The Backyard Stargazer

The sign of a perfect star party – the company, the equipment, the quality of the sky and the number of targets you can check off from your list. Last night had a bit of everything.

The Westchester Amateur Astronomers gather monthly at Ward Pound Ridge in Cross River to enjoy the dark skies. Last night we started with a 20 hour old Moon and quickly moved on to Mercury, the Orion Nebula, the Beehive and (my own personal long-time, never realized White Whale) the Leo Triplet (which I might add I managed to find manually).

And all night long we enjoyed great views of Saturn from the variety of telescopes assembled.

The clear skies are expected to continue at least for tonite, so I’ll be out late again.

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Saturn is one of the easiest and most rewarding views for a small telescope.

A good pair of binoculars can show the rings. Moving up to a small telescope and you can see some cloud details, a moon or two and maybe even the elusive Cassini Division between the A and B rings.

The secret to viewing planets is having good seeing. Seeing is a losely defined term refering to the quality of the air between you, the viewer, and what you are looking at. It might be clear as a bell from where you stand but 60,000 feet above you there might be enough turbulance in the upper atmosphere to ruin a good night’s viewing.

The best way to deal with this is to stick with what you are viewing for at least a half hour. You’ll get enough breaks in that time for the skies above you to clear and the views to sharpen. So be patient. And enjoy the view.

Click map to embiggin – I’m working on making these maps a bit clearer and bigger.

The best way to really learn the sky is to learn your constellations. Some are familiar to us – like Orion or Ursa Major. Others are harder to find. I’ll start with the easy ones.

This month Leo is out in the Eastern skies just after sunset. And as an extra added bonus, Saturn is spending 2008 sitting just to the left of Regulus, the brightest star in Leo.

From The Illustrated Guide To Astronomical Wonders:

Leo is home to scores of galaxies that are visible in amateur instruments, including no less than five bright Messier galaxies, and possesses several fine galaxies that are bright enough to be glimpsed with even a binocular. Several of these bright galaxies are tightly clustered, making it possible to observe multiple bright galaxies in the same low-power eyepiece field.

With binoculars you can see Saturn’s rings. A small telescope will show even more detail.

So go out tonite and tell me what you see.