Astronomy Observing Reports: February 2017

Sunday, February 26, 2017

OBSERVING REPORT FOR 26 FEBRUARY 2017

Location: Front Deck, Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time: February 26, 2017 1800-2155hrs

Weather: Cool, windy, mostly clear with cloudy periods, 0C to -4C with windchill of -9C. Dark skies as tonight is the night of New Moon.

Equipment: Meade 8" LX 200 with 19mm and 32mm eyepieces, 2x Barlow Canon, o2 filter, moon filter, Rebel Xsi with 18-55mm and 75-300mm lenses, Samsung S5 Neo cellphone camera with attachment.

Attendance: Becky L. and David McCashion

Objective: To observe Messier Objects.

Report:

Set scope up as Sun was going down. Venus was bright in the west. Showed Becky Venus in the eyepiece. She said it looked like a half moon in the eyepiece but looked like a regular round star with unaided eye.
Imaged Venus and Mars with cellphone camera. Venus is getting to be a thin crescent shape and mars is a very small disk in eyepiece, even with high magnification.
Clouds covered most of the sky from shortly after 1900hrs to approx. 2020hrs.
Viewed Orion Nebula with 32mm eyepiece and 02 filter. Seemed to darken the nebula and show dust lanes throughout. Imaged with Canon and 75-300mm lens.
Around 2026hrs did a search for Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova above Leo where is was suppose to be on this evening. Searched by taking long exposure images of the area and searching with telescope and 32mm eyepiece. Could not confirm a sighting. The Comet was reported to be 7 mag but is also very diffuse and the tail is pointed away from the earth at this time.
Searched for and found M41 farther below Sirius than I thought. Very impressive star cluster that took up much of the 32mm eyepiece field of view. Imaged with Canon and 75-300mm lens.
No Shooting stars or satellites were seen.

Images:

Cellphone attached to 19mm eyepiece and 2x Barlow.

Shy Chart for Comet 45P from AstroBob website, thanks to Ed O for sharing!

Area above Leo @ 2125 hrs. Zoomed in looking for Comet 45P.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

SUNSPOT 2638 (UPDATED)

Location: Front Porch, Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time/Weather/Report:

February 21, 2017 1030-1055hrs-Sunny, clear, slight breeze, -1C with windchill of -5C.

Very nice day to observe the Sun. Sunspot group showed up in view screen as faint dot in upper left portion of Sun, Near the limb. Other fainter markings could be seen around the well defined, circular sunspot..

February 24, 2017 1400-1600hrs- Mostly cloudy, Sun broke through a few times, rain showers a few mins after telescope was brought inside, 10C

Occasional sunny breaks gave way to a steady clear patch for about 10 mins just before 1600hrs. After that it rained. Sunspot 2638 was only thing visible across the face. Well defined, circular, very bright and getting close to the center as Sun Rotates it towards the Earth.

February 28, 2017 1030-1140 hrs- Mostly warm and sunny, few high, think clouds, no wind, 5C.

Increased Sunspot activity today. A new chain of Sunspots appeared to the right of the bright circular Sunspot 2638. According to Spaceweather.com its Sunspot group 2641. Images did not turn out very well, possibly due to the high level thin clouds.

Attendance: Myself.

Equipment: Solar Filter, 8" Meade LX 200, cellphone adapter connected to 32mm eyepiece, 0.6xFocal Reducer, Samsung S5 Neo cellphone camera.

Objective: To image the Sun.

Images for Feb21:

Images for Feb 24:

Images for Feb 28

OBSERVING REPORT FOR FEBRUARY 20, 2017

Location: Front Porch, Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time: February 20, 2016 1900-2100hrs

Weather: Mostly clear with few broken clouds at first then completely clear, slight breeze to no wind, -2C with windchill of -4C. A very rare clear night for observing.

Equipment: Meade 8" LX 200 with 32mm, 12.5mm and 9mm eyepieces. Samsung S5 Neo with Cellphone adapter.

Attendance: Myself

Objective: To view and image Venus which is in its Crescent Phase at this time.

Highlights:

Venus and Mars were 1/3 of the way up in the sky in the west at 1900 hrs, which put them just above the rooftop from the porch. Venus was a much thinner crescent in the eyepiece than it showed in images. Disc of Mars could be seen at high magnification, which was surprising, as it is so far away at this time. No detail could be seen across its face though.
Viewed and imaged M42 and M43. M42 was huge and bright in the 32mm eyepiece. Trapesium stars were easily split with this high magnification telescope and good quality eyepiece. Spectacular, one of the most amazing things to see in this telescope. Images did not turn out though
Viewed and imaged Sirius. Very bright, bluish.
Split Double star Mintaka on Orion's Belt.
One Satellite Seen, no shooting stars observed.

Images:

Double Star Mintaka on Orion's Belt.

Sirius, brightest and closest star that can be seen from NB.

Venus in crescent phase. Was much thinner crescent in eyepiece.

Disc of Mars.

Friday, February 10, 2017

PENUMBRAL LUNAR ECLIPSE

Location: Front deck, Little Lepreau, NB

Date: February 10, 2017 2030-2330hrs

Weather: Clear, very cold, slight breeze -16C with windchill of -24C.

Attendance: Myself.

Equipment: Canadian Telescopes 80 ED/APO with 19mm and 12mm eyepieces, Nexus 4 cellphone camera and Canon Rebel Xsi.

Objective: To view and image the penumbral full moon which was suppose to start around 2044hrs.

Report:

Didnt expect to see much from our location, so was surprised when looked out at 2045hrs and the top left was clearly shaded.
Set up scope and imaged with DSLR and Cellphone camera at 2112hrs. Then took cellphone images around 2200hrs and shadow moved from top left to top center.

Images:

Taken with cellphone camera

Taken with Canon Rebel.

BIRDING IN FLORIDA

Location: Kissimmee, Florida

Date: January 30 to February 4, 2017

Weather: Mostly sunny with almost no wind all week, warm 25-30C.

Report:

Seven White Ibises that arrived every morning, then left together just before dark. They walked around the shallow areas and up on shore pecking at the ground and into the mud. Fairly tame.
Between 6 and 10 Peacocks and Peahens wandered around the yard. Once we seen them fly down from high up in a tree.
A Female Anhinga showed up to the pond on at least two different days. It would dry its feathers up on some kind of piping and would then sit up in a tree overlooking the pond. Difficult to identify.
On the drive into Kissimmee and through the Carolinas and Georgia, many great tailed Grackles were seen around gas stations...at one place there seemed to be hundreds.
There were many Muscovy ducks that hung around and were quite tame. They were all over the pond and surrounding area throughout our stay. Difficult to identify.
There was a Limkin one day that was very difficult to identify.

More to follow...

Images: