Dave Wallace's Adventures in Astronomy

06/09/2003 0045 UTC

Got set up by about 8:45 PM local time. Jupiter was clearly visible, about 30 degrees above the horizon in the west. The moons were arranged two-and-two this evening: a pretty, symmetrical grouping. The cloud bands were easy to spot, but still no luck in sighting the GRS. Pushing the power up didn't help, either. Conditions weren't all that clear -- lots of water vapor in the air.

As the sky darkened, I hopped around, checking alignment against the setting circles. The alignment was at least as good as the precision of the circles, even though I has used magnetic north plus the local magnetic declination to set by. (This method usually gets me within a couple of degrees of true north.)

The quarter moon made a nice target; there's some really impressive relief in center of the southern hemisphere. And that's where the terminator was last evening. Arcturus was nearly overhead by nine o'clock (though it's about 20 degrees south of zenith at this latitude), which is a strain to view in the sighting scope. Mizar is worse. At 57 degrees declination it's within ten degrees of zenith and just plain impossible in the sighting scope.

My setting circles continue to be an aid in pointing. Though they're only accurate to around five degrees even when the telescope is properly aligned. So for these high targets, it's nearly impossible (unless you're flat on your back) to point the scope. The sky was dark enough to adjust the mount's azimuth to true north. It didn't take much adjusting, as Polaris was already in the sighting tube. I'd hit alignment to within one degree with the compass.

Vega was about as far above the eastern horizon as Jupiter was in the west. So I got another gander at Epsilon Lyra. This is a sight! Two stars of just about equal brightness, a bit over three arc minutes apart.

By nine thirty, the sky was dark enough even in the light-polluted east to spot the "summer triangle": Vega high and due east, Deneb a bit lower and somewhat northeast and Altair, just rising and southeast. From the positions of these stars, I knew that Albireo would be above the horizon. But there's enough sky glow in that direction to make it difficult to spot. I finally resorted to using the setting circles to get in the neighborhood and then doing a spiral search while looking in the finder. It took almost twenty minutes to lock onto this star. But it was worth the effort.

If you've got to have a reason for owning a telescope, this is it. The brighter star (magnitude 3.5) of this colorful double is orange. The dimmer one (about 4.5) is sapphire blue. They're about one arc minute apart. It looks like a piece of jewelry sitting in the sky.

This is one of the few stars in the sky that I can see in color; I'm sure the fact that there are two stars of dissimilar color juxtaposed is one of the reasons. Arcturus, for example, is much brighter but I rarely perceive it as red -- usually it appears to me as white with maybe a red fringe.

I called it quits at 10:15. By then, the tube of the dew shield was soaking wet. But it did its job -- the telescope's corrector plate was still dry. Got home at 10:30. Timing is everything: it started raining at about 10:45! (Funny -- I didn't see any evidence of gathering clouds; Jupiter was still visible as I was packing up and I drove home in moonlight.)