Dave Wallace's Adventures in Astronomy

02/28/2004 2330 UTC

I got to the A.T.M.O.B. club site at about 6:30 PM local time. The sky was completely covered in high, thin cloud but I was betting that this would dissipate as the air cooled. It was about 42 degrees when I'd left my house, so I was hoping for a good night. I set up and went inside for a bit. I believe I started observing at about 7:15. The clouds were starting to break, but most of the sky was still obscured. Orion was in the clear, though, so I started with M42. The moonlight washed it out some, but the Trapezium area was still clearly discernable. I played around with the Barlow, trying to see more than just the four easy stars. No luck.

Next target was Saturn. The sky was still enough for me to see the Cassini division in the rings and bands of cloud on the disc.

Jupiter was still pretty low, just clear of the trees to my east, when somebody said "Check it out -- there's a moon just emerging." So I did. Sure enough -- Europa was just peeking past the limb of the planet. Callisto and Ganymede were on the opposite side and Io was transiting. (According to my planetarium program, anyway. I can't identify the moons by sight.)

I made a try for a new Messier object, M44 (Praesepe or Beehive Nebula), in Cancer. Hit it in one. Impressive -- much like M45 (Pleiades) and just about as big. It fills the 40 mm eyepiece.

Even with the moon sitting over in Taurus, I had to take another gander at M45. Since there's lots of bright stars in this cluster, the moonlight didn't have any great effect. It's still visually very impressive. And as long as I was there, I aimed the scope next at the moon. Which was in first-quarter phase. Great relief at the terminator! The moon looked like somebody had dropped ball bearings into a pan of fine cement and let it set. Except the color's a bit darker than cement and you can really see that you're looking at a sphere. It was so bright that I had to run the moon filter at about 70% attenuation.

As long as I was halfway there already, I went over to M31 (Andromeda) and had a look. The moonlight robbed it of maybe the outer third of the area I usually can see. What was left was a dim smudge that might have been elliptical.

Almaak is in the general area, so I thought I'd get another look at that nice double.

The club president came over and mentioned that the Messier Marathon which had been scheduled for last weekend but was canceled due to weather would be re-scheduled to March. I remarked that I'd only gotten about five Messier objects. She said to try for the three in Auriga -- M36, M37 and M38. These are classified as open clusters. But they're fairly small (12 to 24 arc-minutes) and pretty dim (5.5 - 6.5 magnitude with surface brightness around 12.0). Given that the moon was only about 15 degrees away and that my GOTO is still only accurate to a couple of degrees, it's not too surprising I missed them all. If I did -- I saw *something* that might have been the brightest four or five stars of the cluster at what *could* have been the right coordinates for M37.

Orion was setting behind the western trees. So I went back to Jupiter, which was now maybe thirty degrees up in the east. And was treated to the best view of the planet I've ever had. Unfortunately, the GRS was around the back of the planet at the time. If it hadn't been, I'm positive I would have been able to see it. The cloud bands were showing detail in the 15 mm eyepiece. I tried the yellow filter, but it didn't seem to make a difference, so I went to the blue one. This might have helped, but if so the effect is pretty subtle. Jupiter was definitely the night's best object.

We all called it quits at about 11:30, so I was back home by midnight. By then, the temperature was down to 28 degrees. It was just as well we quit when we did. My battery level was down to 70% when I parked the scope. That means I probably couldn't have run the electronics for much more than another half an hour.