Late Night Outreach...

Date: 22nd March 2009, Sunday
Observation Time: 11pm to 12pm (1 hr)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing was fine. probably 3.5 of 5
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Buddies: Ashwin and Alankar

Total Objects: 3
New Objects: 2

Had nice observing session late night, after Imax-Watchmen. Considering the cloudless night, wanted to show "Crispy" Saturn to Ashwin and Alankar.

- Leo
Saturn: Image wasn't sharp, but better than previous observation. Saturn's rings were perfect-edge-on yesterday 21st March. Felt the same. Wasn't able to see the gap betn rings and the planet, so must be edge-on. 3 moons on western side, while 2 moons on eastern side.

- Corvus
Delta Corvi (New): In order to show some variety of objects in the sky, pointed to this double star in "Hasta"-corvus constellation. Didn't try for any mag-separation calculation. Primary is blue-white, while secondary is orange-red in color. Primary seems far brighter than secondary. In 38x secondary was visible, but not clear enough. Heigher mags resolved it better. Secondary position angle is probably 225deg.

http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~jkaler/sow/algorab.html

- Virgo
To show how galaxy looks like in a scope, I was looking for any nearby bright galaxies. Initial plan was to show Messier galactic zoo in Virgo, but becasue of limited viewing from my patio, skipped Virgo-cluster as well as Leo-cluster.

M104 Sombrero (New): M104 was promising one in the map, but I have never star-hopped to it before, so wasn't much confident.. but BAM...in first shot i got it. Around 110deg angle & ~1.5 times the distance of Delta-Gamma corvi line. In 38x you can see the fuzziness, but barely. Easy to miss this object, but there are 3 bright stars aligned straight to its "SW". Increasing the mags indeed helped in revealing more details. I am surprised with how-much higher mags this object supports in city light pollution also.. At 76x, the edge-on shape was clearly visible. Had a feeling of buldge in the middle, but not clearly. the galaxy itseef is aligned with two other bright stars on west. the edge-on shape probabaly makes 25deg angle with the star-alignment on SW. At 110x, bulge was improved.