Astronomy Notes

This is the best observation ever done. The sky was the clearest I had ever met. Hundreds Of stars were viewable. Looked to the south, you could see Crucis (a constellation which looks like a cross). Looked at the zenith, you could see Jupiter, Arcturus and more! Let’s skip all these things and straight to the observation report.

Date: 25 May 2006
Time: 9:16PM GMT+8
Sky Condition: Extremely Clear

Objects Observed
Planets

• Jupiter (Great Red Spot spotted)

Star Clusters

• Messier 68 (NGC4590, Globular Cluster)
• Caldwell 091 (Open Cluster)

Nebulae

• Eta Carinae

Let’s start with Jupiter. It’s the brightest objects in the sky undoubtly. I managed to spot the Great Red Spot. I observed it using the Meade SP6.7mm eyepiece. It’s large in view. After I attached the blue colour filter, the Great Red Spot was better in contrast. I also spotted three bands on the Jupiter. There were five bright moons and one of them was in front of the Jupiter. The shade of that was easily seen on the Jupiter. It’s a black point on the Jupiter. I need a notebook to take this photo!

I used the Tonight’s Best feature in my autostar controller. I observed Messier 68, Eta Carinae and Caldwell 091 through this feature.

Messier 68 (NGC4590) is a globular cluster. I could see uncountable stars in the eyepiece field. That’s really nice! It’s 46000 light years away from us and 100 light years in diametre. Its magnitude was 8.1.

Caldwell 091 is a open cluster. It’s best view in low magnification and wide angle eyepiece. There were also quite a number of stars in the eyepiece field. I had started to love the clusters!

Eta Carinae is a diffuse nebulae in the direction of Carina. I saw many stars were there but I didn’t see any cloud. I was wondering whether the telescope pointed at the wrong point. I have to search for reference to confirm whether I did really see this.