Observing Reports

TEXAS SOCIETY OF YOUNG ASTRONOMERS
At Rosemont 6th Grade
…….by Sallie Teames

Gene Dawson - Just got a new pair of the Canon 15 x 50 image stabilized binoculars this evening, and they are truly awesome. Rock solid hand held image. Had a great evening out in the front yard here in Benbrook. Several street lights and Fort Worth light pollution to the east. To the west, M41 was easy picking. M44 was overhead and looked great. Was able to grab M36, M37 and M38 as well. Later in the evening I went in the back yard, which is fairly well cut off from street and porch lights. Was able to positively bag M81 and could see a Mag 9.5 star. This was without dark adapted eyes, as I was running in and out of the house looking at star charts (I know that's stupid, but I went out in a hurry and didn't take a flashlight). This was the first time I have ever found M81, even though I have looked for it from Benbrook with a 6 and 8 inch reflector. I'm sure the reflectors would have picked it up, if had them pointed in the right direction. The wide field really helped locate the objects. These things are really the cats meow. There are not cheap, but they work great. Can't wait to get a look at the moon with them.

Doug Christianson -  Was comet searching last night from Arlington, unfortunately looking in the direction of Fort Worth. Thanks to confirmation information about its position on the FWAS eGroup I now know for sure that it was a good sighting. Using Venus as a starting point I looked 20 degrees to the right (North) and located Ikeya Zhang first at about 15 degrees altitude just to the right of Beta Andromeda. Beta Andromeda was the only naked eye star in the vicinity at 7:30 pm. Beta And was twinkling pretty good in the low altitude view and close by in the same FOV was a fuzzy ball. Quite easy to see with binoculars, but without a visible tail.

Half an hour later from a rooftop we again observed the fuzz ball just before it set. Again, no tail, but we were competing with lots of local lights and sky glow from Fort Worth.

Cloudy skies have kept the young observers at Rosemont 6th from viewing the alignment of the five visible planets.  However, Yolanda Navarette did manage to "sneak a peak" between clouds of Venus and Saturn and the moon by Jupiter and do an observation report. Yolanda has been diligent all year in her observing projects.

Hopefully, the skies will clear over the next two weeks while the planets are all still lined up, so the kids can see it. This particular alignment won't be seen again for 38 years.

For his science fair project, Zuriel Flores is tracking the four Galilean Moons of Jupiter over a three week period.  He is using one of the 60 mm telescopes that our principal, Manual Cantu, purchased for us this year. Zuriel is keeping a nightly observing journal of his drawings and comments. He is also researching Galileo and his discovery of Jupiter's four moons in motion around Jupiter.

Well, the observing year of the TSYA at Rosemont 6th is drawing to a close. In May, we will be giving observing awards.

Once IZ was gone my friends and I did a binocular sky tour. We identified Jupiter, Saturn, Aldebaran and Hyades, Pleiades, Orion and M42, then observed colored stars. Beta And (the marker for IZ) looked yellow. The contrast between Rigel and Bettleguese was terrific. Then we compared Aldebaran and Bettleguese, both red giants. Sirius and Rigel also were similarly

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