My New Telescope

It came, it came, it finally came!

I got my very first telescope today. Per a number of people's recommendations, I got an Orion Starblast, on an EQ mount. Got it put together with/despite help from my kids, and went out to try it out.

The only mildly negative part of the evening came when I tried to get the EZ Finder aligned. I aligned it fairly easily, but had to realign it a few times before either it stayed put, or I figured out how not to bump it again, not sure which. But with it aligned properly, pointing the scope was a breeze, and I found everything I set out for, (except M38, but that was my fault).

Found Albireo and the Pleiades, which both Wife, Kids and I thought were quite stunning. Then they sought the indoors, and left me to look at M42 and the moon by myself. By 11pm, a haze was setting in, so I headed inside.

Anyway, I'm glad I found the positive reviews of the Starblast. Granted, I'm a novice, but it seems to be nicely made, and is certainly a nice step up from my binoculars.

Halloween Night Observing

Had a fairly pleasant night out last night, and setup my binoculars on a tripod out front while the trick-or-treat-ers were coming by. Got glances of "what the heck is that" from a few parents, but got to show the moon to a couple of tweens and a group of older teens; all who looked were suitably impressed. "Sweet!" was the most common comment :).

I'm amazed at how hard it is to *NOT* see satellites pass overhead these days. Saw three or four from my brightly lit front porch looking out over my brightly-lit-by-streetlights-(darnit) street. (Unfortunately, the ISS passed by too early and too low in the sky, and was obscured by clouds.)

And for the 2nd year in a row, saw a very nice, bright meteor shoot overhead just as I was glancing up. Both this year's and last's shot from mostly north to the S or SW.

Meanwhile, I continue to await the shipment of my new telescope. How can a few weeks pass by *SO* *SLOWLY*!

Uranus and M39

Central PA finally has a clear, moonless night (well, early evening, anyway), and I headed out with my binocs.

For starters, I decided to track down Uranus. I've found all the planets from Mercury out to Saturn, and I finally just realized that Uranus should be within the range of my binocs, even in my light-polluted skies. I star-hopped from alpha-Aquarius down to gamma, zeta and eta (which were naked-eye, actually, but my eyes weren't all that dark-adjusted when I first went out), then down past kappa to lambda, and voila! Lambda-Aquarius has a couple of dimmer companions above and to the left and right, and Uranus was fairly close in magnitude to them, but below. It's gonna be fun over the next while to see Uranus move and the others stay behind.

Then I pointed my 'nocs up at Deneb, and did more star-hopping out to M39. Not as much to say about it, although the view was really wonderful. M39 itself had about a dozen or so individual stars visible, and the general area around it was full of more faint stars as well. If Santa will cough up a scope in a few months, I'm going back there, for sure.

Low Flying Moon

This is a bit outdated at this point, but still interesting, I think. On 9/29, the moon was at its lowest point in the sky (during transit) for the past 18 years or so. (Transit is the highest point in the sky over the course of a night, roughly speaking.)

Seems the moon moves between high and low points over the course of a lunar cycle (roughly 4 weeks), but those high and low points get wider and narrower over an 18.6 year cycle, and we just passed the maximum of it. In 9 years, there won't be much difference between the high and low points at all.

Anyway, the long version of this can be found on Wikipedia's article on lunar standstill.

Lunar Occultation

While out pointing my binocs at the moon tonight (I've just started playing with the Astro League's beginner's lunar checklist), I noticed that the moon was getting awful close in the sky to a particular star. For grins, I sat there a while longer, and watched the moon move in front of it. Quite a nifty sight, for a beginner. xephem shows it as v1 (I assume that's gamma-one) Sagittarius; Peterson's Field Guide shows it as W Sag.

Woo hoo! My first occultation!