It's been a couple weeks since I've been able to get outside with a telescope. A lot of rain, and being sick, and long hours at work. Last night I set-up Clara's telescope (10-inch f3.8 Springsonian) since I wanted to use it very early this morning to try for fast-moving comet 45P/HMP. I still feel unwell, so after setting up last night I looked at the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, and some general scanning about. I left the mount set-up and went to bed early.
The alarm woke me at 4:30am and I went outside. It was cold, and the moon, only one day past full, shone brightly. Transparency was poor; I saw a jet leaving a long silvery vapor trail behind it. The moonlight was badly scattered. I could barely make out Hercules, with which I orientated myself. The comet should have traced a path from Beta Hercules to Corona Borealis during the night. Unfortunately the finder I had did not have hourly demarcations, so I was unsure exactly where to aim. I started in CrB where and then panned down to Beta Her. I did this numerous times, sometimes thinking I saw a diffuse glow, but it seemed to disappear. I tried 35x at first then increased to 50x to see if the improved contrast helped. No luck. I think the main problem was the moonlight but next time I will make sure to have a finderscope and a better finder chart. The comet will still be visible after the moon has moved out of the way, so I will give it another try.
No comments:
Post a Comment