That's so interesting Chuck because I did the same last night around 1:30am from my backyard in West Jordan with the 15x70 binos and I found the view very fascinating (doesn't take much to impress me, can you tell I don't get out much?) Your description of it was spot on although it seemed much larger than M-13 to me. I enjoyed being able to view it in the same FOV as Saturn, and it was bright enough to remain visible even as clouds raced by in front of it. It seemed to me to be more diffuse and elongated than I had expected especially from left to right. I haven't looked at many pictures of it in the last few weeks so I was expecting a tighter fuzz ball. I wanted to grab some wide field photos but the wind was too much for my little tripod. Howard --- On Tue, 2/24/09, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Lulin -- obs report To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 9:03 AM I caught it in a 15x70mm bino last night from mid-valley, between the clouds. What a huge letdown. It looked like M-13 on a bad night.
I heard J. Kelly Beatty on NPR yesterday afternoon talking about it. This is one of those astro events that should NOT be publicized too loudly.
If you live in the sticks, your view is probably much better, but since 90% of the population lives where the light pollution is, most people are going to be underwhelmed- IF they even manage to spot this non-event. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com