May 20, 2010 May 22, 2010
Posted by orionrising in Observing.Tags: HIP 55713, HIP 56500, Leo, mars, moon, reference point, saturn
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Clothesrack Organization of Faint Stars in Leo
Object: Stars
Site: Front Yard
Seeing: Good
Transparency: 3
Type: Deep-Sky
Constellation: Leo
Magnification: 10x
FOV: 4.8 Degrees
Observing Time: 10:40 pm – 10:58 pm
Notes: Clothesrack-style organization of four stars: two from Leo the Lion, HIP 56500, HIP 55713. Moon was out tonight too, in First Quarter. Saturn and Mars were in the sky as well, Saturn sporting a creamy-yellow hue as always. Very warm weather the past day, but it’s more comfortable now. All four stars were bluish-white. At first it was difficult to find a decent reference point for this arrangement of stars, so it got lost easily and I spent a good minute trying to find it again. I need to practice my star-hopping skills. This is part of the training that binoculars gives to a stargazer; with a telescope it is even easier to become utterly lost. With practice, even faint stars can become signposts to finding the objects you want, not just the bright stars.
Amateur Astronomy with Binoculars and a Small Telescope 
Was outside for 2 hours last night trying to find M51. Failed miserably haha. At least the weather is nice so I’ll try again tonight
LOL, two hours!! Crazy amount of patience you have, trying to find one object for two hours =). The weather should be nice tonight too (May 24), bar the fireworks ;). This is turning out to be a great week for stargazing =D
Should be clear again tonight too, had to help dad fix the lawn mower last night and didn’t make it out. I think i’ll try for a few brighter objects first seeing that the moon’s out and everything. By the way, I made a list of objects to see, want it?
Yep, I’m going out tonight as well. Horrible humid weather btw; should be cooling off somewhat tonight though, so looking forward to it XD
Great, you completed your list of objects to see! Please send it to me so I can peruse it while sweating in this searing heat =D
I’ll type up that list tmr.
Tonight is GORGEOUS! seeing is the best it’s been in almost a month, so is the transparency. The moon is becoming a bit of an annoyance though, but i’ll take a clear night any way I can get it.
Spent one more hour on M51 but to no fruition… I was close though… I’m not quite used to my inverted/mirrored finder yet so when coupled with a normal star chart I made the very rookie mistake of…….. LOOKING FOR THE WRONG STAR! Making matters worse is how close it was to the zenith making az.
All rookie mistakes, shouldn’t be too tough to remedy (example: bring an inverted star chart… haha). I was soo close though, the star I was looking at was about 2 degrees away from M51 (2 lowest magnification FOVs), I even saw the actual star in the finder, but it didn’t register…. Still, it’s a learning experience, and at least I can actually star hop tonight… few days ago the seeing was so bad that I can’t see anything at all in the finder…
“Spent one more hour on M51 but to no fruition… I was close though… I’m not quite used to my inverted/mirrored finder yet so when coupled with a normal star chart I made the very rookie mistake of…….. LOOKING FOR THE WRONG STAR! Making matters worse is how close it was to the zenith making az movements a little ambiguous.”
sorry, editing error in that second paragraph there
LOL an inverted star chart will be good. I sympathize with the mistakes, I make them all the time with my binoculars…=( And I’m still thinking about the binocular mount, it’s getting pretty annoying since I believe I’ll see much more with a stable mount. Glad to see you got some quality star time though.