Under the summer sky

At this time of year I find it most effective to go
to bed a little early, then set my alarm for 0100
or so and head out to the back yard. I did just
that Saturday night, and padded out to the back yard
with my C8.

One of the things I wanted to do was play with my
new Lumicon Sky Vector DSC setup, which I bought
just before a run of crummy weather. This was an
uneventful installation, though I found it helpful
to run a tap down the threads in the scope mount to
clean the crud out, and whacked a bit off the
otherwise much too long declination axis coupler.

So I aligned on Altair, Vega and Arcturus (setting,
but still available) then asked the computer where M57
was. When the readout read 0 0, there was M57. Cool.
I guess I need to get out more. :-)

I spent time with M13, M15, M27, M31, M56, M57 and M92.
Yeah, I know, hardly deep sky challenge stuff, but I
am not proud, and will take what I can get. Also the
Moon (waning gibbous, which helped me rationalize the
lack of deep sky stuff :-) and Mars (a little small and
a little low in the sky, but I could see the polar cap).

M27 benefited from a nebula filter, turning it from an
amorphous grey blob into the familiar apple core.

I got back to bed about 0300. Yawn.

Laura Halliday VE7LDH "Que les nuages soient notre
Grid: CN89mg pied a terre..."
ICBM: 49 16.05 N 122 56.92 W - Hospital/Shafte

Laura,

A quick newcomer question. When you refer to "M13", M15, etc - what
does the "M + number" stand for?

peace,
Cherokee

"Cherokee" wrote in message
oups.com...
Laura,

A quick newcomer question. When you refer to "M13", M15, etc - what
does the "M + number" stand for?


The Messier catalog:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=messier+catalog

Greg

Charles Messier was a French astronomer who specialized in finding comets.
He was struck by how the Crab Nebula resembled a comet and made a list of
objects to prevent future confusion. The Crab Nebula then became M1 (Messier
1). A few have been added since then, and the list tops out at 110. You can
find a list with photos at:
http://www.seds.org/messier/data2.html

Clear Skies

Chuck Taylor
Do you observe the moon?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/

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"Cherokee" wrote in message
oups.com...
Laura,

A quick newcomer question. When you refer to "M13", M15, etc - what
does the "M + number" stand for?

peace,
Cherokee

Chuck,

Thanks for the explanation and the the link. I now understand Messier
objects.

peace,
Cherokee