This is a spectacular image of the galaxies, clockwise from the upper right, M66, M65 and NGC 3628. These three galaxies are outlying members of the Virgo cluster of galaxies to the east of them.
Click on the thumbnail to enlarge.
Scott is the current president of the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society and is, as you can see, an accomplished astrophographer. He also owns Anttler’s Optics in Kalkaska, MI.
Venus will appear below the thin crescent moon tonight. The view should loon like the chart below created with the open source program Stellarium. Stellarium doesn’t quite show the lit edge of the moon very well when it’s a thin crescent. You will also see earthshine on the unlit part of the moon. It’s also called the “Old moon in the new moon’s arms” or Da Vinci Glow. Old Leonardo got it right. It’s the reflection on the moon of the earth’s nearly full phase.
Spring will begin at 8:07 p.m. EDT Tuesday March 20th. If you’re as old as me you probably were taught that spring started on March 21st.
This was our location on the south side of the Rogers Observatory. We’s looking westward. From left to right is my scope, Chris’ scope, then Richard’s and Richard heading toward it. Scott is at the edge of the building hiding his telescope He was the only one who had a shot of M52.
Scott, Richard, Chris and myself and another went out Friday night for the marathon. The night started clear, but clouds showed up later. Scott was hoping for Saturday night, and by the looks of it he was right. Anyway Scott won with 49 objects nearly twice mine. My having trouble with the cold and being way out of practice for this doomed my efforts. Young whipper-snapper!
Well, the Messier Plus Marathon in late summer should be warmer.
Update:
Scott just sent me this.
This is a sun pillar photographed by Scott Anttila reduced by in size by 50 % for this page. These clouds didn’t bother us. It was the ones coming from the northwest that got us.
Looks like we’ll get this one in!
It’s a Go so far.
This may not be the perfect night for a Messier Marathon, but it’s better night than we could have expected 24 hours ago. The Clear Sky Clock shows tomorrow night to be even better. However that’s 24 hours away, and the forecasts have been fluctuating wildly.
I’d prefer not to look a gift night in the mouth, and go with what we got. If we decide to can it after a while, we’ll see how everybody feels about resetting to tomorrow night. There’s been clouds hanging over on the Wisconsin side of the lake all afternoon. The maps of the Clear Sky Clock show a spread of these clouds our way which hasn’t yet materialized. If you click on the cloud cover dots for each hour on the clock you’ll bring up a map showing the computer forecast cloud pattern for that hour.
Here’s the times for tonight:
Sunset: 7:49 p.m.
End of astronomical twilight: 9:29 p.m.
Start of astronomical twilight tomorrow morning: 6:14 a.m.
Sunrise: 7:52 a.m.
I expect to be at the observatory by sunset. I’m working late at Alden and will only have time for a quick supper before packing up and heading out to the observatory.
Look for another report just after 7 p.m. on the latest prognosis. As I’m composing this off-line I’m noticing that the northwestern sky near the horizon is getting milkier. It seems like the clouds are coming from that direction from what I see on all the maps.
Discuss this in the comments section.
Guess what. The clear weather today is holding so far. The NWS predicts partly cloudy tonight, so we may get something out of it. I think we can do a not so perfect night. The Clear Sky Clock disagrees and says Saturday night will be best. That’s quite a change from this morning’s forecast. I think it’s down to coin flipping. My vantage point in downtown Alden now is that it’s a beautiful clear day. Next update will be around 6 p.m.
What happens when we’ve had clear nights all week. Of course, it’ll cloud up for the weekend. It seems that in Michigan there’s only so many clear nights allotted. The weather forecast isn’t very good for tonight or tomorrow night. Even the Clear Sky Clock is showing clouds for Saturday night for Traverse City.
The next update will be at midday today. The Go/No-Go for tonight’s session will come in the area of around 6 p.m.
As of Thursday evening. It’s not looking good for either Friday or Saturday night, the 16th and 17th at Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory in Traverse City. The National Weather Service, Intellicast and weather.com are all agreeing on a chance for snow. Where there’s snow, there’s clouds.
The only bright spot is the Clear Sky Clock, which shows clearing Saturday morning. This is the reading at 8 p.m. on the 15th. We’ll see.
The stand-in host for WICA news radio couldn’t find my mp3 file for today, so for anyone who missed it. Here is a slightly expanded version.
Normally the Ides of a month was considered to be a favorable day for the Romans. Of course there’s that one notable exception. Their calendar is kind of hard to understand. The Ides were either the 13th or 15th of the month, depending on the month. The Nones (pronounced with a long o) was the 9th day before the Ides. And the Kalends was the first of the month. Instead of numbering the days consecutively like we do, the days were numbered as the number of days before these special days. It seems all too confusing. In early Roman calendars the Ides of March started the year. The start of the year was rolled back to January 1st in 153 BC. The Romans numbered their years since the legendary founding of Rome. Also the Roman week was 8 days long, ending with Market Day.
It’s from Kalends that we get our word calendar