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| The moon and Venus at dusk. Orion to the left. |
Around 2:30am on April 22, my alarm went off for Kathy and I to go out and watch the Lyrid Meteor Shower. We're fortunate to have a nice outdoor couch where we could lay down and look skyward. We dressed warmly, but the desert air was still chilly. Kath made it about 20 minutes before heading back to bed. I powered through until 4am. I may have seen a total of six meteors, and most of the were off to the side where I WASN'T looking at that moment. That was the second "shower" I lost sleep over. Last summer I got up for a different one, the Perseids I think. Same thing happened.
However, one night a few weeks back I was doing one of my regular viewing sessions when a smoldering meteor streaked by overhead. It wasn't glowing, but it looked like a trail of smoke twirling behind it. Tres cool!
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| Tip of a crescent moon with a dark orb |
Last couple of weeks brought in a couple of items to add to my Outer Limits Challenge. The first was M104, the Sombrero Nebula. It took some tweaking and finagling. Plus, I needed Virgo to get higher in the sky in order to escape the damn sky glow from downtown Tucson. I had originally found it in the early morning last year, but was hellbent on getting it found again as well as a picture for my records.
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| 4-min exposure of M104 |
One I did get was M67 in Cancer, the Golden Eye Cluster. It was almost straight up, so I was in an uncomfortable position to aim, but was able to view it and get a picture.
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| Cancer is a very faint constellation |
Observation log for the last session is here:
Log for the Sombrero session (I got a few more items done that night too) is here:
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