No more observing sessions in February since we were able to view a large number of objects Saturday night. I'll see you all in class on Wednesday.
On Saturday night we had a nice clear, moonless night for observing. We had a much better view of M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy) than we had in December when the moon was full. The Orion Nebula (M42) was amazing and we saw our most distant object yet, M81. M81 is a galaxy in Ursa Major that is 12,000,000 lightyears away! We saw the Perseus Double Cluster (NGC 869/884) as well as M79 which is a globular cluster that may be part of the neighboring Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy which is interacting with our own Milky Way Galaxy. In addition, we saw NGC 2264 (the Cone Nebula), M44 (the Beehive Cluster), M41 (an open cluster), and the third largest asteroid which is called Vesta. Our final objects were Mars and the comet 118P/Shoemaker-Levy.
Get your sky chart here:
http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html
-the link for the map is near the bottom of the page
(there is a new one posted each month!)
Saturday, February 13, 2010
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