19 September 2004

Observing Location	TotL
Atmospheric Conditions	It was a very clear night with fairly good seeing but it was chilly. The temperature dropped down to 50 before we quit around 0230 and it was breezy which was even buffeting my binoculars.
Instruments	Canon 15x50 Image Stabilized binoculars - Charlie Tacahashi 102 - Peter Tele Vue 76 - Ben
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway Peter Tagatac Ben Cacace

Target	Moon
Time	19Sep04; 2200 EDT
Category	Moon
Comments	Low along the terminator were three very prominent craters. The top two appear to have their walls touching and are Cyrillus and Theophilus on the edge of Mare Nectaris. A little lower on the edge of the mare is Catharina. Below Catharina is a white line extending toward 4:30 from the terminator, Rupes Altal, a scarp wall.

Target	M2, NGC7089
Time	19Sep04; 22:08 EDT
Category	Deep Space Objects
Comments	A faint fuzzy globular cluster in Aquarius. Observed in one of the scopes.

Target	Algol, β Per
Category	19Sep04; 22:19 EDT
Comments	We watched Algol dim until Rho was brighter than it, then come back to near full brightness.

Target	95 Her
Time	19Sep04; 22:28 EDT
Category	Double Stars
Comments	In Ben's scope it appeared a close double of unequal brightness.

Target	M34, NGC1039
Time	19Sep04; 2237 EDT
Category	Deep Space Objects
Comments	An open cluster in Perseus Go up a little over a field of view from Algol to a large right triangle with the cluster to the right 5 stars in the shape of a cross with dimmer stars around it. In Ben's scope at 60x the center star is a wide double.

Target	16 Cyg
Time	19Sep04; 2257 EDT
Category	Double Stars
Comments	A tight double near the third star from the tip of the left wing of the swan. In my binoculars they looked green-white and yellow. In Ben's scope @22x the green didn't show but the yellow was still there. In the same field of view was the Blinking Planetary Nebula, NGC1626, but it was not observed to blink by anyone.

Target	Kemble's Cascade and NGC1502
Time	19Sep04; 2358 EDT
Category	Asterism and Deep Space Object
Comments	In Cam. From Algol go left through α Per then three fields of view to an arc of 4 bright stars going from 1 to 6. The cascade is an arc of dimmer stars arcing through the brightest lower star of the first arc from 10 to 4. At the bottom of the cascade it splays out like a bird's foot (or the bottom of a waterfall) with a very tight double in the left claw in NGC1502, a compact open cluster. An alternate hop to the cascade is to draw a line through the end stars of the Big W (Cas) and extend the line that distance again (total distance from β Cas is about 28 degrees) to NGC1502 (RA 04:07:43; Dec 62d20'00") at the base of the cascade. [APOD says they are unrelated stars. 20 stars in a row 5 moon widths long.] [Cascade stars are Mag 8 and 9.]

Target	57 Gam2 And
Time	Double Stars
Category	20Sep04; 0035 EDT
Comments	A double of very different magnitudes. Observed in Peter's scope.