Still Here

Due to a combination of bad weather and fatigue I have not been out with my telescope for a while. Even so there have been some neat things going on. Sometimes after one of my five month olds 4AM feedings I will take a quick peek out my window. The normally washed out south sky (light pollution from Edmonton) has become alive. Orion is dominating the sky as it rises earlier and earlier each day. Venus is shining as bright as I have ever seen it. All this with the moon still shining brightly and washing out the sky even more. I think I will finally get my chance to get out this weekend. Clear skies are predicted and it is the Thanksgiving long weekend. I am not looking forward, however, to the sub-freezing overnight temperatures.

My new telescope almost became a reality this weekend. My wife confessed that she almost went out to buy me one to surprise me. She decided to wait so that I would get what I really wanted. It won’t be long now. I am a lucky man. I do want to go visit our local astronomy club to find out what exactly I can expect to see with a larger telescope so close to a light polluting city before a make a purchase.

Fall is in the Air

Saturday night quite possible may have been the last warm summer night I get this year. It is now mostly dark by 9:30 and the night air is feeling a little more fresh. I even had to scrape frost off my car windows one morning last week. It has even been cold enough that there have been rumors of some overnight snow. It is all good though. As nice as the evenings are in July, even at midnight it is not completely dark. Saturday was a rare combination of completely darkness, cloudless skies and warm overnight temperatures. We had spent the hiking in Jasper National Park so I was a little tired (we spent a total of 8 hours driving and 3 hours hiking), but I did not want to waste the night. I thought that finally I might be able to see a deep sky object in my telescope.

Once again my little telescope let me down. I tried to find M103 in Cassiopeia and M81 and M82 in Ursa Major. No luck. I tried to get a look at Mars but is was very low on the horizon and quickly moved behind some trees. I decided to move onto some naked eye viewing. I was looking around the summer triangle (Deneb, Vega and Altair) when I saw a relatively slow moving meteor make it way NNW. It had a decent size trail was was visible for about 1.5-2 seconds. That alone made it worth the effort to go outside.

Just before I went inside a lone Canada Goose did a flyby. It was odd enough for a goose to be flying around a midnight but what made this even more out of the ordinary is that it circled over head a couple of times before heading on its way. Perhaps he was out for one more night of goose merriment before heading south, had a little too much quack grass and had some trouble getting back to the pond.

One that note I decided to pack up and go to bed. Before I called it a night I scattered some Astronomy magazines around the house left open to some “random” telescopes advertisements. Christmas is only three months away after all.