loopy
12-12-2004, 12:10 PM
G'Day all,
Just a short one this time - I got halfway through my book on genome sequencing last night, and decided I needed a break. Looking outside, the clouds that were around on Friday night seemed to have dissapeared, so I grabbed the old bino's and walked out to the footy field.
Viewing was a little worse than last time - I couldn't make out much detail in the Milky Way, but the Magellanic Clouds stuck out. At a pinch, I'd say it was around mag 5 - the Great Square in Pegasus was under light pollution for me, so I was basing that on the stars near Orion's Belt.
I thought I'd try something new this time. Instead of working from map to sky, I'd scan the sky, look for something that was interesting, then try to dentify it on the map. This worked great until I realised that it was dark outside and I couldn't read the map... :)
Never-the-less I persisted, and one of the first things I noticed was a naked eye fuzzy patch below and to the right of Canopus. Binoculars gave it a little more detail, and I found it to be Eta Carinae. I was impressed at the level of detail that I could see with the naked eye - it was actually rivalling the two Cloud's in term of magnitude!
Further to the South, around the limit of my light pollution, I could make out another blur, but only under bino's. It was rather odd - in my whole field of view, I could only see this blur, and one other star, which leads me to believe it must be pretty bright. Cross reference with the map put it as Kappa Crucis, AKA NGC 4755, AKA "The Jewel Box". I Googled up some photos of it this morning, and it's definitely on my to do list for when I get my scope!
Around this point, I snuck another quick look at 47Tuc, just 'cause I could :)
I tried something different here, and lay on my back, and tried to stabilise the bino's as much as I could. I turned towards M42, and I was surprised how much detail I could make out, much more than last time. I could distinctly see the trapezium, and the nebulosity surrounding it was more or less the same shape as the photo's I've seen of the region.
While I was lying on my back, I saw another smudge over to the right of M42. he way I rememered its position was that it sort of made an equilateral triangle, with Rigel and Sirius forming the other two points. Looking at it, it seemed to be of a similar brightness to 47Tuc, so I thought it must have been something major. When I got back to my room though, the map I had showed that that area was totally empty! I'm rather confused by that - anybody got any idea what it was? I thought maybe it was a comet, but I couldn't percieve any movement at all from it, and on the S&T Sky Chart, I'm coming up with nothing....
Anyways, that was what I saw last night. In general, I was pretty impressed with the ammount of naked eye detail I could make out this time, especially considering it wasn't as dark as last week. I think I might add my mysterious object to a new catalogue, the Loopy catalogue. I'll call it L69.... :)
Cheers,
Brad
Just a short one this time - I got halfway through my book on genome sequencing last night, and decided I needed a break. Looking outside, the clouds that were around on Friday night seemed to have dissapeared, so I grabbed the old bino's and walked out to the footy field.
Viewing was a little worse than last time - I couldn't make out much detail in the Milky Way, but the Magellanic Clouds stuck out. At a pinch, I'd say it was around mag 5 - the Great Square in Pegasus was under light pollution for me, so I was basing that on the stars near Orion's Belt.
I thought I'd try something new this time. Instead of working from map to sky, I'd scan the sky, look for something that was interesting, then try to dentify it on the map. This worked great until I realised that it was dark outside and I couldn't read the map... :)
Never-the-less I persisted, and one of the first things I noticed was a naked eye fuzzy patch below and to the right of Canopus. Binoculars gave it a little more detail, and I found it to be Eta Carinae. I was impressed at the level of detail that I could see with the naked eye - it was actually rivalling the two Cloud's in term of magnitude!
Further to the South, around the limit of my light pollution, I could make out another blur, but only under bino's. It was rather odd - in my whole field of view, I could only see this blur, and one other star, which leads me to believe it must be pretty bright. Cross reference with the map put it as Kappa Crucis, AKA NGC 4755, AKA "The Jewel Box". I Googled up some photos of it this morning, and it's definitely on my to do list for when I get my scope!
Around this point, I snuck another quick look at 47Tuc, just 'cause I could :)
I tried something different here, and lay on my back, and tried to stabilise the bino's as much as I could. I turned towards M42, and I was surprised how much detail I could make out, much more than last time. I could distinctly see the trapezium, and the nebulosity surrounding it was more or less the same shape as the photo's I've seen of the region.
While I was lying on my back, I saw another smudge over to the right of M42. he way I rememered its position was that it sort of made an equilateral triangle, with Rigel and Sirius forming the other two points. Looking at it, it seemed to be of a similar brightness to 47Tuc, so I thought it must have been something major. When I got back to my room though, the map I had showed that that area was totally empty! I'm rather confused by that - anybody got any idea what it was? I thought maybe it was a comet, but I couldn't percieve any movement at all from it, and on the S&T Sky Chart, I'm coming up with nothing....
Anyways, that was what I saw last night. In general, I was pretty impressed with the ammount of naked eye detail I could make out this time, especially considering it wasn't as dark as last week. I think I might add my mysterious object to a new catalogue, the Loopy catalogue. I'll call it L69.... :)
Cheers,
Brad