Monday, July 8, 2013

The Ring

Been more than a few days but I was finally feeling up to doing a little hunting on this moonless night.  To my disappointment, it seems that most easily seen objects are not around in the summertime, not in this hemisphere anyway.

So I did a quick Google for "Summertime nebula" and found Trifid and Lagoon as top results.  Hell if I could find out where the Teapot constellation is or was.  I'm sure I will someday.  For now I needed to stick to things I knew.  Reading down a few lines I found the Ring Nebula.  Kersplat! It was pretty close to Vega.  Vega practically gouges my eyes out nightly.  Using the handy dandy starmap app I found the approximate location.  It is best seen to me as a sort of oddly shaped diamond or a parallelogram.  Like this not to scale representation:


    VEGA


                         X

  
        X





                                   X
                             o                          
                                         
                 X


The "o" is where it is.  I couldn't locate the son of a bitch.  Although the bottom stars I could define I just couldn't make out anything regarding the Ring.

So back to Google I went.  Ooh! That sure looks like a sweet picture of the Andromeda Galaxy and I was in luck that it was a clear shot to the east.  This was even harder to find.  I don't even think I found the correct stars to guide me.  Flummoxed and depressed I was about to walk away when I decided to try the Ring one more time.  Success!

The Ring Nebula
 
Ok, so it was not nearly as glamorous as an image taken form an interstellar telescope.  In fact it was an almost imperceptible and colorless smudge.  But, I saw it.  What gave it away was just how hard it was to make out.  I noticed that there was this star I just could not focus on.  It wasn't a star at all.  It was the Ring Nebula.

Though it was very hard to see, using what small amount of peripheral vision the eyepiece allows, I could make out the center.  I could also leave the area, return to it fairly easily and locate the Ring again.  There were these three stars that I used.  The Ring and the three stars formed what I thought looked like a chicken's, or any bird's, footprint.  This won't be the last time I go back.

This was a great night again.  Saw many shooting stars as well.  It's truly amazing and unexpected how many I see by chance.  I could have searched for Neptune tonight too.  It's pretty big and it's up as I am writing this.  Yet, something tells me the planets are going to require a lot less city light.  Might save those for camping.

Time to go work on my night vision.  You think that surgery that Riddick had is real?

Until next time...

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