Inspired by the three days of ABC's Stargazing Live, and finally free of Dance-Dad duties and cloudy skies - I got Dobby out into the back yard last night for a look at a few objects.
With Jupiter in opposition (on the 8th) it is big and bright and rising at just the right time to be nice and high by the later evening, so that's the first target.
I was getting a lot of shimmer in my image, which made pushing the magnification up a bit pointless. However, there were moments of clarity where the bands were clear and sharply defined. Three moons were visible to the left of Jupiter, and yet again I experienced a little thrill to see this system. I was not able to identify the GRS, so a bit disappointed there, but moving on.
I played around with the filters a bit as well, and tried a few photos with the mobile holder device which I'm steadily redesigning in my head, as this prototype is more problematic than solution.
However, with all the time spent fiddling around with these things, I noticed an interesting event - the missing Galian moon was emerging from the right of Jupiter's disc! Very cool! As I watched, it changed from a bright speck on the edge of the planet to a distinct object and extended away from the planet in the same plane as the other moons. Nice, now I'll have to keep a watch out for other similar events on the calendars.
Some research after identified that the moon was Europa (my favorite) which had been passing between Jupiter and Earth (but I couldn't make it out in the shimmer) swinging out back into view.
After that excitement, it was on to the next target. Dr Brian Cox had mentioned Omega Centauri on StarGazing a couple of times, and got me thinking that I hadn't checked it out for a long while, and I wasn't even sure how to find it again. So it seemed a good inspiration to move on to the second round of constellation refreshers - Centaurus.
Before launching straight into star hopping, I spent some time staring straight up and comparing what I saw to the image on SkyEye. I still can't see a Centaur in it, but I'm more confident I can trace all the significant stars from Rigel Kent through Hadar and then hooking around and over Crux. I didn't check for other named stars, though - I must remember to add that to my 'training'.
Then on to Omega Centauri, star hopping from Rigel Kent for the practice. Got a real crick in the neck, as this was nearly at zenith so I had to get right down and look up through the spotter scope.
Other than the contortions, finding Omega Centauri (NGC5139) wasn't too hard. I even deliberately moved away from it and star hopped to it again.
The light conditions unfortunately made it not as spectacular as it should be, but even then it's impressive. Nice to think I'm looking at the remains of a dwarf galaxy that our galaxy has stripped much of its mass from. Also interesting that I'm looking right at (well, in the direction of) a black hole of some 40,000 SM.
I've been meaning to start collecting the Caldwell Catalogue, so this can be the first official tick on that list...
Omega Centauri, C80 - Tick!
Next session will be to explore Centaurus more and tick off some other targets.
Then I noticed on the SkyEye map that M83 was close to where I was looking, so I decided to have a go at that. It looked like it might be difficult again, it was even closer to the zenith, so I tried out the indirect navigation mode on SkyEye. With rubber bands I attached the mobile to the spotter scope, and then swung around and registered Jupiter, Spica, Antares, and Rigel Kent to get it oriented. It seemed to know where it was pointing accurately after that, so my failure to find M83 was either because it wasn't dark enough, or I just failed. It was getting late...
The final random target was M4, which I was reminded of while registering Antares. I was intending to play around a bit more with SkyEye indirect mode, but then the battery died. Fortunately, it is not hard to find, as it is very close to Antares. Again, the light conditions made it dim, but still was nice to see. Looking at my notes later, it's been almost exactly a year since I last looked at it!
Before going in for the night, I had a last look at Jupiter and noticed that it was much steadier now. While it may have been an improvement in the atmospheric conditions, I'm sure now that Dobby being at ambient temperature helped as well. Another reason to plan ahead whenever possible and get the scope cooling down for a while. Last night was unplanned though, so you get that.
I'm really Jones-ing for a dark sky now.
