<html><head></head><body><div class="yahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Greetings Members and Friends,</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Please consider attending our February monthly gathering this coming Wednesday at the Norwell Council on Aging, 7pm start time. In addition to our normal monthly business, I'll be presenting a deep analysis that I did on Matt Schricker's oh-so-fine image of the Auriga region that he shared with us back at the beginning of January. I believe you'll find my results both educational and entertaining. <span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">This will not be a discussion about image processing techniques,</span></span> thus I promise to never even mention things like pixel-scale, deconvolution, up-sampling, interpolation, flats, darks, flat-darks, dark-biases, etc. What it will be about, you'll have to come to the meeting to find out. ;-) </div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">As so many of us did last night, I stepped outside at the onset of darkness to marvel at that splendid sight of the Moon and Venus right next to each other in the sky. The family text groups were on fire. The pairing was simply beautiful. If you put a pair of binoculars or a telescope on the pair, you probably noticed that Venus is well into its waning crescent phases, and last night it was showing a 37% illumination.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">As I was looking that up, I noticed that Neptune was also nearby on the other side of the Moon and that there was an arrangement of stars with it that kind of looked like a squished heart, and so who doesn't want to see the <i>Heart of Neptune</i> when it comes around? :-)</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><img title="Inline image" alt="Inline image" src="cid:803dceb0-c256-c2f8-dafb-9b589365a5d9@yahoo.com" class="yahoo-inline-image" draggable="false" style="max-width: 800px; width: 100%;" data-id="<803dceb0-c256-c2f8-dafb-9b589365a5d9@yahoo.com>"><br><span></span><i>This is what I noticed on my Stellarium app yesterday evening when the Moon and Venus were stealing the show. I went and got my 15x70 binoculars and put them out on a tripod. There was just one little problem...</i></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><i><br></i></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">I should have known. Neptune usually hovers around 8th magnitude in our skies, and HD 224037 isn't much brighter. The Moon, sitting just a half a degree from Neptune last night was at magnitude <i>minus</i> 8.2. That's a 16-magnitude difference in brightness. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was caught out by how difficult it was to make out even just those two dots in the view, never mind all the dimmer ones that made up my so-called "heart." So, no heart was seen, but at least I got to see Neptune.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Speaking of Neptune, the other feature in our skies lately being widely parroted by the mainstream media is this so-called <i>planetary lineup. </i>Well, it's pretty cool lately, and that's because Mars is now rising early enough to be pretty high before Saturn sets. In fact it's surprising how fast Saturn is diving for the western horizon these days, so getting out there sooner rather than later would be good if you are in fact interested in seeing it. It's absolutely a family-friendly activity, so drag everyone out there to witness the spectacle before it goes away.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Gregg Dennizard and I have been in conversation about a potential lunar/planetary observing session being held at Webb Memorial Park in Weymouth. Looking that forecast, the soonest upcoming date that has a decent forecast at the moment is this coming Friday, the 7th of February. We'll update this possibility at the meeting, by which time we'll hopefully have a solid forecast.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><img title="Inline image" alt="Inline image" src="cid:2627668c-305a-46c0-7b02-10583b85102d@yahoo.com" class="yahoo-inline-image" draggable="false" style="max-width: 800px; width: 100%;" data-id="<2627668c-305a-46c0-7b02-10583b85102d@yahoo.com>"><br><span></span><i>The sky on this coming Friday evening, if clear, will offer a plethora of bright targets that would work just fine from a place like Webb. Four naked-eye planets, the Moon, and a host of bright stars will be more than enough to keep us busy until our better sense tells us to get out of dodge before we freeze to death. :-)</i></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><i><br></i></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Welcome to February, folks! Hopefully it's a better month for observing that January was!</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Mike M.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><i><br></i></div></div></body></html>