Jedolby

  In 1980, when at 19 years of age I first became truly curious about the night sky, I bought a telescope and began to learn the basics of backyard astronomy. Having never looked through a telescope before, it took some time to figure out finder scopes, eyepieces, Barlow lenses, and star charts. Basic nighttime observing skills and tricks were completely foreign to me. For instance, I didn't know that it takes our eyes about 30 to 45 minutes to completely adapt to the darkness. When our eyes are fully adapted, we can see the stars and nebulae much better than we can at first glance as soon as we walked outside. I had no idea that neighborhood night lighting could ruin my night vision, making it difficult to see the stars until I let my eyes become dark adapted again (by avoiding looking at any artificial lights for another 30 to 45 minutes). Nor did I know that moonlight is just as bad! Avoiding the moon and neighbor lights is essential if you wish to catch sight of the Milky Way o...

  The Sky & Telescope article headline, "Bright nova lights up Lupus Constellation," caught my attention in the wee hours of the morning yesterday, so I wanted to try and get an image tonight after sundown. I had never shot the field before, so I had no images to blink. I'll have to wait a while and shoot it again after it fades to make a blink comparison. For now, this image will have to do. The star marked "83" is a star of magnitude 8.3 (decimal point removed so as not to be confused with a star at that location). The lines connecting HR Lupi, GM Lupi, and HD 133340 are for reference purposes when comparing this image to the finder chart in the Sky & Telescope article. If you wish to take images of the nova through your own telescope, you can start by centering on the variable star HR Lupi. The nova will be the first star of about the same brightness to the north of HR Lupi. Below is a zoomed-in comparison of the star field alongside an image from Al...

  Near the end of April, I was hunting for supernovae in galaxies at 14 hours of Right Ascension, and I saw in my planetarium software that a couple of minor planets were in the same field as NGC 5468. As is often my custom, I shot some pictures of the galaxy and moved on, planning to sort out the asteroids later with the assistance of the time filter .  Following another one of my frequent customs, I then proceeded to forget all about the asteroids! But every now and then, I refresh my memory of recent minor planet targets by searching through my images and looking for asteroids that I added to the file names. If I find some that I never processed, I'll spend an hour, or so, putting together an animated GIF. And so, yesterday morning, I discovered the files containing the pair of forgotten planets with NGC 5468 and I went to work on them. To my surprise, although NGC 5468 is a nice, face-on spiral galaxy (a good target galaxy for supernovae), it wasn't on my 14-hour targets l...

  The sky was clear, but a bright full moon was rising low in the southeastern sky. My solution was to shoot galaxies in the northwestern sky, far away from the moon. Although my sidereal clock showed 14:33 at the start of my session, I chose my list of targets at 13 hours of Right Ascension, an hour-and-a-half west of the meridian.  I like the 13-hour list of galaxies. It includes the impressive Whirlpool Galaxy, M 51, the curious Sunflower Galaxy, M 63, and at the southern end of the list (for me, in the northern hemisphere), there is the beautiful face-on spiral galaxy, M 83, in Hydra. I never tire of these targets. They are standouts amongst the many smaller and uninteresting elliptical galaxies on my lists.  Last night, I moved on from M 63 and shot NGC 5005, which is a smaller version of M 63. Nothing new there, so I sent the scope onto my next target, NGC 5033. Although the bright center of NGC 5033 appears smaller than NGC 5005, its faint but sprawling spiral arms...