That was rather annoying - I had a big story written out and we just had a blackout...
Anyways, last night at around midnight, I gave up the option of sleep in favouring of going out onto the footy ovals and staring up in the sky. Things have definitely changed a lot in the last week - the full moon that was good to look at has gone (I think it's rising later?), but that'd paved the way for some ink black skies, for me predominately to the SE and E.
I tried the test in S&T for determining magnitude, and found about 10 or so stars inside Pegasus. From this, I guessed at about mag 6. I could also faintly see a small triangle of stars, just to the North of Eta Ori (the middle star in Orion's Belt) - two of them are approaching mag 5.5, and the other is between mag 5.5 and mag 7 (not exactly sure how bright), so that seemed to back it up. I'm really looking forward to viewing the skies back home (my parents live up in Daintree, FNQ), because I remember seeing a lot more stars when I looked up back there...
I started off as usual with just my naked eye, seeing how many star names and constellations I could remember from last time. From the North, swinging through East to south, I found Pegasus, Andromeda, Airies, the Pleiades, Taurus, Orion, Cannis Major, Carina, Crux and Centauri. Just to the south and slightly West of Canopus was the Large Magellanic, and further West was the Small Magellanic. Just to the edge of the SMC was a faint blob of light - it looked like a star, but was more a disc than a dot. I filed that one away in the memory banks to come back to later.
I could see a fair bit of milky way detail running through Carina, and just to the edge was another faint blob (it kind of made an equilateral traingle, looking at Canopus, LMC and this blob). I finally pulled out my bino's to check it out, and could see a decent sized cluster - NGC 2516. I'll definitely be coming back here with a scope, when I finally lay my hands on one
I turned the bino's back towards the LMC, and olong the edge of it, I could make out a bright spot. I think this must have been the Tarntula nebula, although I couldn't make any detail out of it.
That fuzzy spot over near the SMC was still bugging me, so I finally took a look over there, and there she was - 47 Tuc in all her glory
I stared at it for a long time (maybe 10 minutes?) trying to get some individual detail on each of the stars, but I found it hard to hold the bino's steady enough. Again, this is somewhere I'll definitely revisit with a scope.
Next on the list was Eta Carinae, which I could identify as a bright little blob, surrounded by the cloud of the milky way. I followed the cloud around towards Orion (it didn't quite get that far), and along there way there were many "bright" patches, areas that stood out from the background. The whole lot of them made my "to do" list
Finally, I moved back over to Orion and had a look at M42. I've been watching this guy for a couple of months now, and it's amazing how much detail you can get on it, just from using binoculars. I can definitely see the "fan" shape, and allthough there's no colour there, I can make out differences in brightness and a very slight ammount of detail.
So that was my night last night - I saw some new things, learnt a lot and have more goals for next time I go out. Hopefully next time I can spend a bit longer out there - I live on a defence base, and only managed about 45 minutes out there before the MP's came up shining their torches in my eyes
And hopefully next time will be just as much fun as this one.
Cheers,
Brad
And now it is just starting to rain so it looks like it will be a few days yet for us in SE Queensland.
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