Not so faint fuzzy tonight?

"Mike Ruskai" wrote in message
.earthlink.net...

I can only guess it was a small noctilucent cloud, since there's no trace
of anything like it tonight.

Need not have been noctilucent -- could have been an ordinary cloud
illuminated by town lights below.

There have been many instances of small clouds being mistaken for newly
discovered comets, and occasionally the opposite!

After a few seconds, having no dark adaption at all, I caught a fuzziness
near the zenith. After I turned the outside light off, it was even more
prominent. It's an elongated fuzzy patch in my 10x50's, brighter than any
galaxy I've seen even through my telescope. In fact, it looks to the
naked eye a bit like M31 looks in my 8" telescope.

Anyone else see this thing?

Mike, I have 2 comments:

1) Thank you for the suggestion to go out last night, without it, I may
not have (being stuck in the Chicago suburbs with typical mag 3 skies.)

2) I went out a couple hours later, about 2am to check it out, and take
my first peak at Saturn and the orion nebula. The sky's were
exceptionally clear, the best I have ever seen in the suburbs here.
Looking up, I immediatly noticed a fuzziness, which stunned me because I
had never see such a thing before naked eye.(although I have only been
looking up for the last couple months, and have yet to make it to a dark
sky site) Anyway, upon further investigation what I was seeing was the
pleides. To the naked eye, engulfed in this light pollution, it
appeared as a fuzzy. Although as soon as I pointed my widefield at it
at 11x, it was clearly the pleides. I know it seems obvious, but could
this have been what you saw?

Mark

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 22:16:06 -0400, Michael A. Covington wrote:

"Mike Ruskai" wrote in message
t.earthlink.net...

I can only guess it was a small noctilucent cloud, since there's no trace
of anything like it tonight.

Need not have been noctilucent -- could have been an ordinary cloud
illuminated by town lights below.

There are no town lights below. I guess you really had to see it to
understand. There were plenty of clouds out that night, all of them dark,
obscuring much of the sky. This object was very bright, and not moving
with respect to the stars, while the clouds were.


--
- Mike

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On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 03:29:56 GMT, Mark De Smet wrote:

After a few seconds, having no dark adaption at all, I caught a fuzziness
near the zenith. After I turned the outside light off, it was even more
prominent. It's an elongated fuzzy patch in my 10x50's, brighter than any
galaxy I've seen even through my telescope. In fact, it looks to the
naked eye a bit like M31 looks in my 8" telescope.

Anyone else see this thing?

Mike, I have 2 comments:

1) Thank you for the suggestion to go out last night, without it, I may
not have (being stuck in the Chicago suburbs with typical mag 3 skies.)

I used to live under skies like that. My condolences.

2) I went out a couple hours later, about 2am to check it out, and take
my first peak at Saturn and the orion nebula. The sky's were
exceptionally clear, the best I have ever seen in the suburbs here.
Looking up, I immediatly noticed a fuzziness, which stunned me because I
had never see such a thing before naked eye.(although I have only been
looking up for the last couple months, and have yet to make it to a dark
sky site) Anyway, upon further investigation what I was seeing was the
pleides. To the naked eye, engulfed in this light pollution, it
appeared as a fuzzy. Although as soon as I pointed my widefield at it
at 11x, it was clearly the pleides. I know it seems obvious, but could
this have been what you saw?

Under my skies, the Pleiades are fuzzy only to the first glance. And they
certainly don't look as I described above in binoculars.

Since no one else seems to have seen it, a local (relatively speaking)
cloud seems to be the best explanation.


--
- Mike

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