Clear summer night

A beautiful clear night tonight after a nice dinner, so dragged Dobby out the back for a look.
Orion is above the house so checked out the nebulae (it's the name of the blog ya know) Used the 30mm ep with the barlow and enjoyed the view. Tried all the filters, just to see the effect. Nothing really special, perhaps the blue helped define a bit... Maybe
Played with the indirect mode on my mobile
Looked for ngc1617
Bed time

One year on a comet

It's the anniversary of Philae landing on Comet 67P! Rosetta is still orbiting the comet and sending back science, but poor little Philae has been out of touch for a while.
Still, it is an awesome mission and doing really well. I'm kinda surprised Rosetta is still doing ok while flying around in the comet's debris.

Future targets

You know what? Next time the sky is clear (not holding breath) and Centaurus is nice and high, I'm gonna make a big effort to tick off NGC5128 from my must see list. Can't really believe I haven't made an effort on that one before. Still a noob ;)
I'll officially tick of NGC5139 while I'm there as well.

A new mission to be excited about

Cassini will wrap up all too soon. Ending with a plunge into Saturn's atmosphere. So a new mission is needed to get excited about with new images and science to drool over - and a new one is almost there.
In July 2016 Mission Juno will reach orbit around Jupiter, and start sciencing from a mere 5000km above the clouds.
Awesome.
Can't start soon enough!
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/

Star gazing - singular

So a cloudy day cleared just at dusk to provide a beautiful clear sky.  However, I did not get Dobby out to the front yard until 11pm, and by then the Moon was behind the trees and Saturn was down behind the neighbour's roof.  The sky above was relatively empty as well, with all the familiar constellations (Scorpio, Sagitarius, Centaurus, Crux) down behind our roofline and the tree.
So left with nothing much else to look at, and missing the dark sky I've now tasted, I aimlessly wandered the 30mm and 25mm eps around the sky before deciding to try a close up look at the brightest star above me at that moment.

Turns out that star is Achernar, the brightest star in the constellation of Eridanus ("The river") which is a winding line of stars that I will need some practice and some darker skies before I can be confident that I can pick it out.  Achernar is 'the star at the end of the river'.

Achernar is the tenth brightest star in the southern sky, a bright blue giant, which wiki reports to be a binary -  although I could not find a companion as I played with my new eyepieces trying to up the magnification.

Didn't stay out too long, but making progress on learning the constellations.

Back to basics with the iBall 1.0

Tim came over this evening for some assistance with an exercise that is part of his BSc.
He had to identify three known stars and estimate their magnitude and colour by eye and then compare that to the known values in the literature.  He then has to calculate their actual magnitude.
This was an interesting exercise for me, as I've managed to get this far without having a hard think about magnitudes, and tonight helped straighten out a few points in my mind.

In summary:
Low magnitude number = brighter / High magnitde number = dimmer
Aparent magnitude is the brightness as it appears in the sky compared to other stars
Absolute magnitude is the brightnes if the star was only 10 parsecs away
Absolute magnitude is calculated using a formula I'll try to understand in the morining.

Nice to get out and stargaze with Tim again, even without scopes and under the regular city sky.

Dark skies and good wine

This weekend Tim, Alisdair and I went out into the country to find a dark sky.
However, being gentlemen of refinement... we found it at a warm, welcoming, winery.
This wonderful winery that so comfortably accommodated our amateur stargazing was Tim's brother-in-laws place.  Wonderful hospitality and food and drink!

Determined to see more than the light polluted skies of Melbourne could offer, we journeyed out West.  The diagram below taken from Dark Site Finder shows how suitable the spot is.  Both to protect the innocent, and due to my not paying attention as we drove out, the location of the winery is only approximate. 

This dark-sky excursion educated us in a few ways.  One resource we discovered was Skippy-Sky, a website where we can find predictions of cloud cover for the weekend.  Amazing how accurate it was!  It was predicting clear skies by 1am, and although there were multiple patches of cloud roll over, even some rain - come 12.30am the skies cleared and we had hours of beautiful clear sky.


With us we had Dobby the 8", Tim's 6" Equatorial mount ("Eckie"?), and Alisdair's brand new 10" collapsible dob (Aperture envy!)

More to come...

Cloudy skies, but breaks make observing possible
7pm Looked at Moon, Saturn
Used 35mm ep, 2x barlow, lunar filter
1/2 moon waxing, terminator awesome!
Saturn at a distance, didn't make time to try the full x400 magnification

Clouded up - curry dinner.  Some rain!

Break in the clouds, so out again to observe
Look at Carina (no nebula spotted)
Moon, Barlow and 6mm ep showing amazing detail on craters
Swung over to Rigel Kent to separate binary - used full mag - got it!

Clouds. Cards. Stellarium.

1am
Differentiate Rigil Kent using full mag again
M28
M22
open cluster above Scorpio (?)
Tried for Andromeda - too low?  Not recognised?
Tried for Uranus - couldn't make it out, although had a strong suspect
M69
M70
M54

Tired, nearly 3am.  Went to bed!

First light

Sat 15 August.
Not a great night, but the clouds broke long enough for me to drag Dobby out onto the front step and have a play with the new eps!

No moon, and Saturn hiding in the haze on the horizon meant I only really had the stars directly above to check out. So I looked around Sagittarius a bit.
The new 32km gives a very pretty wide field view, I'm really looking forward to getting that out to a dark sky.
Found a fuzzy. Might have been M24, but didn't really check at the time. Used the different eps and the Barlow to magnify. Noticed the reduction in brightness as mag went up, but shouldn't be a problem when away from all the light pollution.
Great to try the new lenses. Hope to use the filters next.

67P, Rosetta and Philae all at Perihelion

Yesterday (the 13th) the comet 67P and its visitors reached Perihelion.
Apparently Rosetta has returned some nice images of the comet jetting. Philae has been quiet, but Rosetta has been in a bad location to receive signals. Now it has moved to the North of the comet it may work better. So I've still got hopes for the adorable little washing-machine :)
I'll try to catch up with the posts and hang-out conversations this weekend.

Yay! Birthday gift for Dobby!

The birthday gift for Dobby and I arrived yesterday :)
The SkyMaster 1.25" eyepiece and accessories kit, with 5 new eyepieces, a 2x Barlow, 5 colour lense filters and a moon filter.
I'm very keen to try the big field on the 32mm so, that should be beautiful. And I am very curious about how good the results will be when I crank Dobby up to the full 400x magnification possible with the 6mm ep and the Barlow.
The filters should be interesting too. I'll have to start with Saturn though, as I'm pretty sure (without checking right now) that Jupiter is setting too early now.

Of course, this will all have to wait until these damn clouds clear away!

NdGT live!

Awesome! Seeing Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson tonight, live at "An Evening With"with Tim.

Hope my brain doesn't explode.

*Update*
Well, the old brain didn't explode with overloading - but fairly fizzed with fanboy-ism!

Dr Tyson discussed the origins of the universe, life in places other than Earth and panspermia, dark matter and dark energy, lots of other topics, and of course the whole Pluto thing.

While there wasn't the depth of information that Tim and I would have liked, I'm sure it was appropriate for the audience as a whole and was still very interesting and thought provoking.

New Horizons almost there

July 8 is the official start of the Flyby phase of the mission. July 14 is set to be the closest approach at 2149 local time.

Apparently this is what it is seeing right now ...




Which is awesome.

Rare Venus Jupiter conjunction

Tonight Venus and Jupiter come so close together that I could see them both in one view through my 25mm ep... If I could see them.
*sigh*
Stellarium shows it like this:

Melbourne shows it like this:


Dammit.

Winter Solstice 2015

Enjoyed a beautiful warm bonfire on a cold Saturday evening. Then on Sunday evening we stoked up the brazier and enjoyed a nice fire (and marshmallows!) in the front yard.
The Moon, Venus and Jupiter put on a nice show in a clear sky on both nights, and on Sunday I dragged out Dobby for a look at them. Beautiful craters on the terminator on the crescent moon, Venus showed a strong crescent, and Jupiter was just great as always - all four moons visible in a clear line.
Saturn came over the trees later in the evening (after marshmallows) and looked very pretty. Tried to take a few photos but didn't have much success this time.

Wakey Wakey!

Yay! Philae has woken up!



Yesterday ESA was able to contact Philae and download data and status information via Rosetta.

Sounds like Philae is in good shape to do more comet science (after a 7 month nap, it should!) So excited to learn more about 67P from ground level.

What is it about this 'little' 100kg cubic robot that provokes such warmth and affection?



Probably the adorable cartoons.

Sol 1000!

Wow! Today Curiosity has been on Mars for 1000 Sols!
I hope there is cake.

Total eclipse 2015 - live from Svarlbard!

Svarlbard! Svarlbard! Svarlbard!

The total eclipse of 2015 was predicted to be a good one, with totality lasting longer than many due to the Moon being at perihelion at the time.  However it was only making landfall on the Faroe Islands and Svarlbard.  So you could travel to Svarlbard like Tim did, or you could watch the webcast in the warm comfort of your own home and play cards - like we did.

The Faroe Islands were clouded out, but fortunately the skies over Svarlbard were clear and the was a great stream coming from the local news station.  We panicked a couple of times as the feed seemed to get overloaded and lag, but it cleared up in time and we got to see it all.

Not quite like being there, but pretty awesome anyway.

St Patricks Day Aurora Australis

I've always wanted to see an Aurora, and I still do.

Ón St. Patrick's day, 17 March 2015, a fairly big CME hit and caused awesome Aurora in the Northern Hemisphere - that much I was aware of - but then I discovered that we had unusually large effects down here in the Southern Hemisphere as well!  Amazingly, there were sightings of the Aurora even in Goulburn - here's a link to a YouTube video taken early on the morning of the 18th.

I'm not sure how good the Aurora looked in Melbourne, because - of course - we had total cloud cover that night.

Typical...

More comet joy...

So, another comet swings by...
Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2 is putting on a show this weekend. Approaching a magnitude where it is nearly visible to the unaided eye not far from Aldebaran and Orion.

Or so I'm told. Melbourne is covered in cloud this entire week.

Typical.

Thpptt!