Viewing Notes
July 3 , 2005
South of Vail, AZ
Obsession 25" f/5 Dobsonian Reflector
Tonight was the big night for the Deep Impact probe collision with comet Temple 9P. I was planning on going to the Las Cienegas site but saw a bunch of vehicles at the usual Starizona observing site south of Vail. So I wound up there, even though the sky to the north is really light polluted because of Tucson. And I know that this all relative and that Tucson is really good compared to other cities. I also wanted to look at the supernova in M51 (2005cs, IAUC 8553 discovered 2005/06/27.933 by Wolfgang Kloehr). The comet impact was a bit disappointing because the only real noticeable effect was greater definition of the comet's nucleus. There was no real brightening seen in the coma, in large part due to the greater atmospheric extinction as the comet set in the western sky. However, the real highlight of the evening was the view of M51 and the recent supernova.
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The image on the right show the supernova, positioned in the second spiral arm at the almost 1 o'clock position relative to the core of the main galaxy. This picture on the right really doesn't come close to the detail seen in the 25" Obsession. The supernova itself was brighter than the foreground star at the 2 o'clock position in the right-hand image above. |
