Sunday, October 28, 2001

My telescope is in storage right now. In part that's because my wife and
I have been renovating the house and there's no good place to keep it
out. As a result I'm limited to my naked eyes and my 7x50 binoculars.

The weather was very good tonight; clear and cold. However, the waxing
gibbous moon significantly impacted the sky. No stars were visible at
all in a circle centered on the moon with a radius of perhaps 10
degrees. I noticed, however, that the moon was near the Psc/Aqr border.
There are no bright starts in that region anyway. At about 10:00pm EST
Jupiter, in Gem, was just rising above the mountain to the east. Saturn
was well positioned in Tau.

I got satisfying views in the binoculars of several bright star
clusters. In particular, M35 (Gem), M37 (Aug), M36 (Aug), M38 (Aug), and
M34 (Per). Although all of these objects were easily seen, the views
were not ideal due to the large moon. The galaxy M31 (And) was quite
bright and practically on the zenith. The galaxy M33 (Tri) was visible
with difficulty. Frankly I was surprised to see it at all tonight. The
moon was probably only 30 degrees away.

I wondered tonight how many of the Messier objects would be visible to
me in my binoculars. I suspect that many of them would be. Perhaps I
should make a list. Tonight I saw

M31 - And - Bright, of course. Impressive as always.
M33 - Tri - Barely visible tonight.
M34 - Per - Nice knot of stars.
M35 - Gem - Large and somewhat diffuse. Close to the horizon tonight.
M36 - Aug - Your typical "fuzzy ball".
M37 - Aug - Brighter and more impressive than M36.
M38 - Aug - More obscure. Tonight's moon washed this object out.
M45 - Tau - The Pleiades cluster. Visible with the naked eye.

(Did Messier really mean the Pleiades when he talked about M45? Or was
he talking about the nebula in which the cluster is embedded?)

Peter