9 November 2006

Observing Location	VP
Observational Period	1115-1130 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	Cloud Cover Isolated Temperature 63°F Wind Calm Humidity Moderate Feels Like Hot This is the day we should have had yesterday. It feels like late summer out there. There are a few cumulus clouds down to the south, low on the horizon. Transparency Excellent Seeing II
Instruments	Canon 15x50 IS binocular w/Baader AstroSolar filter film - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target Sunspots Constellation Lib Category Solar Time 20061109.1115 EST Comments Heliographic Latitude (B0) +3.48° Heliographic Longitude (L0) 68.20° Position Angle (P) +22.80° Carrington rotation number (CR) 2049 I think I might have seen Group 923 without magnification but it is hard to tell looking in the Baader film since most of what I see is my own reflection. The welders' glass is really better for this since one side is dark and the other mirrored.   Groups Spots R North 0 0 0 South 1 1 11 Total 1 1 11 R = (Groups * 10) + Spots) Group 921/922 Heliographic Latitude -21° Heliographic Longitude 8° Mcintosh System Chx All that is left of these spots is some plage sitting right on the western limb. Group 923 Heliographic Latitude ° Heliographic Longitude ° Mcintosh System This is a large spot with a wide penumbra, surrounded by facula. There may be smaller spots above the central spot but I am not sure enough of that to claim them.

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Observing Location	Totl
Observational Period	2000-0130 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	Cloud Cover Clear q/some Haze Temperature Mild Wind Calm gusting to 12 mph Humidity Moderate Feels Like Cool I don't think it was as good tonight as CSC was predicting or as bad as NOAA was predicting. There could have been more stars. About 1015 the wind packed up but died down again before 2300 EST. There was constant boiling on the Moon. Transparency Good Seeing III
Instruments	Canon 15x50 IS binocular - Charlie Nikon CoolPix 990 - Charlie Takahashi 102 refractor - Peter Fujinon 7x50 binocular - Peter Nikon CoolPix 995 - Peter TeleVue TV76 apochromatic refractor - Ben
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway Peter Tagatac Kin Lee Ben Cacace Tammy - a biker who stayed a long while

Tonight was my first night trying to use Pocket Star Atlas in place of Planetarium. There were several things I quickly discovered.

• The Pocket Star Atlas can't rotate the stars to match what I am seeing in the sky the way a computer atlas can. I have to find stars that I can use to match to the stars in the atlas and rotate the whole atlas to match what I am seeing in the sky.
• With the printed atlas you can't zoom in to a field of view that matches that of your optics.
• I miss the Telrad over the chart telling me how big my field of view is.

Planetarium is definitely more convenient to use but it had a learning curve when I first started out with it so I need to keep after the paper atlas.

Target (7) Iris Constellation Ari Category Asteroid/Comet/Meteor Time 20061109.2046 EST Comments I thought I saw it and Ben confirmed it. It was very stelar in appearance.

Target Moon Constellation Category Lunar Time 20061109.2120 EST Comments Lunation 1037 Phase Waning Gibbous Age 18d21h7m Elongation ° % Illuminated 75.5% Magnitude - Altitude 10.5° I spent more time photographing the moon than I did observing it. I didn’t get anything stunning though. Sharpening with unsharp mask at 50%, 5 pixels, 0 threshold. White point set in Aristarchus and black point in space. The Terminator was just east of Mare Nectaris The outer basin around Mare Nectaris Grego: …Mare Nectaris makes a prominent feature. Its larger outer basin arc of Rupes Altai casts a narrow but increasingly prominent black shadow live from Piccolomini around to the west of Catharina. Cherrington: South of Theophilus one Crisium length we see a bright, slightly wavy line extending 100 miles northwest to the terminator [Five-Day Moon] and 50 miles beyond it. That unusual feature is the sunlit face of the Altai Scarp, the rest of which will be seen tomorrow night. A gigantic, irregular cliff, it averages one mille in height but here and there rises to 2 ½ miles. While it is now very bright, it will appear black when viewed during the waning gibbous phase, a relationship that tells us its lower level is toward the sun tonight, that is, on the Mare Nectaris side. Its surprising parallelism to the mare shore is another important clue to the story of the moon’s surface. At the southeast end of the Aaltai Scarp we see the fine Class 1 crater Picolomini. It is 54 miles in diameter and 11,800 feet deep, and stands out prominently with its bright floor framed by the brilliant inner west wall and a black inner east wall. Its bright central peak should be visible through binoculars. [Eigihteen-Day Moon] Note that Rieita Valley also radiates from Mare Nectaris, the second such valley seen tonight. Baldwin has found several others. He believes that Mare Nectaris was once an enormous explosion crater produced by the impact energy of a colliding minor planet and that the valleys were formed in connection with that spectiacular event. Madler appears as a small dark crater with bright eastern wall.

Target Mintaka, δ Ori Constellation Ori Category Double Star Time 20061109.1115 EST Comments this is a fairly tight (52”)and very unequal (2.2/6.7) double on the right end of the Belt of Orion.

Target M42/M43 Constellation Ori Category DSO: ENeb Time 20061110.0001 EST Comments I observed this area of the sky in all of the optica. It wasn't as impressive as I remember seeing it two years ago. In Peter's scope I was able to see M43 by moving the scope. There was quite a but of nebulosity visible in M4. I didn’t see any nebulosity in NGC1977 in my binocular. NGC1981 was visible as two arcs of there stars each with some dimmer stars nearby.

Target Pleiades, M45 Constellation Tau Category DSO: OCl Time 20061110.0000 EST Comments The Pleiadea was near the zenith but all I could are was six stars. Alcyone, 2.86m Merope, 4.17m Electra, 3.70m Maia, 3.86m Taygete, 4.29m Celaeno, 5.44m

I have no idea what I am doing, but I selected what looked to be the right best exposed and focused Moon pictures and told Deep Sky Stacker to register and stack them. It was a slow process, taking about 3.5 minutes to register each picture. It was wanting dark files, flat files, offset files, and bias files, which I don't have, or if I do I don't know what they are to recognize them. I didn't get anywhere with Deep Sky Stacker. I was only able to get it to stack one image and the exposure on it was much worse than the image that it started with. I had downloaded RegiStax and didn't even get that far. The interface is a lot more confusing. It is going to take reading the manual to figure out both of these programs. My Moon moves all over the frame, so I may need to go into Photoshop and crop each image so the moon is more nearly centered and the software has an easier time figuring out what I am giving it.