Tag Archives: Hubble

CNYO Observing Log: A Summary Of The Last Few Months Of 2015 In Rapid Succession

Greetings fellow astrophiles!

In the interest of full documentation of the year’s events (but because we’re running short on time), a brief post summarizing all of the unsummarized Observing Logs for the past few months (we’re done with observing for 2015 unless something really interesting happens tomorrow night!). Despite mostly unfavorable conditions, we did manage to get a few decent sessions in.

Mid-to-Late 2015 Library Lectures

1. Hazard Branch Library, Syracuse – 20 June 2015

In advance of International SUN-Day on June 21st, CNYO hosted a combined solar astronomy lecture and nearly clouded-out observing session. Provided the sky is clear (which was mostly NOT the case for the 2015 SUN-Day festivities), we’ll be running a session for International SUN-Day 2016 somewhere around town.

2. Seymour Library, Auburn – 6 October 2015

A “general introduction to astronomy” lecture was the staff request for this session, including a bit about getting around the CNY Nighttime Sky (courtesy of CNYO’s handy-dandy brochures) and a little sneak-in of the New Horizons (Pluto!) and Dawn (@ Ceres!) missions. For the record, one of the aesthetically pleasing libraries in CNY.

3. Liverpool Public Library, Liverpool – 23 November 2015

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After a rescheduling of the October 22rd lecture due to pending social obligations, CNYO returned for our twice-yearly (or more) LPL lecture, featuring a more complete session about Ceres and Pluto and all that it means to be dwarf planets in our always-interesting Solar System.

4. CNY Tech User Group @ LPL, Liverpool – 7 December 2015

CNYPCUG (but by “PC,” they mean “Tech”), which meets monthly at LPL, saw the announcement for the November 23rd session and asked for a tech-centric lecture of their own. Mixing up some of the recent dwarf planet discussion with the flurry of missions already active (with an extra emphasis on Hubble imagery), this session ran over 90 minutes and had lots of good discussions to boot.

Late 2015 Observing Sessions

2015 wasn’t a truly bad year for observing, but trying to get clear skies, little-to-no Moon, and short-notice organizing all together for some of our hoped impromptu sessions just didn’t work out too well. The four official sessions on the books are listed below.

1. Total Lunar Eclipse @ Baltimore Woods – 27 September 2015

This, THIS session was a treat. Driving out to Baltimore Woods around 8:00 p.m., the sky was completely overcast with only a few patches of anything clear-like in the distance. Within 5 minutes of BW, however, the sky just opened right up, with some of the last cloud cover making for some excellent final views of the obscured Moon before the whole sky went clear. Over 50 people were at the session, which culminated in a beautiful full lunar eclipse.

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The best part of the whole session – and the one I made mention of for people to take a second look – was just how bright the restive the sky becomes when the Moon is dimmed so significantly. One could have had a full New Moon observing session, complete with galactic views and all the subtle highlights one could wish for, all while having this dark orange/red Moon *right there* in the sky. Bob Piekiel was kind enough to make a montage of the event, which I include above (click for a larger view).

2. North Sportsman’s Club, West Monroe – 10 October 2015

This session was mostly organized on our Facebook Group and even received a small but active (8) attendance (including a guest appearance by New Moon Telescope’s own Ryan Goodson) despite a clerical error in the organization itself not allowing us to make it through the gate (so, not wanting to waste a clear sky, we unloaded and observed from the long NSC driveway – the field being too far away to want to risk carrying scopes around).

3. Joint Nottingham/Corcoran Observing Session @ Corcoran High School – 6 December 2015

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A shining example of Murphy’s Law of Astronomy – “If you schedule it, it will be cloudy. If you cancel, it will be clear.” The session was scheduled for December 4th, with the 5th and 6th as alternates. The 4th was a wash, and the 5th looked to be – until we cancelled the session, after which those who still attended reported having an hour of clear skies for observing. We set the 6th as a make-or-break session – which mostly broke. Despite a busy 70 minutes with 18 attendees, we were only able to catch a poor view of the Andromeda Galaxy and a moderately washed-out view of the Pleiades. The discussion more than made up for the weather, however, and we plan to return again to try our luck near the heavily lit Corcoran High School football field (sadly, Nottingham High School does not fare much better).

4. Geminid Meteor Shower @ Baltimore Woods – 13/14 December 2015

As far as reported observing, this session went solely to Bob Piekiel at his special session at Baltimore Woods. With a one hour clearing on the evening of the 13th, Bob and his two attendees managed six bright meteors and a number of deep sky objects before packing it up. The 14th, sadly, was not an option for observing due to increased cloud cover, meaning CNY, yet again, largely missed out on one of the great meteor showers.

The 2016 calendar is getting populated and plans are in the works for more sessions. Stay tuned and Happy New Year!

Free Astronomy Magazine – May-June 2015 Issue Available For Reading And Download

Greetings, fellow astrophiles!

A few months back I featured Free Astronomy Magazine as the first of a (to be) series of articles on great free online content for amateur astronomers (see A Universe Of Free Resources Part 1). I received announcement of the May-June issue availability in mid-May (have been busy cleaning out CNYO email folders!).

You can find previous Free Astronomy Magazine issues by checking out our Free Astronomy Magazine Category (or look under the Education link in our menu).

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The May-June 2015 Table Of Contents:

The web browser-readable version of the magazine can be found here:

www.astropublishing.com/FreeAstronomyMagazine_MayJun2015/index.html

For those who want to jump right to the PDF download (50 MB), Click HERE.

* Nova 1670, a mystery almost solved

* Mars: the planet that lost an ocean’s worth of water

* Hubble sees supernova split into four images by cosmic lens

* Looking deeply into the universe in 3D

* The largest ocean is on Ganymede

* An old-looking galaxy in a young universe

* A grand extravaganza of new stars

* Unusual asteroid suspected of spinning to explosion

* Dusty cloud passes galactic centre black hole

* Waiting for Philae’s reawakening

NASA News Digest: Space Science For 8 June – 11 June 2015

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

The NASA News service provides up-to-date announcements of NASA policy, news events, and space science. A recent selection of space science articles are provided below, including direct links to the full announcements. Those interested in receiving these news announcements directly from NASA can subscribe to their service by sending an email to:

hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov?subject=subscribe

NASA Selects Eight Projects for 2016 X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge

RELEASE 15-114 (Click here for the full article) – 8 June 2015

2015june16_15_114NASA is working with eight U.S. universities on new technology projects for deep space exploration, including the agency’s journey to Mars, as part of the 2016 X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge.

The challenge, which is led by NASA and the National Space Grant Foundation, has teams designing systems, concepts and technologies that will help improve NASA’s exploration capabilities and provide undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in technology development.

“These strategic collaborations lower the barrier for university students to assist NASA in bridging gaps and increasing our knowledge in architectural design trades, capabilities and technology risk reduction related to exploration activities that will eventually take humans farther into space than ever before,” said Jason Crusan, director of NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) division.

For more information about previous challenges and current challenge requirements, visit: go.nasa.gov/x-hab and www.spacegrant.org/xhab/

For information about NASA and its programs, visit: www.nasa.gov

NASA Spacecraft Detects Impact Glass On Surface Of Mars

RELEASE 15-118 (Click here for the full article) – 8 June 2015

2015june16_15_118NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has detected deposits of glass within impact craters on Mars. Though formed in the searing heat of a violent impact, such deposits might provide a delicate window into the possibility of past life on the Red Planet.

During the past few years, research has shown evidence about past life has been preserved in impact glass here on Earth. A 2014 study led by scientist Peter Schultz of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, found organic molecules and plant matter entombed in glass formed by an impact that occurred millions of years ago in Argentina. Schultz suggested that similar processes might preserve signs of life on Mars, if they were present at the time of an impact.

Fellow Brown researchers Kevin Cannon and Jack Mustard, building on the previous research, detail their data about Martian impact glass in a report now online in the journal Geology.

For more information about CRISM, visit: crism.jhuapl.edu/

For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit: www.nasa.gov/mro

NASA Releases Detailed Global Climate Change Projections

RELEASE 15-115 (Click here for the full article) – 9 June 2015

2015june16_15_115NASA has released data showing how temperature and rainfall patterns worldwide may change through the year 2100 because of growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.

The dataset, which is available to the public, shows projected changes worldwide on a regional level in response to different scenarios of increasing carbon dioxide simulated by 21 climate models. The high-resolution data, which can be viewed on a daily timescale at the scale of individual cities and towns, will help scientists and planners conduct climate risk assessments to better understand local and global effects of hazards, such as severe drought, floods, heat waves and losses in agriculture productivity.

“NASA is in the business of taking what we’ve learned about our planet from space and creating new products that help us all safeguard our future,” said Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist. “With this new global dataset, people around the world have a valuable new tool to use in planning how to cope with a warming planet.”

Additional information about the new NASA climate projection dataset is available at: nex.nasa.gov/nex/projects/1356/

The dataset is available for download at: cds.nccs.nasa.gov/nex-gddp/

OpenNEX information and training materials are available at: nex.nasa.gov/opennex

For more information about NASA’s Earth science activities, visit: www.nasa.gov/earth

NASA Hosts Media For Update On Asteroid Grand Challenge, Robotics Tour

RELEASE M15-091 (Click here for the full article) – 11 June 2015

2015june16_m15_091aMedia and social media are invited to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland Tuesday, June 16 for an update on the agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge and the robotic systems that will be used on asteroid exploration missions.

To attend Tuesday’s 9:30 a.m. EDT event, reporters and social media representatives must pre-register with Dewayne Washington of NASA Goddard Public Affairs at dewayne.a.washington@nasa.gov or 301-286-0040 by 3 p.m. Monday, June 15.

In addition to an update on the agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge, participants will hear from Benjamin Reed, deputy project manager of Goddard’s Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO), and tour the facilities newest lab, dubbed The Cauldron. The SSCO is developing robotic systems for the agency’s Asteroid Robotic Redirect Mission (ARRM) and other NASA missions using space robotics.

NASA’s Hubble Telescope Detects ‘Sunscreen’ Layer On Distant Planet

RELEASE 15-121 (Click here for the full article) – 11 June 2015

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected a stratosphere, one of the primary layers of Earth’s atmosphere, on a massive and blazing-hot exoplanet known as WASP-33b.

The presence of a stratosphere can provide clues about the composition of a planet and how it formed. This atmospheric layer includes molecules that absorb ultraviolet and visible light, acting as a kind of “sunscreen” for the planet it surrounds. Until now, scientists were uncertain whether these molecules would be found in the atmospheres of large, extremely hot planets in other star systems.

These findings will appear in the June 12 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

“Some of these planets are so hot in their upper atmospheres, they’re essentially boiling off into space,” said Avi Mandell, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a co-author of the study. “At these temperatures, we don’t necessarily expect to find an atmosphere that has molecules that can lead to these multilayered structures.”

For images and more information about Hubble, visit: www.nasa.gov/hubble

A Busy Day For Science @ NASA News – Voyager 1 Flies Out And Star Clusters Zoom In

Greetings fellow astrophiles!

There are untold numbers of places online that provide all kinds of astronomy news. The CNYO twitter feed is pushing 200 (following, that is. Still working on the follower count) accounts that range from UK Astronomy Clubs (they are exceptionally well organized on the other side of the pond) to equipment vendors to NASA astronauts. The same goes for RSS feeds from astronomy-centric news services, facebook groups, online magazines (or paper magazines with significant online contents), and a multitude of individuals hosting blog sites that report their own observing, study the news for proper amateur digestion, and generally produce really great content.

All that said, there is a lot of the same news online. With a large twitter feed count, you’ll see the same story a half-dozen times within an hour of its official reporting. Imagine following all the major news services to have them all post the same Associated Press tweet over and over and over again. One comes to question the veracity of the news services who happen to post articles hours or days after everyone else.

I subscribed a year ago to the NASA News Release Email List in the hopes of catching all of the major NASA happenings from the original source. The list is free to subscribe to and pumps out about 3000 news releases a year (some days being MUCH busier than others).

One can make their own subscription official by following the text at the footer of all their messages:

NASA news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an e-mail message with the subject line subscribe to hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov. 
To unsubscribe from the list, send an e-mail message with the subject line unsubscribe to hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov.

This past September 12 was a banner day for NASA News, as NASA made the official announcement of Voyager 1’s departure (sort of) from the Solar System and Hubble scientists reported the largest yet observed cluster of globular clusters (imagine having multiple M13’s in the same low-power field of view!) – featuring a rare image to complement the standard text-only announcements. I’ve included the two releases below (with an extra image showing the position of Voyager 1 – including an actual image of the distant traveler obtained using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and Green Bank Telescope (GBT).

Dwayne Brown – Headquarters, Washington – 202-358-1726 – dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Jia-Rui C. Cook – Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. – 818-354-0850 – jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

RELEASE 13-280 – NASA Spacecraft Embarks on Historic Journey into Interstellar Space

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun.

New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, where some effects from our sun are still evident. A report on the analysis of this new data, an effort led by Don Gurnett and the plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, is published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Science.

“Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind’s historic leap into interstellar space,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. “The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we’ve all been asking — ‘Are we there yet?’ Yes, we are.”

Voyager 1 first detected the increased pressure of interstellar space on the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles surrounding the sun that reaches far beyond the outer planets, in 2004. Scientists then ramped up their search for evidence of the spacecraft’s interstellar arrival, knowing the data analysis and interpretation could take months or years.

Voyager 1 does not have a working plasma sensor, so scientists needed a different way to measure the spacecraft’s plasma environment to make a definitive determination of its location. A coronal mass ejection, or a massive burst of solar wind and magnetic fields, that erupted from the sun in March 2012 provided scientists the data they needed. When this unexpected gift from the sun eventually arrived at Voyager 1’s location 13 months later, in April 2013, the plasma around the spacecraft began to vibrate like a violin string. On April 9, Voyager 1’s plasma wave instrument detected the movement. The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the density of the plasma. The particular oscillations meant the spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere. Density of this sort is to be expected in interstellar space.

The plasma wave science team reviewed its data and found an earlier, fainter set of oscillations in October and November 2012. Through extrapolation of measured plasma densities from both events, the team determined Voyager 1 first entered interstellar space in August 2012.

“We literally jumped out of our seats when we saw these oscillations in our data — they showed us the spacecraft was in an entirely new region, comparable to what was expected in interstellar space, and totally different than in the solar bubble,” Gurnett said. “Clearly we had passed through the heliopause, which is the long-hypothesized boundary between the solar plasma and the interstellar plasma.”

The new plasma data suggested a timeframe consistent with abrupt, durable changes in the density of energetic particles that were first detected on Aug. 25, 2012. The Voyager team generally accepts this date as the date of interstellar arrival. The charged particle and plasma changes were what would have been expected during a crossing of the heliopause.

“The team’s hard work to build durable spacecraft and carefully manage the Voyager spacecraft’s limited resources paid off in another first for NASA and humanity,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. “We expect the fields and particles science instruments on Voyager will continue to send back data through at least 2020. We can’t wait to see what the Voyager instruments show us next about deep space.”

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft. It is about 9.5 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from our sun.

Voyager mission controllers still talk to or receive data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 every day, though the emitted signals are currently very dim, at about 23 watts — the power of a refrigerator light bulb. By the time the signals get to Earth, they are a fraction of a billion-billionth of a watt. Data from Voyager 1’s instruments are transmitted to Earth typically at 160 bits per second, and captured by 34- and 70-meter NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) stations. Traveling at the speed of light, a signal from Voyager 1 takes about 17 hours to travel to Earth. After the data are transmitted to JPL and processed by the science teams, Voyager data are made publicly available.

“Voyager has boldly gone where no probe has gone before, marking one of the most significant technological achievements in the annals of the history of science, and adding a new chapter in human scientific dreams and endeavors,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. “Perhaps some future deep space explorers will catch up with Voyager, our first interstellar envoy, and reflect on how this intrepid spacecraft helped enable their journey.”

Scientists do not know when Voyager 1 will reach the undisturbed part of interstellar space where there is no influence from our sun. They also are not certain when Voyager 2 is expected to cross into interstellar space, but they believe it is not very far behind.

JPL built and operates the twin Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers Interstellar Mission is a part of NASA’s Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA’s DSN, managed by JPL, is an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions.

The cost of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions — including launch, mission operations and the spacecraft’s nuclear batteries, which were provided by the Department of Energy — is about $988 million through September.

For a sound file of the oscillations detected by Voyager in interstellar space, animations and other information, visit: www.nasa.gov/voyager

For an image of the radio signal from Voyager 1 on Feb. 21 by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Long Baseline Array, which links telescopes from Hawaii to St. Croix, visit: www.nrao.edu (image below – click for a large version).

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J.D. Harrington – Headquarters, Washington – 202-358-5241 – j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

Ray Villard – Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. – 410-338-4514 – villard@stsci.edu

RELEASE 13-282 – Hubble Uncovers Largest Known Group of Star Clusters, Clues to Dark Matter

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Hubble Space Telescope image of largest known population of globular clusters, in Abell 1689 galaxy grouping. Image Credit: NASA/ESA

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered the largest known population of globular star clusters, an estimated 160,000, swarming like bees inside the crowded core of the giant grouping of galaxies known as Abell 1689.

An international team of astronomers used Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to discover this bounty of stellar fossils and confirm such compact groupings can be used as reliable tracers for dark matter, the invisible gravitational scaffolding on which galaxies are built.

“We show how the relationship between globular clusters and dark matter depends on the distance from the center of the galaxy grouping,” Karla Alamo-Martinez of the Center for Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Morelia. “In other words, if you know how many globular clusters are within a certain distance, we can give you an estimate of the amount of dark matter.”

Alamo-Martinez is lead author of a paper on the findings published online Sept. 10 and appearing in the Sept. 20 print edition of The Astrophysical Journal, and part of a team led by John Blakeslee of National Research Council Canada’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia.

Globular clusters, dense bunches of hundreds of thousands of stars, are the homesteaders of galaxies. They contain some of the oldest surviving stars in the universe. Almost 95 percent of globular cluster formation occurred within the first 1 billion to 2 billion years after our universe was born in the theorized Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

Studying globular clusters is critical to understanding the early, intense star-forming events that mark galaxy formation. Understanding dark matter can yield clues on how large structures such as galaxies and galaxy clusters were assembled billions of years ago.

The globular star cluster in Abell 1689 is roughly twice as large as any other population found in previous globular cluster surveys — in comparison, our Milky Way galaxy hosts about 150 — and constitutes the most distant such systems ever studied, at 2.25 billion light-years away. The Hubble study shows most of the globular clusters in Abell 1689 formed near the center of the galaxy grouping, which contains a deep well of dark matter. The farther away from the galaxy core Hubble looked, the fewer globular clusters it detected. This observation corresponded with a comparable drop in the amount of dark matter, based on previous research.

“The globular clusters are fossils of the earliest star formation in Abell 1689, and our work shows they were very efficient in forming in the denser regions of dark matter near the center of the galaxy cluster,” Blakeslee said. “Our findings are consistent with studies of globular clusters in other galaxy clusters, but extend our knowledge to regions of higher dark matter density.”

Peering deep inside the heart of Abell 1689, Hubble detected the visible-light glow of 10,000 globular clusters, some as dim as 29th magnitude, which is 1 one-billionth the faintness of the dimmest star that can be seen with the naked eye. Based on that number, Blakeslee’s team estimated that more than 160,000 globular clusters are huddled within a diameter of 2.4 million light-years.

“Even though we are looking deep into the cluster, we’re only seeing the brightest globular clusters, and only near the center of Abell 1689 where Hubble was pointed,” he said.

For images and more information about the Abell 1689, visit:

www.nasa.gov/hubble or hubblesite.org/news/2013/36

The NASA News Release service is a great way to keep track of goings on in the nation’s space program, but goes much farther into all areas of NASA research, including climate research, geology, engineering, and administration. I encourage interested parties to sign up and get at least some of their space science news first-hand – then complain about all the twitter feeds taking so many minutes to report the same.

CNYO Observing Log: Baltimore Woods, 13 July 2013

One month from the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower, Bob Piekiel’s monthly Baltimore Woods session this past July 13th was a study in summertime CNY observing – that is, a study in patience, persistence, and bug spray.

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Caption: Scopes and observers at the ready.

The evening started with an expectation of partly-cloudy skies according to all forecasts. The setup of of Bob’s 16″ Meade SCT, 25×125 Vixen binoculars, Larry Slosberg’s 12″ New Moon Telescope Dobsonian, and my 12.5″ NMT Dob went slowly as we watched the clouds move fast and move in. What might have been an early observing crowd at BW turned out to be an evening Frog Walk program that had the attendees hopping into the distance from the parking lot.

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Caption: Elaine, Bob, and a 16″ Meade SCT.

Scope setup and cloud cover were complete by 8:45 p.m., leaving a group of eight of us to strain to see Vega, Deneb, Altair, and Arcturus (the four brightest stars in our sky this session). Their appearance at all produced the call of their individual names for well over an hour. We were lucky enough to catch a few early glimpses of Saturn and the Moon, but even they were no match for cloud formations approaching from the West. While no one complained loudly about the mosquitoes in the air, no one appreciated their presence either. One of the benefits of a non-DEET (or, at least, more natural) bug spray is that, with a spray and rubbing-in around your head and neck (that you are more hesitant to do with the DEET variety), you can stare into an eyepiece unencumbered by the ever-louder buzzes in your ear.

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Caption: The author waiting impatiently for clear skies (photo by Larry Slosberg).

With the hopes of later clearer skies (and because the scopes were set up anyway), the group engaged in the time-old tradition of assorted conversations under an overcast nighttime sky while waiting for clearings between clouds.

With 20 minutes to go in the “official” BW session, dark patches finally began to appear at our zenith. Within 10 minutes, these small patches had grown into large spans of dark sky, from which observing began in earnest at 10:50 p.m.

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Caption: A view of the southern sky (featuring Sagittarius and Scorpius).

The official session lasted another hour or so and included a few Iridium Flares and one pair of unwanted car headlights directly in our path (if you see a scope in the middle of nowhere, PLEASE dim your lights).

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Caption: A very close double – car headlights raining on our session.

My observing list included Albireo (the head of Cygnus the Swan and one of the great double stars in the Night Sky), Alcor and Mizar in the handle of the Big Dipper (in the tail of Ursa Major), the great globular cluster M13 in Hercules, the “Double-Double” binary star pair in Lyra (Epsilon1a and Epsilon2a Lyrea, making up the handle of the lyre with Vega), The Ring Nebula (M57) in Lyra, the Veil Nebula (a supernova remnant quite obvious in an O III filter) in Cygnus, and M5 (which I think is a slightly crisper globular cluster than M13) in Serpens. In the search for M5, the skies were dark enough that NGC 5921 in Serpens (the half of Serpens known as Serpens Caput, to be specific) became ever-so-slightly prominent. This galaxy, dim and featureless but still bright enough to notice in a scan of the skies around M5, is shown in Hubble images to be a fantastic barred spiral galaxy.

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Caption: NGC 5921 (from NASA/Hubble).