[Friends_of_SSASTROS] Notes From The Field - It's been an Interesting December

[Mike McCabe]

December 14th, 2022 – A SevereCase of BSD

  Okay, okay, with the plethora of illness relatedacronyms being tossed around these days you’re probably thinking something like“oh my goodness that sounds bad, I hope everything will be ok!” I can assureyou that I’m confident of a full recovery, but when the dreaded Bad SeeingDecember lets up is anybody’s guess. So far it’s been relentless, and it has compromisedmany an observation right along.
    Let’s start close to home; the Moon has beenoff of most people’s radar since the spectacular close approach with Mars backon the 7th, but I will say that for a few nights afterward themoonrises were particularly beautiful too. Luna is now an early A.M./daytimeobject, and returns to the evening sky on Christmas Eve.
  LaLuna shone in this morning’s sky about 40°to the west (right) of the Sun, and thanks to good transparency was easilyvisible to the naked eye at mid-morning. The view in a scope didn’t add much detail,as the western limb is largely made up of maria, whereas the eastern limbpossess a lot of highland areas. One of the few features discernible in theeyepiece was the Grimaldi Basin, which didn’t come out in my picture.
  Moving out to the Sun, it has been veryactive of late but the BSD has compromised most of my observations, especiallyin white light. I did have a few minutes this morning where the seeing wasn’t toobad, but that didn’t last and soon it was churning away like I was viewingthrough a glass of water.

  Last night I caught a glimpse of Venus about40 minutes after sunset, and I’m hoping to spy Mercury sometime over the nextcouple of evenings. There’ll be an attractive Moon/Venus/Mercury triangle onChristmas Eve and even though the forecast for the sky is looking good at thispoint, the same can’t be said about the forecast for my marriage if I suddenlyannounce on one of the biggest family nights of the year that I’m “going outlooking for a low western horizon”. The Missus is generally very tolerable, buteverything has its limits.

  Beyond the inner planets, Saturn has become anon-starter for me since it dove into the trees to my southwest, and Jupiterand Mars observations have been generally impaired by the BSD. This is kind of a disappointment,not so much for Jupiter which I’ve observed in detail many times over theyears, but opportunities to see details on Mars are few and far between.Hopefully between now and the end of the month we’ll see some improvement inthe seeing conditions. I hope.
    As for deep-sky observing, my efforts thismonth have generally been focused on the Astronomical League’s Binocular DeepSky program. I will say that so far this program has been great fun to engagein, and as with most of their programs I’m seeing things that I’d otherwise notbe aware of. I do plan to pull out a scope soon and tackle the Observer’sChallenge object of the month, which for December 2022 is a triple star systemin Cassiopeia, Iota Cas. Tonight and tomorrow night are looking like they mightbe good for this one. Multiple star systems are excellent cold weather targetsand generally tolerate average transparency pretty well, and we’ve had both ofthose conditions in spades lately so it’s looking like we have a recipe forsuccess. A chart is attached if you’d like to join in the fun!
  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays toeveryone, and remember...
Keep Looking Up!                                                                                                                             
Mike McCabe


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