Time: CDT (
2021-10-21
20:00-23:21
I brought my telescope out to take a look at Venus before it set. It was just above my neighbor’s shed. It was at 0.53 phase, gibbous but nearly a half phase, and about 10 degrees above the horizon, larger in apparent size than the last time I looked at it a few weeks ago. Atmospheric turbulence that low in the sky causes lots of color variations but overall it was sharp. With my small telescope unstable air tends to make entire planets move around instead distorting the planet itself.
I decided then to do some star hopping. I noted that Gaff’s Cluster should be in view and I don’t believe I’ve viewed it before so I decided to hop my way to it. I started with Altair since it was nice and bright and one of the few stars visible by eye in my
. Just above this star was an interesting string of faint magnitude ~8 stars, one of which is the eclipsing binary star system V1454 Aquilae. Though I looked at it very carefully, I could not detect a companion star. I went on down to the double star 23 Aquilae. Once again I could not split the stars even with the 5 mm eyepiece (91.8x). I moved west to 21 Aquilae and another satellite, NOAA 19, crossed my view. Went down to the globular cluster Jupiter and Saturn had now moved out from behind the trees. I was able to see the usual multiple bands on Jupiter though no storms. 3 of the 4 Galilean moons were visible with Europa being hidden in front of Jupiter.
Saturn was nice and sharp with the moon Titan just above it. Saturn’s shadow was distinct against the rings. The Cassini Gap was just discernible as was a faint cloud band on Saturn’s surface.
I moved west from Saturn to the double star Alpha Capricorni. The pair were easily split and both were bluish white with the more westerly star about half as bright as the other.
Hopped over to the double stars, Omicron Capricorni (ο Capricorni), p Cap, and Okul (n Cap) and I couldn’t split any of them at maximum power (5 mm and 2X Barlow). The companions were likely within my telescope’s diffraction rings.
Turned to my east over my roof top and came across the double star HIP 10680. I could split it with low power at 25 mm and with the 5 mm I could tell that the more northern star was slightly brighter than the other. The colors were similar and mostly white. I would get a hint that one was bluer than the other but then my perception would switch. So the colors are inconclusive.
While scanning the eastern sky I came across the brilliant double star Mesarthim (Gamma Arietis) in the constellation Aries by accident with the 12 mm (38.25x) eyepiece. These are two identical white stars that with the 5 mm eyepiece look like a pair of eyes in the dark looking back at me.
The one day past full Moon came up over my rooftop. I took some good looks at it with my 12 and 5 mm eyepieces and decided then to call it a night.
