Although seeing is often better in the pre-dawn hours I generally plan my sessions in the evening finishing at midnight or a little later. However it seems that lately I’ve completely lost my circadian rhythms (perhaps a medical / prescription side effect issue that needs sorting). The positive benefit of having lost any sense of rhythm for the day is that one can get up to check out the apparition of Comet Neowise.
Another personal not is that one must give the Cloud Demons their due. Three new eyepieces from the budget priced Starbase Orthoscopic line arrived and the only remark from the Deities is that there were hours of poor seeing. Clear skies and above average transparency prevailed and, in the pre-dawn hours, seeing was average.
Spontaneously awaking at 2:30 AM I fired up the computer and the Cartes du Ciel
East of my residential location there are hills and low mountains. I waited until 4 AM to go out. The Sun rises at about 6 AM so that gave a window. I found the pointer stars and they indicated that the comet hadn’t peaked up behind those hills yet. So I entertained myself while waiting by taking tours of the sky with the binos.
I looked at the Moon and saw very nice crisp shadows at the terminator. Then I checked out Jupiter. Io was to the east and Ganymede, Europa and Callisto to the west. Ganymede was quite close to Jupiter. I then picked up Saturn as an oval.
I then turned to the summer Milky Way. I turned first towards Scutum where I found M11. I then turned north to Cygnus and Lyra where I viewed the North America nebula and the Cygni region which is always beautiful. Lyra was lovely and I found M57, naturally unresolved but a nice fuzzy patch.
However, interference from the streetlights was unacceptable. I was observing from the street side of the house not the back yard observing spots. I wanted to be able to appreciate contrast details in the tail of Neowise andthis site wasn’t going to cut it.
So, I got in the car and drove to a park that I frequent on the north edge of town where I often go for walks. There are few streetlights and widely spaced. The park is closer to the hills so there was risk in that. Approaching the site from the west I found a good spot, removed from streetlights, at the NE corner of the park.
On the way I had a brief panic moment when I saw a light in the east that I thought might be a communications tower but was relieved when it turned out to be Venus. Coment Neowise was available to the eye with a nice tail. With the binoculars I appreciated the view. The nucleus presented as star like with a
A brief hop to Venus and back to Neowise where the lighter sky now had shortened the apparent tail leng to 2 degrees flat.
Back in the car I drove home arriving about 6 AM.