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.

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.