View Single Post
  #1  
Old 24-03-2010, 06:53 PM
orestis's Avatar
orestis
Registered User

orestis is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: southern highlands, Australia
Posts: 679
23/03/10 Observing night + sketch

Hi everyone,

It was nice and clear and although there was a half moon out lighting up everything i decided to take out the scope.

Well the first thing i looked at was the moon and i saw some considerable detail in the mountain ridge and craters.As i didn't want to take too much time sketching it i just took a photo (attached).

Alpha Crucis-

At 180x magnification i could see the three components.the 2 main stars were of roughly equal magnitude and the other star of about half of the main stars brightness.regarding colours i think that the 2 main were of blue-white appearance and that the other star was of a slight yellow appearance.i also did a sketch (attached).There were some other faint stars but were not drawn on the sketch.

Leo Triplet-

Thanks to malcolm for his advice of only looking for 2 galaxies i finally spotted these magnificent galaxies even though the half moon was out(can't wait to see these galaxies without the moon).Anyway at first i saw a grainy diffuse sort of patch of light right next to a resonably bright star and then a little lower down i saw a faint streaky kind of light.with averted vision they became a bit brighter but moon was affecting the view so i didn't get to see the 3rd one.(ps-i couldn't tell which was m65 and which was m66 but later i checked stellearium anf found out that the fatter looking one was m66 and the other m65).

I had a good night
thanks for reading

regards Orestis
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (Alpha Crucis.jpg)
116.6 KB25 views
Click for full-size image (moon.JPG)
188.4 KB22 views
Reply With Quote