Daniel, Thanks for the heads-up on 144P Kushida. I looked it up on my planetarium software and then had no trouble finding the location with the binos. I couldn’t see it though. Between 8pm and 8:20 I gave it a try. When the binos couldn’t see it I went in the house and got my old drugstore Meade 4” reflector with a 13mm eyepiece (78x). I still couldn’t see it. I went down to a 9mm (113x) and I still couldn’t see it. But it was fun. It was a piece of cake to find after the hoops I went through to find Lulin. Found the location in less than a minute. Aldebaran was so bright even with the moon close by. Theta1 & Theta2 Tauri were in the same field of view with the 9X50 finder scope. I just worked the cross hairs up to 75 Tauri and had a look around. TYC-1265-499-1 (mag 8.2) was visible but faint for me and Kushida should have been a little ways to the east but at a mag 11 I just couldn’t pull it out with my small scopes. Thanks for the notice. Even though I couldn’t see it, it was really fun trying. Jim --- On Mon, 2/2/09, daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com> wrote: From: daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Search for Comit Lulin To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Monday, February 2, 2009, 5:09 PM Jim: That's an impressive feat of cold weather star hopping. If any one is looking for a early evening comet there is 144P Kushida currently traveling across the face of Taurus ths bull. It transits at 8 Pm at 60 degrees elevation and at 9th magnitude might need a pair of big binos. Weather seems to be going south soon and the moon is creeping closer so tonight might be the best chance to see it. This one is more my speed, I'm just not a morning person during winter. This is a periodic comet with an eight year orbit, currently near 1.4 AU from the sun but goes out past Jupiter. DT --- On Mon, 2/2/09, Jim Gibson <jimgibson00@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Jim Gibson <jimgibson00@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Search for Comit Lulin To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Monday, February 2, 2009, 8:49 AM About 4:30am this morning (2009 Feb 02) I took my binos (Galileo 15X70) out and set up on my Chuck Hards Parallelogram in search of Lulin from North Orem. I have been following Lulin for several weeks now with varying success depending on the seeing over the lights of Provo and water vapor in the lower south east sky. I usually start my search by finding Graffias Scorpii because no stars are readily seeable in Libra from North Orem. Graffias Scorpii is easy to spot because it has 2 stars (Omega 1 & Omega 2 Scorpii) fairly close together about 14’ – 15’ apart and they are about 1 degree from Graffias Scorpii so all 3 are easily spotted in binos or a 9X50 finder’s scope.
From Graffias I go up and slightly to the right till I find the 4th magnitude star Theta Librae. Once found then Eta Scorpii (mag 5.2) comes into view and following that line takes me to Gamma Librae (3.9). Dropping down from Gamma Librae and within the same field of view with either Binos or the finder scope 3 stars in the form of an upside down chevron come into view. They are Zeta, 34, and 32 Librae. Now we venture into the darker part of Libra so if I get lost I can almost always come back and find the chevron without much trouble. Slewing straight west for a ways about 5.5 degrees I find a set of 7 stars forming a parallelogram. The brightest one at the bottom is mag 4.5 Iota Librae and the one at the top is mag 6.2 26 Librae. We are almost there. Going up so that 26 Librae is at the bottom of my field of view I will see a fairly bright (because there is nothing else around that is brighter) star that is orang-ish in color; the mag 5.2 star Nu Librae. Nu Librae has a fainter star 6.4 right below it about 14” away; Hip 73593. For the next few days anyway LuLin will be in your field of view when you have Hip 73593 in view. This morning it was about 30’ south east of Hip 73593. At first I thought I could see it with the binos, but I wasn’t sure if I saw it or if my mind put a faint fuzzy there. That’s how hard it is to detect from North Orem. I got out my Orion 100mmED and following the same star hop pattern and with a 25mm plossl (36x) I could see it no problem. Well, it was still a faint fuzzy. I replaced the 25mm with a 13mm and it was bigger and easier to see, but I couldn’t see a tail or anything. I tried the 9mm UO (100x) and it was bigger still but no structure discernable that I could tell. I think the 13mm was a better view. I took a few pictures of it unguided and at prim-focus. For various reasons I didn’t get my Losmandy out so the longest exposure I took was about 15 seconds. I hope to get my tracking mount out in the next few days and get some longer exposures. Jim
--- On Mon, 2/2/09, Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Search for Comit Lulin To: "Utah Astronomy List Serv" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Monday, February 2, 2009, 12:07 AM
Raeburn,
Sorry you could not see it. It is there. You can also follow along with other images and observing reports on the Cloudy Nights Solar System Forum:
http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/lunar
Spaceweather.com also has a good photo gallery:
http://spaceweather.com/comets/gallery_lulin_page3.htm
- Kurt
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