Doing something different by starting each session with a short commentary on the evening and what my plans are. This first one is from the night of 8 March - the first evening affected by DST for the year.
So it looks like it was a fairly successful night. I had started hunting for both carbon and color-contrasted double stars. Those are very much a "thrill of the chase" set of targets. Some of the doubles are hard to differentiate from other doubles in my field of view, and others have a huge WOW factor. Such as the above mentioned Eta Persei.
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| NGC 2175, the Monkey's Head in Orion |
Above is the Monkey's Head nebula in Orion. I see how it got the name. However my wife syas it looks like our son's dog Murphy (https://backyardastro.blogspot.com/2023/04/a-place-in-sun-new-views-guides-and.html). I spoke with our son who said it looked more like Jack Skellington. I don't know what's wrong with people....
8 April 2026
First night out in around a month. The weather was very uncooperative. The evening brightness also was increasing at a more rapid rate, adding to my anxiety.
Looks like this night was a challenge due to missing charts, lack of clarity on undocumented objects in the S-50, along with a touch of impairment due to Coors Light imbibed on the front porch that afternoon.
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| Group of galaxies in Leo |
I still think galaxies are amazing. They make my mind want to pop. Leo is one of the constellations which has a rich number of galaxies. Virgo and Sagittarius are also big on galaxies (and other DSOs).
This night I tried an app which was supposed to give me a measure of sky darkness. But not only did it not work, it blasted my night vision to pieces. Herschel 3945 was breath-taking. A very color-contrasted double star target. Also got a look at NGC 2683, a 10th magnitude galaxy. It was faint, but discernable. It spoke well of both the light gathering properties of my AD8, but also the clarity of that night's sky.
That night was also my first attempt at NGC 2359, Thor's Helmet. However, the picture showed only a great many stars with just a wisp of any nebulosity. Try try again. I spent the remainder of the night shooting several other objects which took no long exposures:
M47, an open cluster in Puppis
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| Regulus, double star in the heart of Leo |
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| Cor Caroli, binary star in Canes Venatici. Possibly named for Charles I |
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| The mighty Sirius |
16 April, an unusually warm night. Also an unusually busy one. My normally quiet site had a lot of car and truck traffic as mushroom hunters often drove by.
It can't be overstated how thick the bugs were. Not biting bugs, just the kind of gnats that go swimming in the repellent I sprayed on. They were also crawling in my hair, so I needed to put the cap on. Also game hunters must have been out as I heard shotguns in the distance.
No success again with Thor's helmet. And that was a 90 minute session. Got some visuals and pictured more stars:
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| Used the S-50 for a shot of ol' Sol. |
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| Tau Leonis, a double star in Leo |
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| La Superba, a pretty carbon star in Canes Venatici |
I'm throwing in the towel for Thor's Helmet until Sirius comes up again this winter. I want to re-shoot a couple of targets soon: M104 the sombrero and NGC 5128, the hamburger. That one will be a challenge since there will be a very brief window when I can shoot it. Plus it is very low in the southern horizon.
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