💾 Archived View for koyu.space › mrael2_obsv › sessions › 2015 › 2015-03-27.gmi captured on 2023-11-04 at 12:15:14. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-06-03)
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Date: 2015-03-27
Tonight's moon was a little more than 1st quarter at 58%. This meant that the sky was bright, and I needed to view stars more than nebulas or galaxies.
So I decided to view NGC 457, the Owl Cluster. I found this open cluster very easily with my Telrad, which I installed today, then the 8x50 finder scope. The Telrad is the best invention ever for visual astronomical observing!
NGC 457 exhibits two bright stars (one much brighter than the other) that look like eyes. Other stars "below" the eyes form a body and feet while still more stars span out to both sides forming wings. It's an astonishing sight!
My sketch does not show all the stars that vere visible. Instead, I wanted to capture only the main stars that comprised the overall shape of the cluster.
The temperature was above freezing, so I did not need gloves during observing and sketching. Winds were light initially but became calm.
At the close of this night's observing session, I was drawn yet again to M42/M43 and Jupiter. All three were briefly viewed at 83x.