Society for Popular Astronomy

Another comet that *might* become bright, at the end of the year, is C/2021 A1. Maybe, maybe, mag 4 or 5. It'll be in Bootes around mag 5 in December, but it's then heading south into Saggitarius as it brightens a little. So, it's probably another early morning job and at its brightest it'll be down...

I can't see a thing with my setup! A 1960s Prinz 60mm refractor projecting onto a screen. Mind you I haven't looked today yet ...

I had a look around 0500 BST from the bathroom window, but there were too many obstacles in the way, so I saw naught.

Here's its track. The JPL magnitudes are somewhat fainter than those reported currently.

Finally got around to transcribing one set of notes from an evening's lunar observing. The Moon was around 11.5 days old (waxing gibbous) and high in the sky. Just how we like it :) Mare Humorum 2016 UT ===================== 2019 UT. Looked at Mare Humorum again, with the LE7.5 and variable polarise...

Tracie Heywood wrote: ↑Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:45 pm due to its strong red colour, it is quite common for some observers to see a range a few tenths of a magnitude brighter and for others to see a range a few tenths fainter.

We all react differently to red???

stella wrote: ↑Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:02 pm "Garnett Star"? Do you mean Warren Mitchell?

Would that be the Alfa star?

Was that all done with binoculars? Which comparison chart do you use?

Has anybody noticed any sign of variability?

While looking for the nova last Friday night I took a quick look at Mu Cephei, the Garnet Star. It's certainly red! Much redder than Arcturus for example, though I always see an orangey colour when I look at that. It's a semi-regular variable with a quoted period of 730 days and a range of 3.4 to 5....

At 2345UT, I managed to get the spotting 'scope onto the nova, fairly quickly in fact as I lucked onto Beta Cas, backed off to Alpha Cas to double-check and then slid across to M52. The nova was easily seen, as was the mag 9 star close by. There's a line of four stars between the nova and M52. The t...

Managed, at last, at 2057UT, to see the nova - from an upstairs window! It was easy to find. Alpha and Beta Cassiopeia fit nicely into the FOV of my 8x50s. Follow the line joining them, up and to the east one FOV's worth and the nova is on the eastern edge of the FOV. Another half FOV and it's in th...

I'm waiting for the Moon to drop out of the evening skies. I don't know if I'll be able to see it through my 8x50s. If not, I'll try with my spotting 'scope, but then I might struggle to find it! And I have to go walkabout to get a sufficiently good northern horizon.

Good catch! From my latitude at least, at 0600 BST Saturn is six degrees above the horizon. And Jupiter a miserable three degrees. And the Sun nine degrees below the horizon. So it must have been getting light?

I was thinking in terms of the sheer density of the Venus atmosphere, which is some ninety times denser than Earth’s. Isn't there a story about the first Russian lander - its parachutes opened fairly early on, but the density of the atmosphere slowed the descent so much that the batteries went flat...