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It's certainly spring when Orion starts disappearing in the west early in the evening, Leo is nearly overheard and the Big Dipper rises high. This was a
beautiful night. The temperature was in the 30's and some clouds were starting to move in but I was able to find two new objects without any trouble at all.
First stop was at the Christmas Tree Cluster also known as NGC 2264. This cluster is embedded inside a nebula but unfortunately I wasn't able
to see any nebulosity. That's not so suprising considering the moon was 1/3 full and given the light pollution my back yard has. The new townhouse next door had their outside lights on
which made things a little bit more
difficult. I identified the cluster by the two pairs of stars close to the bright star at the base of the tree. There is also a bright triangle of stars just to the west of the bright base star. The large field of view given by the 22mm Panoptic really helped take in the entire cluster. It is quite large.
Next on the list was the the open cluster NGC 2244 in the Rosette Nebula, a little south of the Christmas Tree Cluster. Check out this Sky Rover sketch of the cluster. There are 5 bright stars that together with 4 small stars look like intersecting ladders or airport runways. This was a fun cluster that was also very easy to find. Again, I saw no nebulosity of the surrounding Rosette Nebula.
I made a vain attempt to find M76, the Little Dumbell nebula in Perseus but had no luck.
Perseus was getting pretty low and the atmosphere was thick around where M76 should be. Some trees were also in the way. So, I didn't see a thing but that doesn't bother me. The nebula is listed
at being magnitude 12 and I don't think I'd be able to see a magnitude 12 nebula from my backyard site anyway. I'll try for it again out at a darker site like Baylor. I also took a quick
peak at the Double Cluster again.
Finally, I trained the scope on the moon and got out my QuickCam Pro. I modified the QuickCam by filing off the ridge that keeps the lens from being
removed from the
enclosure of the QuickCam. This lets me simply unscrew the lens and remove it, exposing the CCD so it can be used for astrophotography. When I want to use it as a webcam, I just screw the lens back on. This was the very first time using it with the lens removed and I am encouraged by the results.
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