Astronomy Observing Reports: OBSERVING REPORT FOR 27 MAY, 2015

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

OBSERVING REPORT FOR 27 MAY, 2015

Location: Side-yard of house at Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time: May 27, 2015 0330-0430 hrs AST.

Weather: No wind, mostly clear, some fog and thin high level clouds, lots of moisture, 5C.

Equipment: Meade 8" LX 200, Canon Xsi DSLR and Eds' 15x70 binoculars.

Attendance: Ed O, and Myself.

Objective: To view and image Comet Lovejoy, which was near Polaris.

Report: Ed found Lovejoy right away with his binos. It was right next to Polaris, about 2 degrees away. Lovejoy was in the 2 o'clock position, within the field of view of Polaris. Ed also found M13, which was high, almost straight overhead, slightly to West. He thought that Lovejoy and M13 were about the same size with Lovejoy being dimmer by at least two magnitudes.

Scope was aligned on Polaris and when viewed through big scope with 32 mm eyepiece a second star appeared. Polaris is a triple star system and we managed to image at least two of the three stars. The star Polaris Ab is too faint and too close to Polaris to split with a backyard telescope. Hubble found it and, I think is the only scope that can see it.

Found Lovejoy with big scope. Found it to be a rather big, faint grayish fuzzball, that was about half the size of M31 and much dimmer. Imaged Lovejoy with DSLR attached to big scope at prime focus.

First light started at 0400 hrs and began to wash out the Comet. By 0430hrs there was lots of daylight.

Many satellites were seen, including one iridium flare that went through the handle of the Big Dipper. One shooting star was seen going between Polaris and the Big Dipper. It was kind of faint and moved very fast.