And the wonders continue...

Did you ever have one of those practically perfect days, that seem to start well and just continue to get even better as the day continues into the night, a day that will not be forgotten in some time, well that day was Saturday, October 17, 2009 and it was an amazing day. I woke up to go to a class I am taking at CNM, that was a very good and productive class for me then, I then went to work for a few hours that were very productive making me wish I had more time to spend there but I needed to get ready to head out to the observatory for what I was hoping would continue to be a great evening.

I arrived at GNTO and began to set up my telescope and look over my sky maps to see what I was going to be looking for that evening as the sun set and the sky darkened more and more people began to arrive filling the observing field to capacity. The night did not disappoint, it turned out to be a wonderful evening with some very clear good skies for observing the wonders of the universe. I saw a couple of things that I had never seen before and some of my favorites I spent some time staring at through the eyepiece. M13, M57, M31 are all regulars for me when observing but 'WOW' this time observing they were all much more spectacular than I had ever seen them before, I think with a little more magnification on M57 I might have seen the central star. Jupiter was putting on quite a show this night looking spectacular even at low power and holding its own at higher powers, at about 10:30pm I looked at it again with a 6mm eyepiece and was very clearly able to see the 'Great Red Spot' and some detail in the edges of the bands around the planet. I also saw Neptune in Kevin's scope and was very impressed with the turquoise colored disk of the planet evident in his scope, I tried finding it in my scope but after spending only about 10 minutes looking went on to other things.

I also took a look at M27 and M15, both have been seen before but not as regularly as the others and they looked amazing last night the 'Dumbbell' very clearly showed the structure that gave it its name. I also saw the 'Saturn Nebula' NGC 7009 for the first time and it was spectacular, a very small object but it definitely looked like Saturn with its rings (in this case not rings) and the bluish color was amazing. Another first for me was Epsilon Lyra 'Double Double' I was not able to split the second double but was clearly able to see the 1st double and the bright (in the eyepiece) pair of blueish stars were quite spectacular against the background of stars.

All in all, it was quite a good day ending in a very good night. I look foreword to the next spectacular evening of observing and only hope that it will begin with a spectacular day to start.

The image above is a couple pages from my sketch and observing log, I actually took the time to sketch and note all that I saw this night.