Starry Nights @ SFU: March 4-5 2008

Starry Nights @ SFU: Blogs & Pics - March 4-5 2008

High-resolution copies of selected celestial images are available for download from these blogs,
and print nicely on inexpensive photo paper with a basic colour or B&W printer.

Starry Nights of March 4 & 5 2008

We held two consecutive starry nights! The 2nd night, Wednesday March 5, was especially good, since we viewed at least a dozen Messier objects, along with Saturn (with a beautiful display of its rings) and Mars.

We also had quite a few scopes on hand. Thanks especially to our star gazers from off campus! Grade 6 student Ronan came with his father Scott, and brought his 4.5" reflector (and on Tuesday came with his friends Justin, Tyler and Conner). Ronan's extensive knowledge of the sky, and his expert handling of his scope, made quite an impression on all those who attended these two starry nights!

Thanks also again to SFU students Gwen Eadie and Aaron Springford, who brought their 8" Dobsonian and home-made 3" refractor. We used all four scopes and binoculars in various combinations. The links below give information on each object that we viewed, from the excellent site Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS).

We saw the multiple stars Mizar and Alcor, and the pretty double Almach in Andromeda, with a very striking colour contrast between the brighter orange and fainter blue companions. We saw open clusters M45 (the Pleiades), M44 (the Beehive in Cancer), M34 and the double cluster NGC 869/884 in Perseus, the Auriga clusters M37, M36 and M38 (in order from East to West, along with NGC 1907 visible in the same field as M38). We saw the Great Nebula in Orion M42 (and its companion M43), and could just barely make out the Crab nebula M1 in Taurus. We then turned our attention to galaxies, viewing Bode's galaxy M81 and its companion the Cigar galaxy M82 in the Big Dipper, and even managed to dimly make out the Whirlpool M51 and companion NGC 5195, 37 million light-years distant! We ended the night by taking some short exposures of M42 and the Whirlpool (though I did not save the images, rats!).

Starry-eyed
@ SFU since Nov. 2007