21 February 2006

Observing Location	Parkchester, Bronx, NY
Observational Period	1805-1830 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	Clear overhead but clouds on the horizon Transparency Good Seeing Good
Instruments	Naked-eye observing
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target	Iridium Flare
Constellation	Eri
Category	Satellite
Time	20060221.1805 EST
Comments	Not Seen Tom sent out an email today alerting us that there would be a -8 flare tonight at TotL. Checking Heavens-Above.com I found that it would only be a -4 here, but it has been a long while since I have seen a satellite so I planned to observe it. I may have gotten outside too late and I definitely wasn't looking in the right place. I got downstairs right about the time of the flare and looked through a gap in the buildings across the street to what I thought was roughly south. There was a point of light there that I thought was bright enough to be a -4 twilight flare so I watched it to see if it would fade but it didn't. Then I noticed a dimmer point of light a little higher up which was good because the first one was too low. But that one didn't fade either. As near as I can guess, with only those two stars visible in the sky, I was looking at Sirius and Rigel and the flare took place behind the apartment building right across the street from my building.

Target	Mercury
Constellation	Psc
Category	Planet
Time	20060221.1815 EST
Comments	I moved a couple of blocks down and stood on the overpass to the Cross Bronx Expressway where I have a good view down the expressway to the west but didn't see any points of light there. There was a good bit of cloud on the horizon and it was a very deep red and purple down there so Mercury was probably behind all of that.

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Observing Location	TotL
Observational Period	2115-2245 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	I wondered about this when I left the house. CSC said it would be clear with better than average transparency and NOAA said cloud cover would decrease from around 1800 EST until around 0100 EST. But when I left the house there were more clouds than there had be when I was out to look for the satellite. Knowing that conditions were supposed to improve and might be better at the park I persevered. It turns out both CSC and NOAA were wrong. There were clouds in the area when I arrived in the park and by 2215 EST cloud cover was ranging between 75% and 90%. It was all fluffy cotton balls at that time but there were some sheets of stratus that moved through as well as a haze of high cirrus. I noticed some wavering of the image when I was looking at Saturn so am judging that the seeing was not that great. Transparency Good Seeing Fair
Instruments	Canon 15x50 IS binocular - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target	Mars
Constellation	Tau
Category	Planet
Time	20060221.2015 EST
Comments	I got Mars and Aldeberan mixed up. Mars, Aldeberan and Betelgeuse are all lined up and about equal brightness, with Aldeberan sagging below the line a bit and 1/3 of the distance away from Mars. Object Magnitude Mars 0.60m Aldeberan 0.87m Betelgeuse 0.45m The three objects were close enough in brightness and far enough apart that I could not say which was the brightest in the binoculars. Mars was right next to the Pleiades and I could fit them both in the same field of view but they are far enough apart that it is stretching the eyepiece to do it.

Target	M45, The Pleiades
Constellation	Tau
Category	Deep Sky Object
Time	20060221.2131 EST
Comments	I felt that it looked strange in its orientation relative to Aldeberan but once I figured out that Aldeberan was really Mars it wasn't quite as strange. Everything looks a little off. It has been so long since I have been observing. I am not used to seeing the Gemini twins standing upright. M45 was visible naked eye at times but I didn't try to count the stars, they weren't that obvious most of the time.

Target	Saturn
Constellation	Cnc
Category	Planet
Time	20060221.2132 EST
Comments	Saturn looks much more round tonight than usual. The rings are not as obvious. There is one moon of to the 2:00. There are a couple of field stars out at 9:00. Farther away at 8:00 is M44. The brighter stars of the Beehive all look to be of uniform brightness and are surrounded by much fainter stardust. This has been one of my better views of M44.

Target	42 Ori & 45 Ori
Constellation	Ori
Category	Double Star
Time	20060221.2143 EST
Comments	Planetarium says this is a wide double, 252" (4.2'), in Orion's sword. The stars are equal in magnitude to my eye. They are so far apart that I would not have called them a double star. Their distance from earth varies by about 500 LY so I wonder if they are a physical double or just an optical double. Star Mag. Distance Class 42 Ori 4.58m 815 LY F0III 45 Ori 5.24m 362 LY B2III There is a much dimmer star (TYC 4774-00927-1, 7.17m) between the two stars of the double. There appears to be some nebulosity all the way from ι Ori up through this area.

Target	M42/M43 & The Trapezium, 41 Ori
Constellation	Ori
Category	Deep Sky Object
Time	20060221.2152 EST
Comments	I could not split θ1 but sometimes it appeared to have lobes. There appears to be nebulosity all the way from ι Ori up to 42 Ori and 45 Ori but it is much denser in the area of the Trapezium.

Target	Mizar and Alcor
Constellation	UMa
Category	Double Star
Time	20060221.2230 EST
Comments	There is a star between Mizar and Alcor that is much dimmer than Alcor but was easily visible. I have two entries for Mizar as a double star in Planetarium. Both of them indicate it has a separation of 14.4". I think that is within reach of my binocular, I think I have cleanly split stars down at least as far is 10", and I seem to remember that both Mizar and Alcor are double stars themselves (Cartes du Ciel shows Mizar as a double but not Alcor), but I don't see anything close to Mizar that I can split off or even detect and not split. Alcor was just visible naked-eye if you know to look for it. [I found this description of the Alcor/Mizar binary system at http://www.dibonsmith.com/uma_con.htm, written by Richard Dibon-Smith up in Canada. He even has a print version of the web page which looks nice but shipping is a killer and then you have to worry about duty when it comes into the country. Too bad it can't be purchased through Amazon or another retail outlet here in the States. Zeta UMa, Mizar, is the best of the bunch and probably the easiest to find as well. A multiply (sic.) system with Alcor, AB form a fixed binary at PA 152º, separation 14.4". Alcor (component C) is a distant 12 minutes east (709"). Mizar was the first binary system to be discovered (in 1650), and is usually the first binary to be found and studied by amateur astronomers. No matter how long you study the stars, coming back to Mizar is always a treat. Both A and B are also spectroscopic binaries (that is, each one has a companion too faint for observation but which shows up when studied spectroscopically). The presence of such a companion is deduced from changes in the doppler shift in the spectral lines of the primary. Although at a great distance from Mizar (perhaps three light years away), Alcor (80 UMa) may be gravitationally bound to this star as it shares the same proper motion. However, most authorities believe the stars only form an optical binary. This is a 3.99 visual magnitude star, 81 light years away. Alcor serves as a good jumping off point to study M101, a spectacular face-on spiral galaxy (see below).]

Target	M40
Constellation	UMa
Category	Deep Sky Object
Time	20060221.2245 EST
Comments	Not Seen I didn't really expect to see this dim double (9.0m, s48") but I was in the neighborhood so I took a look anyway. I found an obviously orange star off of Megrez which would have been 70 UMa so know I was in the right place. The only time I have seen this object has been in one of Peter's scopes.

I had thought that I might try to find some double stars to see how close I could split one but by the time it got clear enough to do that the battery on my PDA had frozen and I didn't have the recharger with me tonight. This is happening a lot and I suspect that it is getting to be time to replace the battery in the PDA, or maybe the PDA itself (but I don't know of another Palm OS based PDA with built-in Wi-Fi and a built in keyboard).

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Today I found a great tool for proofreading these blog entries. I was looking to see if FoxyVoice, a TTS extension for Firefox, had been made compatible with Firefox 1.6. Unfortunately it hasn't but there was a recommendation from someone else who likes the extension that Ultra Hal might serve as a good substitute. I think it is even better than FoxyVoice. If I write two sentences with the word read, one in the past tense and the other in the future tense, it understands the context of the sentence and pronounces READ correctly. It pronounces star names correctly. It can't handle HTML tags or the greek alphabet and some other esoteric stuff, but it is an excelent TTS utility. I can highlight a paragraph and copy it to the clipboard and Ultra Hal will immediately begin reading it and most of the time I catch spelling errors right there. The sound of the voice beats the pants off what Microsoft bundles with Windows XP. And it is a free program.