Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 12/9/2020

Yesterday, the highs here in Three Rivers climbed into the 60’s. It’s December. This isn’t normal. But the weather was absolutely stunning and not even the sort that whips around to bone-chilling cold the next day as it was again in the 60’s today. This brief stability in the weather brought clear, calm skies, so despite it being a work night, I knew I needed to get out to observe.

Fortunately, with it getting dark so early, I could observe for several hours and still be home by a reasonable hour, even if I headed out to the further site I like observing at, Danville Conservation Area. And boy what a night it was!

Despite some clouds low on the horizon to the west as I drove out that I feared might creep my way, they dissipated before ever being any sort of problem. The sky had next to no humidity and the air was impressively calm making for exceptional seeing conditions. I was by myself but ended up observing for almost exactly three hours, plus the set up and tear down.

Overall, I made $63$ observations. Only one was sufficiently far off that it had to be tossed. And this was unsurprising as it was Alpha PsA, which is a fairly far south constellation for me and it was less than $20 º$ above the horizon. When observing solo, I have to take my aim, hold the quadrant steady against the wings I added this summer, and then clamp it in place to take the measurement. When objects are too low on the horizon, the quadrant is close to its full extension meaning there’s a great deal of torque, making holding it in place while I clamp it all the more difficult. Some slipping often occurs.

The data ended up being about average. I averaged $0.14 º$ low in declination and $0.41 º$ ( $0 h 1 m 38 s$ ) high in right ascension.

Aside from getting in a good amount of observing, there were a few things that were extra exciting. The first was that, of the $62$ observations I kept, a full $20$ of them were new additions to the star catalog. This included $3$ in Aquarius, $3$ in Eridani, $1$ in Orion, and $13$ in Gemini, which was essentially unmapped previously since, until fairly recently the quadrant could only be used for objects on the meridian and Gemini crosses the meridian in January/February at reasonable hours, and the weather hasn’t cooperated in the past. As such, this helped fill a big gap in my data and brings the total count of stars in the catalogue to 368.

Unfortunately, the thing that I’m sure was the most impressive thing of the night, I missed seeing. As I was observing Orion, I looked up after writing down my measurements and noticed a thin line crossing from a bit west of the zenith, all the way to the horizon in the east-southeast. It was quite bright, so I thought it was someone pointing an astronomical laser, but it wasn’t moving. It took me several minutes to realize what was happening.

It was only after it started drifting slowly to the northeast and becoming more diffuse that it struck me: It was the smoke trail from a meteor. And a meteor that left that definitive of a smoke trail that persisted that long¹ would have been absolutely stunning to see. And I missed it.

And as always, the data is publicly available on the Google Sheet².

It took almost 30 minutes to fade away.
And as an extra bonus, I didn’t wreck my car this time!