The American Eclipse of the USA

So the eclipse happens in the US tonight/tomorrow morning (1:30am onwards or so) (Tues 22 Aug), I guess I'll try to stay up and see what is on TV and what is being tweeted. Shame it isn't as convenient in timing as the Svalbard eclipse, then the kids could get involved.
It's a perfect setup for the yanks, running right across the country smack in the middle of the day. There should be some spectacular images recorded.

July update

The update is that ... there is not much to update.

July  has been typically cold and wet, which discourages this amature astronomer from getting outdoors with the telescope.

Even though tonight is quite clear after some rain this afternoon, it is all of 7 degrees C out there and it is a warm Wednesday evening in here.  So, warm wins again.

T and I are trying to work out another attempt at a dark sky evening at Ararat on the next meeting of New Moon and weekend - so here's hoping that works out.  Next New Moon is 21st of August...hmmm, a Monday - so the Saturday before that is the Waning Cresent which sets at... 1500!  So that should be OK.  Man this is easy with a few good apps on the phone these days.

Cassini is still going strong and has just completed ring crossing number 15 (out of 22).  The pictures being returned are awesome.

Juno and Junocam are still surving the environment at Jupiter, and last week images of the Great Red Spot were released that are a-maze-ing. 

Dark sky evening plans...

dichotomy

dʌɪˈkɒtəmi,dɪˈkɒtəmi/

noun

noun: dichotomy; plural noun: dichotomies

1.

a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.

Such as, for instance, how Winter provides beautiful long dark nights, with some interesting constellations and objects to check out ... but Melbourne provides nothing but bloody clouds whenever you want to try to get out to a dark sky on a particular Saturday evening.

Dammit.

Here's what it could have looked like...

Moon occults Regulus

I managed to get out and check out some of the occultation of Regulus last night.
I missed it disappearing behind the dark limb unfortunately, but was ready for its re-emergence just over a hour later.

I was looking right at the moon through my 25mm ep, allowing me to keep an eye on the entire disk. The sudden "switching on" of the tiny intense blue light of Regulus was really striking! I took a few photos and videos after watching it for a short while, so the photos show the star not right on the edge any more.












I also took some other photos as well...

Cassini back in touch

Phew! It was just announced on twitter that Cassini is back in touch and is now downloading data via DSN Goldstone.

Another 22 loops and dives through the rings and then end-of-mission into Saturn's atmosphere.

Cassini - Dive! Dive! Dive!

Wow - as I'm typing this, Cassini is 3 minutes from diving through Saturn's rings.  It will be using it's high gain antenna as a 'shield'.

This will be really interesting.

Also, the NASA team recently released this awesome photo of Earth and the Moon taken through the gap in Saturn's rings.  Beautiful and so awesome.

10 seconds to Dive.

Cassini just tweeted - "...instruments are on, but we're out of contact with Earth. Here we gooooooo!"

This is cool, but I'm going to miss Cassini and the amazing images and science it has produced.

Jupiter, Centaurus and a bit of Scorpius

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.