[Friends_of_SSASTROS] Notes From The Field - An Unexpected Opportunity

[Mike McCabe]

Tuesday, June 13th2023; Star Clusters, Satellites and Supernova’s

The sky of late has not been a very observable one, and ifit wasn’t for Steve Reilly reminding me, I likely would’ve forgotten entirelyabout the Venus/M44 encounter that would be happening last night. Even with thereminder, my hopes weren’t very high for being able to see it with theseemingly every night lately forecast for a ‘mostly cloudy’ sky.

But when I stepped outside at 9pm the sky was clear andVenus was blazing off in the west, admittedly at bit lower altitude than it hadbeen in recent weeks. The Goddess of Love has passed through greatest easternelongation, and has now entered the crescent phases as it begins its travelsaround the front of the Sun. Thus it will drop a little lower every night nowuntil it reaches inferior conjunction.

Grabbing the 4.5” F/8 Newt/Dob scope and base by the carryhandles I traipsed the arrangement over the eastern side of my yard and putVenus in the finder scope. Blazingly bright, the second-innermost planet shoneback at me with the signature curve of a slight crescent readily apparent. Inthe low-power eyepiece view, 7th magnitude SAO 80354 stood right outnext to the 44%-lit planet, and below the duo about 20 brighter members of thebeehive cluster could be counted.

That number rose to over 30 by 9:15pm, by which time thescene was skimming the tops of my western tree line. I grabbed everything andstarted hauling it out to the street where I could get a better view (and getaway from the mosquitos) when I was stopped in my tracks by a string of 2ndmagnitude dots streaming up out of the west and straight up overhead.

We now know that these sightings are not alien invasions,but rather the early stages of yet another Starlink satellite deployment. Notthat I’m a fan of this space litter, but the sight is rather arresting. Ieasily counted 51 dots, some spaced evenly and some not, as they slowlystreamed overhead. I later looked up the launch and saw that it was a 52 satellite deployment, which made mewonder if something had happened to one of them. Of course I couldn’t have miscounted.No way Jose. J

Oh well, back to the street and the Venus/M44 encounter. Itwas getting darker now and at 9:30pm I counted more than 40 stars in the scenewith the Goddess holding court. I was looking forward to the point where we cansay the stars were ‘countless’, but not the way it happened this time – clouds!

That show was over so I started looking around and upoverhead the sky was still clear and the transparency was better than it hasbeen in over a month. I stood and I looked and I wondered…the Big Dipper wasvery prominent, the asterism shining boldly way up near the zenith. Hmmmm…

Sure enough, after moving everything into the shadows behindthe camper and then performing a few contortionisms to get it aimed, the littlescope was now pointed squarely at M101. The transparency was indeed good as thedistant galaxy popped right into view as a dim cotton ball-like smudge, andeven though at magnitude 11.5 we were toying with the limits of the 4.5”optics, the supernova SN2023ixf was right where I left it the last time Ilooked. With the SN dimming slowly but steadily now that may be been the lasttime it will be able to be seen in that scope, but darn, it was so cool to beable to do that!

Keep Looking Up!

Sincerely,

Mike McCabe

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