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Saturday, August 29, 2015

OBSERVING REPORT FOR AUGUST 27/28, 2015

Location:  Front Porch at Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time:  August 27/15 2030-2200hrs
August 28/15 0330-0630hrs

Weather:  Aug 27/15-Partly Cloudy at twilight to clear after dark, light wind to no wind, lots of mosquitoes and 18C.

Aug 28/15-Clear, lots of dew, no wind, no bugs and 10C.

Attendance:  Becky L., Jessica K., and Myself.

Equipment:  Big Scope with 19mm and 4mm eyepieces.  Small scope with 2" 32mm and 1.25" 12.5mm eyepieces.  Canon DSLR with 18-55mm and 75-300mm eyepieces and attached to both scopes at prime focus.  Cellphone App SkEye.

Objective:  To Locate and image Uranus which was in Pisces.

Highlights:

  • Moon was very bright and large, two days before Full.
  • Jessica and Becky viewed Moon through small scope and 32mm eyepiece.  Jess noticed the terminator as "an uneven rough edge".  Becky asked what the "circles" were.
  • Viewed and imaged Saturn through big scope and camera which was attached to scope at prime focus.  Saturn was kind of low in the SW in Scorpius and was some what hazy and very reddish.  Images didn't turn out well.
  • As Pisces was too low in the East at this time, Scope was covered, then went to bed with alarm set for 0315hrs.
  • At 0330hrs, lots of dew on telescope covers and mirrors, heater required to undew the mirrors.
  • Aligned big scope on Vega which was high in the NW.
  • Located and viewed M57.  Showed up very nice in 19mm eyepiece despite a very bright Moon which was now in the West.
  • After prolonged search which included both scopes and time elapse images of the area and my cellphone star finder, Uranus could not be confirmed.
  • Tried to spit Rigel with big scope and 19mm and 4mm eyepieces and with camera image.  Could not split Rigel.
  • Imaged Orion which was rising in the East after 0400hrs.
  • Split Mintaka with big scope and imaged.  Nice double star that's easy to split even with small scope.
  • Imaged M42, the Orion Nebula with big scope.
  • Imaged area around Alnitak with big scope hoping to capture the Flame Nebula.  It didn't pop out in the images.
  • Cygnus was half way up in the NW.  Imaged the area around Deneb looking for the North American Nebula and the area around Sadr looking for Nebulosity which is in that area.  No luck getting Nebulosity in images.
  • Sirius was observed rising low in the SE around 0530hrs.
  • As I was taking down the small scope at around 0600hrs, noticed Venus, very bright behind some trees, low in the East.  Its showed up as a very thin, reddish crescent through big scope.  Very hazy conditions and the fact it was so low made it hard to image, as it bounced around alot in the view screen.
  • Scope was aligned on Betelgeuse to image Venus.
  • One faint, fast moving shooting star was seen as well as many satellites.

Images:















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