Bino Messier....

Yesterday, 01/11/2009, Sunday, I was out at the Onan observatory, near Young America, MN. It was a beautiful night, with the full moon rising. It had been quite a while since I had done some good observations. I decided to start working on the Bino-Messier project. I had been looking forward to doing some serious observations and got a good boost after listening to a lecture by Greg Haubrich at the MAS Jan meeting (01/08/2009, Thu at Science Museum).

I went to Onan at about 06:00pm with a Celestron Upclose 10X50 handheld binocs. The near full moon was rising in the East, Orion was up, Sirius was not yet up. On the western front, the Summer Triangle was low down, Venus was bright and high up in the sky. It was fairly cold and the temp at Onan (which sits next to a lake and is away from the twin cities) was about 5F (~ -15C) with a light breeze. A cup of hot coffee, which I picked up at a loc al gas station was my only solace in this cold, breezy and desolate place.

I started with the open cluster M45, also known as Pleidas. It was extremely easy to spot. The 10X50 binocs showed the 7 bright stars and about 20 or so fainter stars. No sign of nebulosity was seen. After observing M45 for a while, I snooped lower to M1. I was unable to spot the Crab Nebula at all, partly because of the full moon nearby, but also partly because it is not an easy object especially considering that I had only 50mm objective size.

I shifted further South to M42, the Orion Nebula. Extremely easy to spot as the central object of the three stars in Orion, I was able to barely resolve the stars located in the Nebula. Nebulosity was clearly seen even with the binocs and with the wide field of view, all three stars easily fit into the view.

I went in the car, logged my observations, had more coffee and came back out after a few minutes. I started with the three open clusters in Auriga, M36, M37 and M38. All three are easyto spot with a binocs but are not visible to the naked eyes. As a result, you need to know the position of the clusters. M38 is the uppermost object in (when auriga is rising in the East), next is M36 and M37 is the lowermost. M37 sits outside the Pentagonal shape of the constellation of Auriga, while the other two clusters sit inside. Just to the North of M36, I spotted some object which I could not make out. I later confirmed it to be a Nebula (SH2-331) as per the "Sky and Telescope pocket star atlas".

Next, I looked at the Meridian for M31, the great galaxy in Andromeda. It is visible to the naked eye and is extremely easy to find in a telescope or binoculars. The only problem, this time was that M31 was overhead. While this is usually a positive, when using a telescope (a Newtonian or a Refractor/SCT with a diagonal), with a binoculars, the angle of viewing is not very pleasent. M31 shows as as small fuzzy patch when seen thru a binocs and no details are visible. Later on I tried to move to the nearby M33, the galaxy in Triangulum. This galxy is notoriously faint and with such small optics and a full moon, it was no surprise that I could not find the galaxy.

By now, Sirius was up, in the Eastern sky. I tried looking for M41 which is normally an easy target. Because the cluster would be only about 10degrees or so and right in the lights ogf the nearby Young America, MN, I did not spot the cluster. With the cold and breeze, I decided to pack up and left for home. Today (Monday), we had snow and clouds most of the day and I am hoping to go back out to Onan, either Tuesday or sometime later in the week. Hopefully I will be able to add more objects to my total of six Messier objects.