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A fantastic night. Tonight sixteen more Messier objects were observed, leaving only 27 left to go. Sure, I'm cheating by using the GOTO capabilities of
the telescope. But I
don't care. I love it. The moon was 93% full so it was amazing that I was able to see what I did. A couple of the objects were close the moon and almost invisible because of the glow given off by the moon.
I tried to see comet C/2001 A2 Linear but the moon washed it out and I couldn't see anything. No matter, there were plenty of other things to see. Seven
of the newly
observed Messier objects were globular clusters. Those were M14, M19, M28, M30, M56, M62, and M72. The other 9 Messier's were open clusters. Some of the open clusters were so sparse that it was difficult to see them as a cluster at all. The moon surely contributed to that. If the sky was darker, I imagine that dimmer stars in the cluster would have been visible. The open clusters were M6, M7, M18, M21, M23, M24, M25, M26, and M73.
The Messier list is almost done and I've started to think of what my next project will be. I will certainly be going after the Herschel list next.
However, I've got some
other ideas too. I've found a guy on the web that makes adapters to screw into web cameras. The adapters have a 1.25" tube that slides perfectly into an eyepiece holder. I'm going to order on (for the low low price of $17.00) and see what I can do with my QuickCam Pro. I know for sure that I will be able to get good images of the moon but I'm really curious to see what else can be done. I've already written some software in Java that will subtract one image from another. I'll be using that to subtract dark frames from the web cam image and remove the noise. Dark frames are pictures taken with the camera of nothing. The only thing recorded on a dark frame is the noise produced by the camera. Subtracting a dark frame from a regular image removes the noise and produces a clean image.
I really want to get into photometry and astrometry. As an amateur, it's one of the best ways to make observations that are scientifically useful. If I
had a nice pile of money sitting around, I'll buy an ST-8 from SBIG.
If the pile wasn't so big, I'd buy an ST-7. Sadly, right now the pile doesn't even exist! The web-cam will have to do until then. I wonder if photometry can't be done with a web-cam. I'll
just have to see.
Another challenge I've been thinking of taking up is to see how many moons I can observe. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto all have
moons. It sounds tough but would be really fun to identify a moon on one of those planets. I'm excluding the amazingly simple Galilean moons of Jupiter.
I'd also like to start observing asteroids visually.
There is a lot to do. If only the moon would go away so I could finish the Messier list!
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