9 July 2004

Observing Location	The Great Lawn (North) There were several large groups of fairly noisy kids in the park tonight. It was the first time we have been there that I have been especially vigilant about people moving around and where they might be when I was no longer aware of them. But most of them were going out into The Great Lawn or back into the Pinetum, places where there aren't paths or lights. An under cover police car stopped by and told us to be careful because of the number of people in the park and the value of our equipment. We weren't bothered and only got to show anything to one passer by all night. I think there are more people to show the sky to down at TPO, especially now that they are doing Shakespeare in the Park and some of those people would be heading east past us when the show lets out. But there is more sky to be seen from TotL and the view of midtown is spectacular when there is nothing to be seen above it.
Atmospheric Conditions	It had been pleasant but windy all day today. Now it is cooling off a little and there is a light breeze. The cumulus clouds I saw this afternoon in the Bronx have cleared out leaving altostratus and cirrus that appear quite dense on the horizon, less so overhead although still visible. By midnight everything below 45 degrees was gone.
Instruments	Canon 15x50 Image Stabilized binoculars - Charlie TeleVue TV76 refractor- Ben Tacahashi 102 refractor - Peter
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway Ben Cacace Peter Tagatac Ken Brown Debbie & Sammy

Target	Jupiter
Time	9Jul04; 2101 EDT
Category	Planets
Comments	Always the first object to visible these days, Jupiter appeared about 10 minutes ago just as a passer by stopped to talk to me. It is just getting dark enough now to see one of the moons to the east and there has been a field star high and on the right - too dim to be listed in my planetarium program.

Target	ε Lyrae, The Double-Double
Time	9Jul04; 2112 EDT
Category	Double Stars
Comments	This double star near Vega in Lyra looked like I was seeing four stars. The lower primary was the brightest and gold to orange in color. Its secondary appeared small and above it to the left. The secondary was above and separated about a quarter to half degree. It was dimmer and green to blue. I got the feeling I was seeing its secondary above and slightly to the right and turquoise to blue. The seeing has gone downhill a bit while I have been observing. [Binocular Astronomy says you can split Epsilon 1 and Epsilon 2 naked-eye if you have acute vision and can resolve there secondaries in a telescope at 100x so my impression that there were four stars there was probably due mostly to the knowledge that there really are four there. The Dawes Limit of an optical instrument limits how close two objects can be and still be perceived as separate objects. The limit for my binoculars is 2.32 arc-seconds. Skyhound says Espilon 1 Lyrae as a double separated by 2.36 arc-seconds so might be split with my binoculars, and Epsilon 2 Lyrae is a slightly dimmer and slightly closer double at 2.3 arc seconds which is just beyond my binoculars' Dawes limit under ideal conditions.]

Target	μ 1 Scorpii
Time	9Jul04; 2129 EDT
Category	Double Stars
Comments	Appeared right in the tree line. They appeared horizontal and about 15" apart I think. They are fairly equal in brightness with the right one only slightly brighter. [Binocula Astronomymy says they are 346" apart so I still have a way to go estimating angular distances in my binoculars. The binoculars have a field of view of 4.5 degrees which is equal to 270' or 16,200".]

Target	Lesath, υ Scorpii and Shaula, λ Scopii
Time	9Jul04; 2208 EDT
Category	Stars
Comments	These stars looked like a very wide double but they are actually the stars of the scorpion's stinger. They are minutes if not degrees apart. [The Melbourne Planetarium has a nice (although upside down for the northern hemisphere) binocular star hopping guide to Scorpius.]

Target	International Space Station
Time	9Jul04; 2208 EDT
Category	Satellites
Comments	Very large and bright. Heavens Above had it at magnitude 1 which is probably about right. Passed through one of the guide star of the big dipper, Dubhe (Alpha UMa). It was moving very fast when we saw it in Ursa Major but by the time it got into Cassiopeia it appeared to have slowed down, an illusion caused by the fact that it was then moving away from us but while in UMa it had been moving more at right angles to our line of sight. It got dim but was still visible naked-eye until just before it reached the tree line in the NE.

Target	Iridium 60
Time	9Jul04; 2320 EDT
Category	Satellites
Comments	This flare was to have lit up during the ISS pass and brighten to magnitude -1.4 then fade before the end of the ISS pass but it did not even appear to be magnitude 1 at its brightest, and it had already faded before the ISS was sighted.

Target	Izar, δ Bootis
Time	9Jul04, 2333 EDT
Category	Double Stars
Comments	Golden close double. Primary is much brighter than the secondary. Used it to star hop to Mu Bootis. Observed it in both my binoculars and Ben's telescope.

Target	Alkalurops, μ Bootis
Time	9Jul04; 2345 EDT
Category	Double Stars
Comments	I hopped here from Izar. A wide double with an obvious magnitude difference. The primary looks white and the secondary ruddy orange. In Ben's scope at 96x we were able to split the secondary

Target	C/2003 K4 (LINEAR)
Time	9Jul04; 2350 EDT
Category	Comets
Comments	I hopped to the area where K4 was supposed to be from Mu Bootis. We definitely identified Nu 1 and Nu 2 Bootis, a widely spaced pair of equal magnitude stars (a double?), in the upper left corner of the field, Yale 5726 in the lower left, Yale 5677 in the lower right corner, and something right in the center of the field where K4 should have been. But that last object looked too star-like for a comet. Relative to the other stars it was about the right magnitude though. Unfortunately this field of view is right around the cutoff limit of Planetarium so any other stars were not displayed. [The sky photos at the NASA SkyView Web site don't show anything of the appropriate brightness in that area. We may have seen the comet but it didn't look fuzzy enough.] [Cossen in Binocular AStronomy, in his chapter on observing galaxies, says "... 7x neither darkens the sky background not magnifies a galaxy image as much as 10x, consequently many galaxies that distinctly appear as disks or patches in 10x50s will be merely stellar in 7x50s..."] I think we probably did see the comet.

Target	Alberio
Time	10Jul04; 0008 EDT
Category	Double Stars
Comments	The head of the Swan, Cygnus, and its beta star. Viewed in Peters scope at 22x. To me the primary looked yellow and the secondary white, but the secondary appeared blue to Peter and Ben.

Target	M 39, NGC7092
Time	10Jul04 0038 EDT
Category	Deep Space Objects
Comments	An open cluster between Cygnus and Lacerta. It is an equilateral triangle about 1 degree on a side. 3 evenly spaced stars on one side; 3 irregularly spaced stars on another side; last side only has the 2 corner stars. Follow the body of the swan back about 8 degrees past Deneb then drop down about 4 degrees.

Target	M 27, Dumbbell Nebula
Time	10Jul04; 0055 EDT
Category	Deep Space Objects
Comments	Observed in Peters scope. It is a large object. I couldn't see it normally but it was obviovs with Ben's nebula filter held between the eyepiece and my eye.

Target	31 ψ 1 Draconis
Time	10Jul04; 0111 EDT
Category	Double Stars
Comments	A double star coming out of the U-turn in the dragon's body behind the head. The smaller star looks blue, the larger one cream colored. In my binoculars it is a tight double lacking color but easy to split.

Target	Shooting Star
Time	10July04; 0127 EDT
Category	Meteors
Comments	Streaking across the sky from Cygnus to Camelopardalis with a very long yellow to green tail.