There were many options for viewing going on this evening with the AAMM up north of Tucson, Flandrau on the grass at the U of A, SAS down in Arivaca and TAAA setup at Sabino Canyon. We did go up to Sabino and although I wanted to setup I kind of got the feeling that we were not welcome to setup, only hangout and view. We are going to join TAAA we just have to spend our limited funds wisely until I can come up with a job. So we decided to setup at home and observe both Earth Night and the sky from outside our condo as this afforded us the most scope time. But first, time for dinner lol, I cooked Panko coated Tilapia in the skillet using EVOO, Donna cooked some Red Potato's with EVOO and garlic. As dinner was cooking I setup the telescope on the west side of the condo right outside our bedroom. Using this time to allow the scope to cool down but we did get in some good views of the crescent moon during this time.
Now that dinner was out of the way and it was very good if I do say so myself, but onto the meat of the evening. Shut down everything in the house including the computer in anticipation of the lights out from 8:30 to 9:30 rolling blackout. I did cheat though as I had the laptop and telescope plugged in outside so as to be able to track and also run Stellarium to get RA/Dec settings for the various objects were were going to look at this night.
I knew this was the night to look at Messier objects and so we started with M45 The Pleiades and then moving to M42 and M43 the Nebula's in Orion and as much as I try I can not get NGC 1977 to show. Pulled in NGC 1981 an open cluster just above M42 and M43.
Was time to move south and I did an RA/Dec alignment on Sirius to view some of the clusters around Canis Major. M41, M46, M47, M93 and M50. I know a lot was missed but lights to the south make it had to see some nights. We did take a walk up the road to see if the dimming of the lights in Tucson were noticeable and could not really tell but I do feel that there was a slight dimming of the glow overall but that is just my opinion.
Turned the scope around to the north and used Alkaid the star in Ursa Major that is at the end of the handle to do a RA/Dec alignment. Time to go galaxy hunting. First up was M82 (mag 8.4) also called The Cigar Galaxy. M81 (mag 6.9) Bode's Galaxy was next to be seen. Both of these were looked at with all the ep's. Staying in this part of the sky but moving to the east next up was M101 (mag 7.7) the Pinwheel Galaxy. Next up was M51 the Whirlpool Galaxy and this one is nice because you can see both NGC 5195 (mag 9.6) and NGC 5194 (mag 8.4) that make up M51. M63 (mag 8.6) the Sunflower Galaxy was on tap, from there it us a small jump to M94 (mag 8.2) galaxy in Canes Venatici. Things got a little dimmer with NGC 4449 (mag 9.4) galaxy being a faint fuzzy in the ep. To round out the circle of galaxies was M106 (mag 8.3).
Time for some Globular's. Went to Arcturus to get a RA/Dec alignment and went to M53 (mag 7.7) and M5 (mag 6.4) globular clusters. It is amazing the view you get of these when they are focused in and you advert your eye to use the rods of your eye to really pull in the faint points of light. M5 (mag 7.7) globular cluster was next followed by M64 (mag 8.4) the Black-eye Galaxy. Moved to NGC 5466 (mag 9.1) globular.
Izar a star in Bootes is actually a dbl with star A being mag 4.7 and star B a mag 7.0 with only 6.9" of separation. It took the 17mm and 1.8x barlow for a 216x magnification to show the separation. Donna had to use her better eyes to fine tune the focus.
At this point Donna was rather cold as the temp had dropped into the low 50's. She bid me good night as I wanted to spend a little more time out. My time out was spent waiting for M13 (mag 5.9) and M92 (mag 6.9) to get up over the condo roof. Clock said 1:30 after finally getting these two and and it was time to pack up and head inside. I know lots of stuff was missed and they will be added to the list one day soon.
All in all a really great night out looking at the sky, we pulled in 21 Messier objects and 3 NGC's along with a double star. .
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