Observing Session for Tuesday, September 21

Thank you to all who showed up. We had a big turnout! To recap, we met on the Crespi campus and viewed Neptune (we could tell that it was blue), Uranus, the globular cluster M13 (although with all the light pollution in Encino, it was nothing more than a faint blob), Jupiter and three of its four Galilean moons (Callisto, Io, and Ganymede; Europa was in front of Jupiter and not seen), and a nearly full Moon. We clearly saw the copper colored North Equatorial Belt in Jupiter's atmosphere. On this night, Jupiter was the largest and brightest it has been since 1963! Jupiter won't be this large or this bright again until 2022.

September 4 Observing Session

We had a great evening of observing! We started off with a view of Albireo, probably the nicest looking double star in the sky (one star is yellow and the other is blue). We next took in the sights of the bright globular cluster M13. From there we moved to M27, the Dumbbell Nebula. This is a planetary nebula and is an example of what our own Sun will turn into in 5 billion years! Our next object was another planetary nebula, the famous Ring Nebula, M57. Next on our list was M8, the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius. This is a huge stellar nursery much like The Orion Nebula (which we'll see later in the year). From there we moved onto Aquarius and its planetary nebula NGC 7009. This planetary is much smaller than the two we saw earlier, and this one, also called the Saturn Nebula, shows a greenish/blue color! Moving to the northern sky, we observed M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Needing a little more time for Jupiter to rise to a nice height above the Eastern horizon, we went back to the southern sky and viewed two nebulae and one globular cluster. The first nebula was M16, the Eagle Nebula in Serpens and the second one was M17, the Omega or Swan Nebula in Sagittarius. M16 was made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope and its picture of the "Pillars of Creation." The globular cluster that we observed in Sagittarius was M22. It is huge and rivals M13 through the eyepiece! Winding down the evening, we next viewed Neptune. Everyone agreed that they could detect a faint blue color. Our next to last object was Uranus. It appeared much brighter than Neptune (it is closer to us), but it did not have any color that was detectable. The final object was Jupiter and its four large Galilean moons. Io was alone on one side, and on the other side of Jupiter, from closet in to farthest out, were Europa, Ganymede, and then Callisto. Nearly everyone also detected the bands in Jupiter's atmosphere. An added bonus for the evening was that we saw a very faint band of the Milky Way rising from Sagittarius and extending up near the zenith. That can only be seen under dark sky conditions.