiting at 9:01pm I waited until midnight to start my observing session on Saturday night (Sunday morning). I wanted to try to avoid the worst of the moon’s glare if at all possible.

Unfortunately there was a trade-off with this scenario: a couple of interesting objects I had planned to observe in Lepus disappeared behind the roof of my house and behind a very “mature” tree. I was surprised to see Orion dip so low towards the western horizon.

It was quite cold again and worse, ice was adhering to the patio stones in quite a stubborn fashion. I got (another) workout trying to remove it.

The first object I observed was the “Clown” or “Eskimo” Nebula (NGC 2392)in Gemini. The Clown is a planetary nebula, where a dying star that is running out of nuclear fuel sheds its outer layers into space. In the March edition of Sky & Telescope Timothy Beers writes that certain “intermediate” types of planetary nebulas are thought to be responsible for dispersing elements into space and eventually these elements “make their way into the next stellar generation. As stars form, evolve, and die, they cook light elements into heavier ones – including those we need for life.” Something to think about as I observed NGC 2392. I could not make out the layered shapes that make it look like an Eskimo with a fur parka hood or a clown’s face. I could see the layers but not distinctly. Back in early December on one of the first nights I had the telescope out I observed this object and I saw more detail.

I had better luck with another planetary: NGC 3242 or “The Ghost of Jupiter”. The nebulosity seemed larger and brighter than with the Clown. The broken-spiral shapes (layers) remind me somewhat of the child’s toy “Spirograph”, but looking as if you made a messed up one.

The moon was still pretty high up so I passed on trying to view any Messier objects. I mean, why torture yourself, the bitter cold is bad enough. “I Want To See (Things)!!!” as Joan Crawford exhorted in an old episode of Night Gallery (a very young Steven Spielberg’s first directing gig). But I digress.

Scrolling through the Celestron’s database through to Variable Stars I keyed in R Leonis. R Leonis is a Mira-type pulsating variable in Leo. It’s magnitude ranges from 5.8 to 10. To me it has a distinctly orange cast. Quite bright. One can keep checking in on this star to see if it is getting brighter or is dropping in brightness. I have not tried to determine the magnitude of variable stars before, but I might start.

Next stop was V Hydrae, a carbon star. I could not find this star on the telescope’s database so I keyed in the coordinates for Right Ascension (10h 51.6m) and Declination (-21 degrees 15′) on the telescopes hand-set under the Go-To RA/Dec. utility and the Celestron slewed right to it. This star looked like an intensely red little point of light over towards the southwestern horizon. According to the “Celestial Sampler” by Sue French V Hydrae is “a dying red-giant star ready to form a planetary nebula”. So perhaps in a thousand years this object will look more like the Clown nebula than the bright little red light it is now.

One of the objects I missed by starting so late was R Leporis or Hind’s Crimson Star, another carbon star and a variable to boot, in Lepus. Maybe next time.

I observed Saturn (how can one ignore Saturn?) again. This time I could see Titan at around 3:00 o’clock at a fair distance from the planet, and then closer to the planet another bright moon, probably Rhea. Again closer to the planet I could just see another speck of light, which turned out later to be Dione. That was all I could see, not as good as Monday when I saw 5 moons.

I ended the observing session with M40, a Messier object that is actually a double star. I put very high power on this double and I still could not split it. There seemed to be a orangey-yellow star extremely tight in to a bluish white star. Nice colours. Can anyone let me know why a double star is a Messier object? Did it look like a comet to Messier?

I hope I have some energy left for observing the Lunar Eclipse at Binbrook, weather permitting. The SCT is not ideal for observing a lunar eclipse. Hopefully I’ll re-energize by Wednesday night.

I finally scored the combination of GWS, Saturn above the horizon, and no fog at the same time.

Unfortunately, i had 2 equipment failures, both related to dead batteries. My red dot finder and my equatorial platform both ran out of gas.

It did not take long to align the scope. I finally decided to label the struts and cans, so that i can reconstruct it again the same way. It will be an interesting experiment to see how far out of alignment it is on restoration. The laser is spreading out due to dirt on the secondary. It’s time for a cleaning.

My friend was there when i arrived, and he helped me lift the base of the GWS from the car. He did not want to stick around while i assembled the whole scope and aligned it, but i was keen to show him Saturn.
I whipped out the GWS finder-scope (a Nexstar 3.5) and first lined it up on the moon to focus it. At that point i discovered the lack of the red dot finder.

(It turns out that home depot is selling ‘tea lights’ powered by LEDs that use the same cr2032 batteries as the red dot finder. For $2.99 you get 2 lights and 4 batteries. I highly recommend them.)
Especially if you keep them with your scope instead of in the living room.

He was impressed by the view of the moon. I failed to align the scope sufficiently to show Saturn. Turns out it was just as well… the 25 mm eyepiece on the finder-scope can render Saturn as not much more than a yellow oblong dot. He would have been disappointed.

I was not disappointed once i finished aligning the GWS and put the 26 mm into it. Saturn came out reasonably crisp and with distinguishable gaps between planet and rings. I could not discern the Cassini division however. I could see 3 moons to the right and 2 or 3 to the left depending on whether one was a star…

My configuration of Cartes De Ciel does not show Saturn’s moons, so i will have to wait on that one. I made a sketch of what i saw for future reference.

I then put in the ‘Big Barlow’ and replaced the 26 mm meade. Saturn dutifully doubled in size. At this point i realized the platform was no longer tracking, and established it was not simply that i had left it on ‘moon speed’… the batteries need charging. I thought about running an extension cord to it and charging it, but decided to carry on.

The 7-21 mm zoom eyepiece was next. I put it on the ‘Big Barlow’ to see what i could see. The zoom eyepiece is not a very high quality gadget, and it made the image worse than the 26+Barlow, even when set to 21 mm. At 7 mm, i could not see the space between planet and rings anymore.
(I guess that works out to 1829/3.5 = 522x magnification)
Without the platform i had to constantly readjust the position of the scope to get Saturn back into view.

It was remarkably cold: just touching the scope to re-point it at Saturn was hurting my fingers… and i even put on gloves at one point. The scope was cold to the touch, and my water actually started to freeze towards the end. (In all fairness, it was in my car overnight too). It was -11.5 degrees according to the thermometer in my car.

The moon in the sky is the bane of all messier hunters (except those seeking M45, i think). It washed out the sky so bad that i could, with difficulty, barely see the stars in Virgo which are connected by lines in the constellation diagrams, but no more than those. The finder-scope, on the other hand, shows more stars than the pocket sky atlas, further complicating star hopping. Directing the GWS into the realm of the galaxies, i expected to see something faint and fuzzy to start with, but the uniform glow of the sky was too much for me. Even M51 failed to show up. I knew i was going to have to wait for the moon to bow out.

Then, dreaded frost started appearing. At 1 AM i had had enough. It took a while to carefully repack the scope and close up the car. I need to get some frost busters going for next time.

However, i did establish that Virgo will be visible during the lunar eclipse and that i can scoop M49 then. And the Big Barlow does not significantly degrade the view through the 26 mm.

I tried focusing on Spica to see how good the seeing was. It resolved to a small disk, with a sparkle that made it look like it was on fire. Unlike mars which i have seen on some occasions to be quite ‘alive’ these flames were only about 1/3 the size of the disk, so i would have to say the seeing was pretty good tonight. Saturn also looked steady.

Someday i will learn not to seek Messier objects while the near-full moon is up, but i had waited too long through cloudy nights to pass up this opportunity. Astronomy is excellent exercise.

Neither the seeing or transparency were good, last night, but after the recent frigid temperatures driven by gale-force winds; -4C and a slight breeze felt positively balmy ? so I put on my shorts (and 6 pairs of track pants under my parka) and ventured out.

I?d timed it so that while I was setting up Gail and I could keep a lookout for the scheduled ISS/Shuttle fly-by. As predicted, a star appeared just above the roof of our house and brightened quickly as it rose to the zenith. Directly overhead it came close to mag ?3 but faded rapidly as it went east.

The quarter Moon also had plenty of altitude and looked magnificent in the binoviewers at low power. At 210x magnification, however, we may as well have been looking at a reflection in a stream. Still, there was plenty of detail to be seen in the gently rippling crater fields.

Mars was close by but, again, the conditions cancelled out any detail that may have been seen on the surface so we dropped down to the Orion Nebula and Trapezium. A pretty sight yet I?d seen it better so, when Gail went in, I decided to follow Heather?s cue and hunt down a few doubles.

Switching out the binoviewers for a 21mm Pentax ep I wandered over to Rigel. A brilliant star, in its own right, there is an extra treat if you can tease the companion out of the glare. At 57x, I could just make out a tiny fleck of light. The 7mm Pentax easily resolved it into a blue-gray speck beside the blue giant.

My next target was Sigma Ori, a multiple star system just below the belt star, Alnitak. The brightest star in this system is an unresolvable double for backyard scopes but the three close members of this cluster make it an interesting sight. Also in the same low power field of view is a pretty triple system, known as Struve 761, consisting of a close, matched pair and a single similar star nearby. Apparently all of the stars of Sigma Ori and Struve 761 are moving in the same general direction and are thought to be related.

Casting my eye to the NW, I noticed that Cassiopeia had flipped 90 degrees since the last time I saw it! Just to its left was copper coloured Beta Andromedae and somewhere between them would be the Andromeda galaxy. I wondered how it would look with the present moonlight and was surprised to see that the companion galaxy M32 was actually easier to spot under these conditions than on “better” nights.

Since my double star hunt had morphed into a double galaxy hunt I pushed the scope to where M81/82 should be. I often have to pan around to find these two but this night I was on a roll and when I put my eye to the ep there was the faint cigar shape of M82. A slight adjustment brought M81 into the same FOV.

After a quick look at open cluster M35 and its companion NGC 2158 the night was capped off, as it had begun, with a satellite ? this one traveling through Taurus.

Well it certainly was cold enough Monday night. At least the wind had died down from Sunday’s arctic conditions.

I determined I was going to observe as long as the wind chill was half reasonable. And it was. I spent 10 minutes shoveling hard snow from my backyard patio to clear a spot for my 6 inch Celestron telescope.

I have a reasonable eastern and western horizon. I pointed the telescope at the globular cluster M79 in Lepus. I was anxious to observe this object as there are not a lot of globulars to be seen in the winter months. But again this object frustrated me. Could not see it. I probably was staring right at it, as the telescope was pointing very accurately tonight. I tried moving the scope through the vicinity it was supposed to be in; I tried different eyepieces – low power, high power, back to low again. Nothing worked. Time to move on I thought. The sky was somewhat bright but the seeing seemed to be pretty good.

I have Sue French’s Celestial Sampler at home. The sound of Tau Canis Majoris Cluster (NGC 2362 or Caldwell 64)and her description of this object intrigued me: “a bright sapphire amid a tiny bed of lesser jewels”. This object certainly did not disappoint, with a very bright bluish white star at the center of a smallish open cluster of stars. Quite nice. According to French Tau is a blue supergiant that shines with the light of 50,000 suns. I could have used some of that heat tonight I can tell you! In addition, it is one of the youngest star clusters known. Young and pretty, I bet this is a pretty popular star up there in Canis Major.

I then decided to give Saturn another look. To me, the rings of Saturn look really closed up. I remember how they looked in 2003, opened to their maximum. But Saturn is still so spectacular. I started looking for Saturn’s moons, to see if I could see more moons than I did in January. Titan I sighted right away at a fair distance from the planet at approximately 10 o’clock (pointer). Then on the other side of Saturn I spotted a moon at about 4 o’clock. I looked a little longer and saw another tiny diamond near by. And then another one to the side of it. The three moons created a cute little triangle to the lower right of the planet. I thought I saw another moon on the other side of the planet from the “triangle”, about half way between Titan and Saturn. I still have to check my Starry Night software to see if this was perhaps Iapetus. I do know from checking Sky & Tel’s “Saturns Moons” that the triangle was composed of Tethys at the top and Rhea at the bottom on the left and Dione on the right corner. I did not spot Enceladus. I think that is one or perhaps two more moons spotted as compared to last time.

Quite happy with my moon hunting for Saturn I thought I would check out some double stars. Double stars are quite enchanting (to me anyway) and you can observe them even if the sky is quite soupy looking. Tonight I observed Iota Cancri, a pretty double star that is a little reminiscent of beautiful Albireo (I can’t see Cygnus from my home at this time of year – can’t wait until the summer!). I checked out several doubles, including Algieba or Gamma Leonis which is a fairly tight couple of dingey yellowish looking stars. Also observed Theta 2 Cancri (a couple of evenly matched white coloured stars), Delta Geminorum, Castor (an interesting triple star) and I believe Eta Puppis. Just scrolled through the Celestron’s list of doubles and kind of took a tour. I tried to guess the separation in arc-seconds of the stars and then checked on the telescopes handset by scrolling through the “info” to see what how accurate I was. Sometimes I was close, but not always. Need more practice.

I saw Arcturus rising in the East and I thought: I might be able to see M3 in Canes Venatici. I keyed in M3 and the telescope slewed and their it was, a big beautiful globular cluster with handy bright stars in the field of view to help with focus. Even with very high power I could not resolve individual stars, although I believe I was on the threshold. M3 looked a little irregular in shape. By this point the numbness I was feeling in my right foot was starting to spread up my right leg, so I decided to get out of the cold.

I was happy with what I observed, despite the bitter cold.

Too cold? Too windy? Too cloudy? At this time of year, most HAA members just want to observe something – anything! Well, this week there are several opportunities to view the ISS/Shuttle combination.

No matter how many times you’ve seen it, it’s still cool to watch that bright (and getting brighter) golden “star” cross from horizon to horizon – and you don’t need to set up any equipment, or stay outside more than five minutes. It’s the perfect quick fix for Wnter in Ontario.

To find this week’s (local) schedule go to:
Heavens Above.com

Good luck!

I had the good luck to find out that on Saturday evening, Feb 9, 7-11PM, there was a combined exhibition of 3 local photography clubs, Latow Potogragraphers Guild, which meets Tuesdays at the Cultural Center in Burlington, the Hamilton Camera Club which meets alternate mondays in Hamilton (i don’t know exactly where), and the Trillium Photographic Club, which meets at East Plains United Church, in Burlington.

I arrived at about 8PM and found a large gallery dedicated to framed photos from members of the 3 clubs. I did a quick scan of all the photos, for their ‘curb appeal’ and then went around again and looked at them from a technical view, thinking about how they were made and what an effort was put into capturing and rendering them so well. I understand that these photos had been entered in intra-club competitions and had been honoured, so i was seeing the best of the best.

Wandering around among the bright colours and bold themes, I came across several photos by our own Tim Harpur. The milky way, a shot of Orion Nebula, and a few night scenes showing very cool glare from the lights at Stelco (which incidently are not astronomer friendly, because they are shining sideways… we will have to have a word with them.)

I was naturally attracted to the astro-photos, but was also pleased to hear strangers commenting on them, and the photographic effects of the sky in the earth-bound shots too. Not being a skilled artistic photographer myself, it was interesting to overhear the kinds of things photography fans discuss about a photo.

There were 3 AV presentations, slideshows with music, one for each club, featuring the photos of their members. I watched all 3 and liked the one from the Hamilton Camera Club the best. In addition to cool photos, artistically cropped and coloured, they also had a nice effect in the credits, giving the name of the photographer beside one of their photos (previously seen in the slideshow).

I found myself sitting in the row behind 3 HAA members admiring one of the AV presentations
and piped up when the conversation allowed it.

It was a good show and shows the talent of our members not just photographing the sky (a technically demanding task) but also framing and editing, which requires the eye of an artist.

I am glad to have gone and glad to know such fine people.

I arrived at Binbrook a few minutes after 7, to see one car already there. I could see Orion, although the belt stars were a bit faint, and mars and Sirius were there.

Despite dire warnings of a cloudy night, your HAA membership again demonstrated their unbounded enthusiasm, as they gathered at Binbrook for a 7:30 setup, expecting asteroid 2007 TU24 to go scooting by. Eventually there were 7 cars and 8 people.

I was planning to just set up binoculars, as rain was expected, but when so many members showed up, and Ed started setting up the BWS, i also set up the GWS. Of course, we realized that binoculars just won’t fish up a 11.6 magnitude asteroid. The GWS can see down to mag 16 comfortably, so the GWS it was.

We were well rewarded, but not as expected.

Seeing was steady, and Mars turned out to be the big attraction. Right through clouds that obscured most of orion, we could see mars, shining steadily. It was the steadiest I had ever seen mars, and it withstood 250x magnification.

No less than 6 scopes were soon taking advantage of this opportunity to view Mars, and we agreed we could see surface features on the planet, which withstood the same descriptions from multiple observers.

I saw several dark spots and lines on the orange disk of mars, and wished I had a 2x Barlow to get
even closer. Voila! Other eyepieces were at the ready, and on offer.

Don played the Telescope Clinic video during a short break in the action.

For a white square on the CSC, in the face of an impending rainstorm ferocious enough to keep meteorologists away, we got remarkably clear spots. I am not saying the whole sky was clear, but the sucker holes were big enough to shine a scope through. It was well worth the drive to Binbrook.
We picked up the Plieades and looked for the elephant. The GWS magnifies it too much, so it will have to wait for another time.

Using ephemerids, Heather set up her scope to shine in the right direction to pick up the asteroid scooting by. Alas, there were clouds in that direction. By 10 PM we decided to pack up and head for Tim’s. Horton, that is.

While putting things away, the sky eventually did clear up in the direction we needed. We could see all kinds of stars in there. We broke out the binoculars, and I made motions to set the GWS back up, (I was only kidding, really)… but that was enough of that.

An hour and a half at Tims and we were on our way. Turns out there’s a brisk re-sale market for HAA calendars too!

Here’s a photo from the evening.

With no Polaris or other stars, John helps Heather align the scope on Mars via the traditional method.

Update from Don Pullen – 30Jan08
From APOD (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html), here’s a radar image of what we missed.

“Asteroid 2007 TU24 passed by the Earth yesterday, posing no danger. The space rock, estimated to be about 250 meters across, coasted by just outside the orbit of Earth’s Moon. The passing was not very unusual — small rocks strike Earth daily, and in 2003 a rock the size of a bus passed inside the orbit of the Moon, being detected only after passing. TU24 was notable partly because it was so large. Were TU24 to have struck land, it might have caused a magnitude seven earthquake and left a city-sized crater. A perhaps larger danger would have occurred were TU24 to have struck the ocean and raised a large tsunami. This radar image was taken two days ago. The Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico broadcast radar that was reflected by the asteroid and then recorded by the Byrd Radio Telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia. The resulting image shows TU24 to have an oblong and irregular shape. TU24 was discovered only three months ago, indicating that other potentially hazardous asteroids might lurk in our Solar System currently undetected. Objects like TU24 are hard to detect because they are so faint and move so fast. Humanity’s ability to scan the sky to detect, catalog, and analyze such objects has increased notably in recent years.”

The HAA rose to the occasion and helped make the Astronomy night at the RGB a success. We arrived at between 5 and 6 and were ready for action by 6:30, in the center of the roundabout in the middle of the park. It was handy to be able to position the scopes close to the cars.

Scopes in attendance ranged from a delightfully simple spherical based-scope with a simple finder, to Jim’s goto with all the bells and whistles. The BWS and the GWS were also there. Unfortunately, water freezes, so i had removed my trusty counterweight from the car, and forgot to put it back, so i was flying without a finder-scope. It took me a few minutes to fish up Mars and the Orion nebula. I need to think of something clear i can put in the bottles that does not freeze at low temperatures… maybe vodka, or maybe not.

About 40 kids and some of their parents came to see the sky in the scopes.

We fished up the Orion Nebula, Mars, Betelgeuse, Sirius, and some star clusters, including the Pleiades. The kids saw a happy face and an elephant.

You know, they were right! I saw the elephant for the first time.

Lines of kids, some so small they needed a boost, had a look through the scopes and then headed back inside for the rest of the night’s presentation.

The skies were remarkably clear for a white square on the CSC, and also remained clear at the zenith till past 9:30 PM.

We reconvened at Kelsey’s after the evening was done.

I think this will be an annual event for our club.

Courtesy of Jackie, here are some photos of the event:

Jim showing off Orion

Awe inspiring

Ann holding court

A future HAA member

As mentioned at the last HAA club meeting on Fri Jan 11, there is a reasonably large asteroid that will be passing close by on Mon Jan28/Tue Jan29.

Asteroid 2007 TU24 was discovered in Oct 2007 by the NASA sponsored Catalina Sky Survey. It is approximately 350m in size and is expected to pass by the Earth within 530,000 km (330,000 miles). This is about 1.4 Lunar Distances (1 LD is the average distance between Earth and Moon – approx 400,000km). So this one will pass just outside of the moon’s orbit.

Right now it is fairly faint, but as it approaches on the 28th, it will grow to about magnitude 10 which should be visible in moderate scopes (4″ or better). And it will cross the sky quite quickly. So fast that we won’t be able to use standard tracking rates on most computerized telescopes. You will be able to notice its movement against background stars as it passes through/near Pisces, Triangulum, Andromeda, Perseus and Camelopardalis. It will pass very close to M33 early in the evening.

While challenging, this could be a unique imaging opportunity for those who wish to undertake this quest. For the others, if the sky conditions are good, we’re planning to head out to Binbrook to observe this unusual event.

Closest approach isn’t until about 3am on Tues morning, but it will be visible all evening. So we’ll expect to open the gates about 8pm and stay as long as everyone can tolerate the chilly temps. Current long range forecast is promising, but we’ll provide updates as we get closer.

According to NASA’s JPL NEO website, there are about 7000 asteroids of this size that have been discovered (or expected to be discovered) and one would pass this close to Earth every 5 years on average. They also make it quite clear that this one will NOT hit Earth nor cause any effects anywhere. (There has been a surprising amount of FUD relating to this asteroid on many websites and blogs.)

I’ve included a very scaled down image of the asteroid’s path.

Path of 2007 TU24 between Jan 28 and Jan 29, 2008

You can find a larger version (425kb) of this image at:

2007TU24h
(The dots represent 6 hours intervals, and 0H UT = 19:00EST)

This was obtained from JPL’s website and massaged a little so that it prints easier on most black & white printers.
(Original can be found at: neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news157.html)

I’ll be posting some more info shortly so stayed tuned.

Hope to see you on Mon 28 Jan at Binbrook.

UPDATE: Mon 28 Jan @ 11:00 am
Not surprisingly, the weather conditions are working against us. There is a new system moving in from the WNW that is going to bring some rain and wet snow. It should hit us around midnight (give or take a few hours). We may get lucky and the initial parts of the system may pass just to the north of us giving us a few hours of observing. Checking satelitte images and various CSC around the province, this seems like a possibility. If we were further south, then it’s pretty certain we’d have clearer skies for a better part of the evening. We’re right on the edge.

Closest approach (and therefore brightest and fastest apparent motion) won’t occur until about 3:30 am and its clear (no pun intended) we’re unlikely to be able to last this long. At least temperatures, winds and humidity aren’t expected to be too bad for the situation (at least until the rains start). And regrettably conditions Tuesday night are going to be worse for watching the asteroid depart. So it’s tonight or nothing.

Since the asteroid is only expected to be at magnitude 12 moving to 11 in the evening, it will be a bit more of a challenge to find – especially if there are some thin high level clouds. We’ll need to have accurate charts and coordinates to locate this object. I’ll try to get some printed up to bring along.

But we’ve gone out with worse forecasts. Sometimes we get lucky and it turns out better than expected, sometimes not. Let’s hope this will be one of the better experiences.

Therefore I’m going to suggest that we still give this a shot. It may look gloomy as we head out, but with the forecasted breaks, we may have a chance and I think this is one we don’t want to pass up.

I’ll try to head out and open the gate at 7:30’ish – it will depend on how swamped I am at work. I’ll try to get there earlier if I can. We’ll set up at our usual spot on the hill. Remember if the ground is soft/wet, then try to keep the cars on the roadway. If necesary, unload and then move it to the parking area.

See you tonight.

AIR TIME:

Just had a call from Shiona Thompson at 900CHML – she wants me to do a radio interview about the asteroid, Tuesday morning at 6:40am.
Tune in if you can – Glenn

Over the past month I only had two opportunities to observe and image, and unfortunately clear and c-c-cold go hand in hand during the winter season.

One of those evenings the meteorological data and CSC were both calling for lots of cloud cover but fortunately I was following the satellite imagery that day and found a potential clearing over Lake Michigan that looked like it would drift over our region by the evening hours. I felt a little nuts at first setting up in total cloud cover but I had faith 🙂 later that evening the skies finally became reasonably clear enough to image B33 Horsehead and Flame Nebula. There was a very thin layer of cirrus but it wasn’t enough to make my efforts futile. The effects of it were noted in the image below with Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) appearing even more oversized, and brighter than usual.

Canon 40D unmodded + 80mm, 3min exposures totaling 1.5 hrs @iso1600

My wintery setup that night

Again, another clear night presented itself this past Saturday, but sadly the moon was really bright and fairly close to my region of interest. As an experiment I imaged anyways. Kind of a bad experiment to try M78 which has a very pretty blue reflection nebula but very faint and interesting dark nebula/dust around it. I was happy to see that parts of it showed up after some post processing magic, but I had to crop it severely because of a bad gradient from the brightness of the moon.

Canon 40D unmodded + 80mm, 3min exposures totalling 1hr @iso800

That night got down to -12C and at first I thought I could handle it (esp since I could run inside frequently to warm up) but in the process of trying to debug/restart my guiding software a few times my exposed fingers felt like they were going to get frost bite… so I ended up giving up after an hour and a half. So -12C may be my absolute lowest temperature limit for extended imaging and possibly observing.

KerryLH