Tag: observing

This week’s weather was supposed to be dismal. And for many of my friends, it was. The derecho that ripped across the midwest left many people in the kingdom without power for several days. However, for me, it pulled the clouds that were supposed to last through the weekend out early, leaving me with a cloudless friday night with a waning crescent moon. About as good as I can ask for for observing. However, the humidity did linger with humidity readings upwards of 70%. While it didn’t feel uncomfortable due to the reasonable temperatures (low 70’s), it did mean that my glasses fogged quite badly and all the paper I take notes on was soggy by the end of the night. Despite that, last night was easily the most productive night I’ve yet had. I totalled 71 stellar observations and 3 planets.

Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 8/14/2020”

Last night was a few days past a full moon, so without it rising until around 11:30, I figured that gave a good balance of observing while still making it home for some of the B3R Bardic. While the moon wasn’t out, seeing was still poor. Due to the this being the closest weekend to the peak of the Perseids (and next weekend’s weather not looking promising), there were a lot of people out at Broemmelsick. This resulted in lots of flashlights and headlights that prevent me from ever getting fully dark adapted. Similarly, there must have been more humidity than it felt like because the skyglow from St Louis and St Charles washed things out more than I anticipated.

Still, I was able to take about a dozen observations of stars and did a few of both Jupiter and Saturn, hoping the average would give good results for them. The data can be viewed by going to the Google Sheet I’ve set up. Overall, the night averaged out extremely well, with an average error in the RA of 0.18º (the equivalent of ~45 seconds late), and an average error in Dec of 0.02º which is really hard to beat. The standard deviations were a bit high this time so there was certainly some scatter, but overall quite pleased with the results.

I managed to get out and do a bit of observing last night. It’s been 4 months to do the day since my last opportunity to do so and I started off by making a rather large blunder. The location I usually observe at has several pads for observing and I have one I usually use. It’s straight down a path that points generally north which makes finding the north star fairly easy, even without looking for the big dipper to verify which star it is.

Well, last night I looked for the star over where the path met the parking lot, but because I was on a pad a bit to the west of where I normally am, I accidentally aligned on Kochab, the second brightest star in Ursa Minor, and ended up making three observations over the course of a half hour before I realized the error. Fortunately, we still got in 11 observations, and all of them were new stars! Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 4/21/20”

Happy Winter Solstice to all. Despite wanting to get out at solar noon today to get an observation of the sun, I was asleep at that time as I have a cold that’s sucking all my energy despite not making me feel all that bad.

However, tonight was also a late moon phase so doing stellar observations was on the schedule. Quieteria helped me with these observations, but as it was very cold tonight, we called it quits fairly early. And because we’re in a rather blank patch of sky with mostly stars well past 4th magnitude, that only led to a fistfull of observations. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 12/21/19”

Last month, I came across this dark sky finder website. Unsurprisingly, dark skies in the Eastern half of the US are fairly hard to come by. However, Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri puts a significantly large dent in light pollution that much of the surrounding area is quite dark. Sadly, as the name suggests, the forest doesn’t have many clear sites suitable for astronomical observing, but I was able to find a campsite that’s part of the Rocky Creek Conservation Area that what looked to be a large field based on Google Maps that sat in the dark area.

This weekend I found someone to take over my herald duties to Their Majesties and made the 2.5 hour drive to check it out. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 7/27/19”

This past week was Lilies War, north of Kansas City. With a bit of packing tetris, I was able to fit the full quadrant along with most of my camping gear¹ to attend. Despite Lilies being traditionally extremely hot² and stormy, the weather was quite nice this year with highs in the 70’s most days and lows in the 50’s³. This unseasonably cool weather did bring some storms, but nothing like what we’ve experienced the past few years. Yet between storms I was able to get in a few nights of observing, getting in observations of 59 stellar targets, 26 of which are new to the catalog.

As always, data below the fold. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – Lilies War”

This year has been pretty rough for observing. With the quadrant being damaged and having to toss out a night of data in February, combined with cloudy weather in March and April, I haven’t been able to get much done.

But last night the weather cooperated and I was able to take the quadrant out, this time with the assistance of Megan doing the recording, and me doing the sighting. While I’m still not as good as Padraig, the results were fairly good and posted below the fold.

Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 5/4/19”