10/26/2013
by Matt White
Saturday evening turned out to be a busy night at Seagrave Observatory. When we arrived to open, we had a large crowd already waiting outside the gate.
Partly cloudy skies had turned in to very clear conditions for the evening session.
After opening the observatory, I trained the Clark over to Epsilon Lyrae, the Double-Double. For this target Jim and I chose an 18mm eyepiece which rendered a magnification factor of 144. We had over twenty five people in the dome. After everyone had taken a first look, I bumped the magnification up to 213x, making it a tad easier to split the two pairs.
Staying in Lyra, we moved down to M-57, the Ring Nebula. For this target I dropped the magnification back to 144x.
After everyone had seen M-57, we trained over to Albireo, the fifth brightest object in the constellation of Cygnus. Because of the color differential (a bright yellow and dimmer blue) this object is locally known as the “Cub Scout Star.”
The crowd had thinned out just a bit and we swung the scope north to Mizar and Alcor. For this observation I chose a 25mm eyepiece rendering a magnification of 108x.
To wrap up the evening, I swung the scope back to Vega, which looks beautiful in the Alvan Clark.
By 9:00 pm, the crowd had thinned out and we closed down for the evening.
