Back to Home

Astronomy Discussion Forums

Forums: Atm · Astrophotography · Blackholes · Blackholes2 · CCD · Celestron · Domes · Education
Eyepieces · Meade · Misc. · God and Science · SETI · Software · UFO · XEphem
RSS Button

Home | Discussion Forums
Login

Be the first pioneers to continue the Astronomy Discussions at our new Astronomy meeting place...
The Space and Astronomy Agora
Observation Report From Backyard 10/05 & 06

Forum List | Follow Ups | Post Message | Back to Thread Topics
Posted by Bob Sal on October 10, 2001 14:25:57 UTC

Hi All;
Got out both nights last weekend. The sky was clear Friday, but we had to wait till about 10:30 for it to clear Saturday. Had Mauro and my son Lucas on Friday, Ro and a friend Mike on Saturday. Mike brought his 8" LX200, Mauro brought the 25X100 Binos. We had a 86% Moon come up over the trees about 9:30 Friday and it was 75% on Saturday when the sky cleared. We didn't find any new deep sky items with such a bright moon. We did break out the Rukl Moon Atlas and made some very nice Moon observations. It's not so easy to pick out a map and match it the Moon. First off, everything is upside-down, inside-out and backwards. We managed to locate Crater Posidonius on map number 14. From there we were able to crater hop to many other sights. There's a small crater A inside Posidonius and a system of rilles. The rilles were very faint but there. Outside Posidonius there were many small craters B, D, O, M, P & S. These letters denote the crater names B Posidonius, D Posidonius, etc. Although the size of the smaller craters is not given, I'd estimate them between 3 and 12 km. Posidonius is considered a Walled Plain and is 93km wide and 2300 m deep. In the same area we saw Daniell Rimae which is a system of rilles up to 200km. Crater Daniell was quit obvious at 30x23km and 2030m deep. There were many other fertures to observe there, Plana a 44kn crater with a central peak or mountain in the center, Mason a 33x43kn flooded partly disintegrate crater and many others.
Like I always say, when the Moon is up, it's double star night. I found a list of 100 stars from the Astronomical League. You can get the official double Star certificate if you can find them all. We got through about a dozen. I've seen some of these before. Highlights of the session were, Eta Cassiopeia mag 3.4/7.5 sep 12", very nice white and bright red star. Lambda Arietis mag 4.9/7.7 sep 37" has a yellow and light red star. Alpha Piscium mag 4.2/5.1 sep 1.7" 2 white stars, nice clean tight split. Gamma Andoomedae mag 2.3/5.5 sep 9.8", my favorite double star. Bright yellow star almost orange and a clean blue star. Through it out of focus a little and the colors are outstanding. Iota Trianguli mag 5.3/6.9 sep 3.9", both yellow looked like headlights. Those were the best of the bunch.
Later Saturn came up over the trees. The atmosphere was just boiling so we didn't much details. I will say this though, the rings are tipped very nice this year. We should get nice views later this autumn. hope to see you at the South Jersey Star Party.
That's it;
BOB SAL

Follow Ups:

    Login to Post
    Additional Information
    Google
     
    Web www.astronomy.net
    DayNightLine
    About Astronomy Net | Advertise on Astronomy Net | Contact & Comments | Privacy Policy
    Unless otherwise specified, web site content Copyright 1994-2025 John Huggins All Rights Reserved
    Forum posts are Copyright their authors as specified in the heading above the post.
    "dbHTML," "AstroGuide," "ASTRONOMY.NET" & "VA.NET"
    are trademarks of John Huggins