Ob Report 02/12/07

[MooEy]

Anyone obbing last night? Skies seem super clear all the way since 7pm. However, my ob session started since morning 7am.

First object seen was our nearest star, the sun. I had earlier borrowed the pst from Lee for a solar ob session for the club. But sadly last weekend's sky didn't really make it. So i held another session yesterday in the afternoon.

7am - A red disk is seen thru the pst. Clouds were somehow flirting around with me, passing by the sun now and then. During moments of cloudlessness, lots details pop up at the eyepiece end. Granulation on the sun surface and most importantly, flares and prominences. 3 were seen near 1 o'clock and 1 was seen near 6 o'clock.

11am - Decided to try luck with sun again since it's nearer to the zenith. The same old red disk was seen, but what surprised me was that the prominences had changed a little. Of of them which was orginally shooting upwards, started to take a detour and made a u-turn downwards. Another one of them was "disconnected" from then sun and continue shooting outwards. Seems like there's more to see every few hours apart.

3pm- Met up with the rest of the kids. Skies seems very cloudy and gloomy. We set up the pst and sat down to chit chat. Shortly later, a pocket of blue skies happen to pass by the sun. Details on the sun started to pop out. The 3 prominences i seen early had moved down to the 6 o'clock position. One of them has criss cross and become an x. The one in the middle had move even more outwards and is completely detached from the sun. Under close observation and careful turning of the filter, i spotted a filament on the surface of the sun.

For those who are looking forward to buy a pst, do note that the 10mm radian i used vignettes due to the tiny little piece of filter at the eyepiece end. Only abt 40 degrees of the fov can be seen. The 7.5mm tak LE had no issues. The 4mm i tried didn't fare that well, images started to be soft. Hey, it's only 40mm of aperture, can't expect everything.

Had dinner at 302 kopitiam, Bar chor mee(pork taste so good after u have been deprived of it for almost a year). Then moved over to my house. At around 7.20pm, We took the sp mount, the 102ed, a foldable chair(proved to be the best move i made) and moved out towards the park.

OMG, how long has it been that it's completely cloudless. No high clouds, no passing clouds, no nothing. Just super clear skies. We found a spot and settled down. Turns out later in the evening that the spot we choose was pretty bad. A bright light was in the path of cassiopeia, hindering much of our ob.

First object seen was pretty obvious, m31. Bright core, with another much dimmer patch towards 2pm. I reckon that would be m110. Could somehow see/imagine the spiral arms =x

Moving on, cass is still slightly blocked by the building, we tried ngc 457, also know as the dragonfly cluster. Took a while to find, we saw 2 bright stars(the eyes) side by side in the 30mm eyepiece, but none of the other stars of the cluster were available. However, after putting in the 10mm, we noted the wings and the body of the dragonfly cluster. I guess my site has a little too much light pollution. The 2 brighter stars serve as the eyepieces, and few other stars made out a t shape, resembling a dragonfly. Some people call it the et cluster, since it looks like 2 eyes, 2 arms and 2 legs. From my orientation(eyes down, legs up) it looks more like dragonfly to me.

Next challenge was the double cluster. The dumb street light was pretty much in the path. Nevertheless we managed to find it. 2 bright cluster, one with a pretty bright red star in it. Seems that my 15mm frame it quite nicely. A few brighter stars were in the center of the clusters, with some dimmer stars surrounding it. Quite a magnificent sight.

10pm - being so pissed off with the light infront of us. And it happens that the lights of the playground and badminton court were bring turned off, we decided to shift. Moved towards the badminton court. Seems like one of the best decision made. No stupid street lamp, no awkward building blocking us. And it was much darker with much more stars seen. We had a slight change of crew, Junhao left and Wanling joined us. So it's me, UT and Wanling.

Being a much darker site, we moved on at a slightly faster pace. M42 was revisited. Great orion neb. a fuzzy patch was seen. I tried a piece of lpr filter, the neb becomes slightly bigger. The running man beside it was seen too.

M41 was next. Located in canis major, this is one of the easier to find open cluster for the winter skies. We took a short peep before moving on.

M35, we had a short dispute. Orion holds a sword? or does he hold a club? I argued that he holds a club, since one can see 2 stars left of betelguese, one on top of the other. Moving further left we could see another 2 stars, one on top of the other once again. What sword would look like that? of course, the opposition claims that it must have been a sword since m42 looks like the shelth for a sword. anyway, moving a little left of the 2 stars was our M35 cluster. M35 continue to impress me every time i look at it. Why? Because the stars in m35 looks pretty uniform and well distributed. Uniformed in the way all the stars of roughly the same brightness. Or should i say all of them looks pretty dim. The feeling of well refined sugar, instead of some coarser sugar here and there.

Mars was in the area too. We took a short peep at it. A 4mm eyepiece was used. Quite alot of details was seen on mars, although it was a little low in the skies and quite turbulent. i could make out maybe a T shape or was it an I. Getting brighter since last week, i guess opposition would make a very nice view.

I noticed lepus was pretty obvious, we went there to try luck with m79. M79 is one of the very few gobular cluster available in this season. I have no idea why. Took me quite a while to find it as it's pretty small. A 15mm was used. It appears round(which gob doesn't look round) which brightening towards the core. Size is small like a said, in the eyepiece if a star is a finger, this thing is maybe a fist.

Decided to try luck with doubles, took down rigel easily. A bright dot in the 4mm eyepiece, with a tiny little pimple 7 o'clock of it. Tried sirrius, but not successful.

Somehow, not much has been seen and lots of time had passed. It's already 12 mid night. We decided to leave. Took me a while to dismantle everything, but still the 4" was a one man job.

[acc]

Yes it indeed was a clear night but sky was rather turbulent. Was observing Mars and a few DSOs with the WO 102SV. Could just make out star E of the trapezium cluster in M42 at 150x, during fleeting moments of good seeing.

[kingkong]

did you try holme's comet? i tried but couldn't find it...

[mrngbss]

Now is super clear for Solar obs, but I'm not free!!

[jiahao1986]

Hi Mooey,

I was observing at NTU and saw someone shinning a super-powerful laser to Orion and Canis Major. Was it you guys?

Last night was indeed quite clear, and I managed to get a picture of comet Holmes, it's now so much larger than a month ago. Below are my pictures:

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Regards,
Jia Hao

[MooEy]

eh, i was using a green laser as a finder, but from cck to ntu like abit far wor. jp was telling me he saw that in woodlands as well. not me not me.

~MooEy~

[Canopus Lim]

Nice report. I am still waiting for Mars to rise earlier as it will not look nice when it is low at the horizon with bad seeing.

[acc]

Very clear skies now! woohoo!

[raychan]

Yeah....can see Mars from my place(directly facing East)
Just set up my scope and saw Sirius at the same "latitude" and Orion's belt in between Mars and Sirius.

Surprisingly clear skies tonight....

[philip]

Hi Clear sky reported at 9.pm now , first light for my scope. wow