Re: SAA OBSERVING: A Cloudy Evening at QUO

Thanks Margo, Jon, and Marty for sharing your observations. It
sometimes takes a while before I feel I have the time to carefully
read through the more lengthy postings to saa, but in this thread I
knew it would be time well spent ;-)

"jonisa...@xxxxxxx" wrote:

Sometime during the
evening I tried to find the Owl Nebula (M97) and the nearby M108  over
in Ursa Major but no luck...

It's been a while since I spent much quality time under the twinkling
stars, but now that Buttercup is fully operational I'll attempt to
post some (more) 60mm refractor observations. Interestingly, prior to
the transformation of an old, blue-tubed, Meade model 226, 60mm
refractor into the bright and shiny Buttercup the small refractor did
engage a few DSOs. IIRC I made a posting not all that long ago
sharing those observatons. On that night I swung the small scope
toward Merak and was somewhat surprised to spot the Owl Nebula without
much difficulty. My atlases were left inside, as is somewhat typical
of my observing these days. Nevertheless, I scanned around a little
for M108 unsuccessfully. Not liking to be defeated without a good
fight, I went inside (without any bright lights), pulled out a
detailed atlas (I think I chose "Uranometria"), and committed to short-
term memory the pattern of stars between M97 and M108 -- paying due
regard to angular distances, the previously measured true FOV of the
28x eyepiece, and the mirror-reversed view. I went back outside
(again leaving the atlas inside) and soon managed to see M108 with the
scope that was destined to become Buttercup. M108 was notably more
difficult to see than M97 with the 60mm refractor under my magnitude
6.5 sky, but once detected there could be no doubt!

Despite the unknown age and history of my newly acquired 60mm
refractor, I suspect it has seen more in the night sky in the few
nights since I acquired it than it has seen in the entirety of its
previous life-span -- though of course, I could be wrong!!

Bill Greer
To sketch is to see.
.

Quantcast