February 29th, 2012

Stargazing during the week when there is school the next day is always very tricky since time is a factor. Each minute I remain outside means less time to prepare for classes to be taught for the next day but sometimes,... passion wins over. Last night was one of those nights! Besides it's not every night where one can stargaze on February 29th! Ready for the LEAP?

Since I knew I had little time and had not made any previous research to what I was going to observe, I knew that being outdoors would consist of a rapid stroll around the block. My gaze was immediately captured by the moon. I decided to capture its spendour both with my point-and-shoot camera and with my video camera. Both files were subjected to photo-altering programs (one is Picasa which helps with normal pictures and the other Registax that renders raw video files to a single picture by stacking the individual frames. Here are the finished picture files:

The one above was created with the aid of Registax but left the finished picture with a blueish hue which better represents what I saw through the telescope. The other, using my point-and shoot camera and altering the file with Picasa gave me a more rich black and white texture of the moon.

Using Registax, I also tried my luck with the planet Venus that shone so brightly near our own satellite (seen below).

My personal weather station announced -16 degrees Celsius but the tips of my fingers thought differently. As I stepped back to warm them up, I accidentally knocked over my carrying case holding all of my lenses and collimation instruments. That's when I heard it,.....

PLINK!

I instinctively looked to the ground but there was nothing to be seen but the wooded floor of the balcony. I sighed to myself,.. of course, whatever had fallen had to fall through the cracks! 5 minutes later, I was fumbling around in the snow with a flashlight looking for the runaway "plink". I knew what it was. Such a small "plink" could only mean my Allen key, used to align the mirrors of my telescope. It was small, practically insignificant but the only instrument I could use to alter my main mirror. In other words,.. "plink" was bad news!

After 10 minutes of looking around in the snow, I found it!

With my Allen key in hand I made my way back outdoors. Mars and Jupiter were also out and for once, I was more enthralled with what our little red neighbour had to share than the biggest planet of our solar system. The truth of the matter is that Jupiter was slowly exiting out of our evening sky. He shall be back and soon,... Saturn will be coming out to play! I wonder how much of its ring system will be seen this year?

Although I had little time, I scanned the constellation Monoceros once more since my discovery of M47 earlier this week. I wanted to see more since M46 another open cluster was close by but harder to see, especially with the baseball flood lights on down the road. I waited patiently for my eyes to become accustomed to the darkness and,...

Alright, I hope many of you will skim over this part without really reading it since I would hate to be "one of those people" that claim to see things but,...

I saw something. I know what a satellite created by humans looks like through a telescope for I have seen many. This didn't whiz slowly by like an overly tired meteor. It was very, very slow and steady. I glanced away from my telescope to see if it could be seen with the unaided eye but no. When I looked back in the eyepiece it was gone. Could it have been a different type of satellite? I looked to my Stellarium program that lists all natural and human born objects in the sky according to latitude and time of stargazing and no,... No satellites were to be seen within the vicinity of the place I had been looking at. So my Stellarium program had a glitch, I was overly tired after a day teaching, it was a "different satellite than I have seen in the past,... I do not know what it was. Let's leave it like that okay?

I packed everything and returned to the warmth indoors. What did I see tonight? Venus, Jupiter, a new Messier object, Mars, something weird (that's it) and the moon.

And what a moon it was!

Isabelle