23 May 2006

I have a new birthday star that should be a little easier to see than my prior southern hemisphere star.

Your birthday star is in the constellation Gemini. It is called 37 Geminorum in the Historia Cœlestis Britannica of John Flamsteed and Edmund Halley. It is called NS 0655+2522 in the NStars database.

It has visual magnitude 5.74 meaning that you could just see this star with the naked eye under the best viewing conditions. It is marked in the center of this star chart, at celestial coordinates (J2000 equinox):20060523_Birt Right ascension 6:55:18.7 Declination 25:22:32.5

This star is 56.3 light years away, which means that the light we see from it today set off on its journey at about the same time that you were born.

Joint Astronomy Center - Birthday Stats graphic

Cartes du Ciel graphic for about 2230 EDT tonight

37 Gem is near Castor's waist. There is an exoplanet nearby as well as some clusters and galaxies.

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I attended a lecture on the history and future of mapping last night. It was presented at the Science Industry and Business Library. The lecturer was David Rumsey who has one of if not the largest private collections of maps. He has been making his maps freely available on the web (www.davidrumsey.com) so today I browsed over there and on the landing page I saw what I thought was a fan. On examining it it turns out it is an astronomical circular sliderule.

There is a 7MB graphic below here which requires the free Express View (Mr Sid) viewer plugin from LizardTech to make it visible. You can get the viewer here. If what is happening here is any indication you may not see the image even if you have the viewer. Unfortunately there is no way to provide a link to it on David's site. If you search the site with the keyword "celestial" you will find 94 items but the sliderule is not one of them

Another interesting item is a small globe that enclosed in a hinged "clam shell" type case with a fish skin cover. The globe can be taken out of the case to reveal the constellations painted on the inside of the case.

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Observing Location:	TotL The infield sprinklers started right about 2330 EDT and were only on for a minute or so when they shut down but then started up again. They shut off after about five minutes as usual. Right about midnight the sprinklers right inside the fence started. We quickly moved everything to the north side of the walk where it is usually pretty safe but there was a light wind blowing a mist over us. Finally we gave up and moved down to the benches to the east to pack up. While Peter was packing the sprinklers stopped. I think it is a conspiracy plot to make sure we don't observe past curfew.
Time:	2130-0100 EDT
Observing Conditions:	It was clear and cool but there was very little winf (and I was wearing a wool sweater under my jacket) so it was not anywhere near as uncomfortable as last night. One small cloud passed through Corvus just when we were starting to observe there. I saw it as it caught light passing over Times Square and it appeared to have dissipated. Before reaching the Citicorp building or went north of it, We were looking at the Coma Berineces Star Cluster. And the stars were coming and going as they were when we were looking into Scorpius. Transparency: Excellent Seeing: Good
Instruments:	Takahashi 102 refractor - Peter I was coming from a meeting and had my computer with me so didn't even have the Bruntons tonight.
Observing Party:	Charlie Ridgway Peter Tagatac

I missed two Iridium flares while on my. way up to TotL. One of them was while I was on CPS and the buildings along CPW were blocking my view of the horizon. The second was while I was on the bus along CPW. Both events were low in the N as most of the recent flares have been.

Target:	M3, NGC5272
Constellation:	CVn
Category:	Deep Sky Object
Time:
Comments:	Large and bright with a central brightening

Target:	M5, NGC5904
Constellation:	Ser
Category:	Deep Sky Object
Time:
Comments:	Large and more evenly illuminated than M3; not as bright

Target	Helios 1A rocket
Constellation	Leo - Gem
Category	Satellite
Time:	20060523.2210 EDT
Comments	I was looking up into Leo trying to work my way into Coma Bereneces when I saw the satellite moving to the west. It appeared to be riding the ecliptic but was actually moving from neat S to near N. The magnitude was 3.5 and I thought it was probably Envisat, which I knew would be making a pass but that didn't occur for another half hour and I forgot about it and missed it.

Target:	Coma Berineces Star Cluster
Constellation:	Com
Category:	Deep Sky Object
Tine:
Comments:.	A large sparse open cluster. Saw several individual stars naked-eye but not s many as Peter. I also saw it in his Fujinons.

Target:	Meteor
Constellation:	Lyr
Category:	Meteor
Time:	20060523.2220 EDT
Comments:.	Streaking straight down between Vega and epsilon Lyr; very fast and dim

Target:	Saturn & M44
Constellation:	Cnc
Category:	Planet and Deep Sky Object
Time:
Comments:	Looked very crisp. Two moons were visible trailing the planet. I could just make out the Casini division on the trailing edge of the rings. There was a faint stripe of the ring shadow on the planet and the shadow of the planet where the trailing edge went behind the planet. The north pole was just visible above the rings.

Target:	Three Leaps of the Gazelle
Constellation:	UMa
Category:	Asterism
Time:	20060523.2253 EDT
Comments:	I located these pairs of stars in the feet of the Great Bear while Peter was locating a new target in the scope.

Target:	ν Sco
Constellation:	Sco
Category:	Double Star
Time:	20060523.2325 EDT
Comments:	At high power the upper star was easy to split 230:830. The lower star appears elongated 1:7 with the lower portion appearing orange and the upper blue. We had a big discussion about the angle of the upper stars.

Targer:	ε Lyr
Constellation:	Lyr
Category:	Double Star
Time:	20060523.2345 EDT
Comments:	The separation between the minor components of the pair is about the same as the upper component of ν Sco. The stars are dimmer than ν Sco. The lower pair is fairly equal while the upper pair is obviously unequal. Upper is 11:5 and the lower is 230:830.

Target:	Mel 111, Blinking Cluster
Constellation:	Com
Category:	Deep Sky Object
Time:	20060523.2400 EDT
Comments:	We came off of epsilon Lyr to the west to locate this object. The double star was in the left edge of the FOV and a large fish hook (Easter Island in form) was running off the top edge of the FOV. The Nebula was toward the center of the FOV and beneath the fish hook. It appeared as a small defocused patch of light while everything else was in focus.

Target:	Meteor
Constellation:	Boo & Vir
Category:	Meteor
Time:	20060524.0042 EDT
Comments:	Meteor from near zeta Boo down to near Spica -- about 30 °; very large, bright and moderate in speed. It looked like it was very close to us. No flakes coming off of it.