Author Archives: Shane

Observer’s Calendar for October 2023

Sept 1 – Neptune 1.4-degrees N of the Moon Sept 4 – Jupiter 3-degrees S of the Moon Sept 5 – Uranus 3-degrees S of the Moon What all this means is these planets are closeby in the sky as I don’t think they are close for here in NA. Sept. 6 – Last quarterContinue reading “Episode 354 – Observing Calendar For September 2023 Show Notes”

Stars You Should Know—Summer (Dave Chapman, 2023) Coming up: Fall (September) South Polar (November) Focussing on classic Greek-Roman names with occasional indigenous references. The classic names are used in some GoTo telescope software for sky alignment (e.g. Sky-Watcher SynScan and Celestron). Spectral classes O B A F G K M — Annie Jump Cannon References:Continue reading “Episode 348 – Dave Chapman’s Summer Stars You Should Know Show Notes”

August 1st – Full Moon August 2nd – Saturn 2-degrees above the Moon in VERY EARLY ie 1 am morning Sky August 8th  – Last quarter Moon  August 10th – Mercury at greatest Elongation 27-degrees in Evening Sky – tough in very bright dusky sky August 13th & 14th – Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks inContinue reading “Episode 347 – Objects to Observe in August 2023”

Why would people learn Greek? This was before telescopes, right? I’ve seen more than Greek letters on charts, what else is on their? e.g. take Albireo – attractive double star in Cygnus can be referred to by Resources http://www.theiling.de/henrik.html https://www.thoughtco.com/learn-the-greek-alphabet-1525969 https://computer-ease.com/darkskies/allgreek.htm https://www.sporcle.com/games/g/greekalphabet The most popular double stars catalogue with a large number of entries wasContinue reading “Episode 343 Learn Greek Show Notes”

Stars You Should Know—Spring (Dave Chapman, 2023) Coming up: Summer (July) Fall (September) South Polar (November) Focussing on classic Greek-Roman names with occasional indigenous references. The classic names are used in some GoTo telescope software for sky alignment (e.g. Sky-Watcher SynScan and Celestron). Spectral classes O B A F G K M — Annie JumpContinue reading “Episode 326 – Spring Stars You Should Know with Dave Chapman Show Notes”

May 5th – Full Moon and a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse – but the Penumbra is just the outer part of Earth’s Shadow. For visual observers we might detect a mild dimming of the Moon .. but it’s not going through the Umbra so it won’t get dark or turn red and, having tried to seeContinue reading “Episode 324 – Objects to Observe in May 2023 Show Notes”

Lord Ross Sketch scanned by Alister Ling Sketch by Michael O’Brien Jim Case was the first to send along an image of M51 Peter Monson Sent us an Image, Here’s my M51 image. It was taken with the C9.25 with the 0.63 focal reducer.  Richard Covey from Edmonton RASC Centre wrote:Here is my M51 image asContinue reading “Episode 314 – M51 With Alister Ling Show Notes”

April 1st to the ~21st – Mercury at one of its best evening apparitions reaching greatest elongation (19-degrees from the Sun) on April 11th . Around April 1st it should become easily visible about 30 minutes after sunset. Look due west for a bright, -1, orangish flickering star dancing in the twilight glow. It’s inContinue reading “Episode 315 – Objects to Observe in April 2023 Show Notes”

Filters: It never ceases to surprise me how few observers have a set of 2-inch high quality UHC, OIII and H-Beta filters and instead more people seem to have a couple UHC and OIII 1.25” filters which they seldom use. They likely migrated to 2-inch low power eyepieces and their 1.25” lowest powers yield exitContinue reading “Episode 310 – Winter Wide Field Wonders”