Star Light, Star Bright

Apparently I haven't written anything about astronomy since December 7th, not long after we got our house.

The trip hasn't been great from an astronomical standpoint. Our house in San Felipe was on the north side of Oaxaca, so the sky glow form the city obscured a lot of the southern sky. Also, the big temperature swings between day and night and the geometry of the valley lead to unsettled air and poor seeing. Nonetheless, I did go out quite a few times while we had the house, at least for awhile.

I can't complain too much, as I found a lot of stuff I wanted to see. However, the views left me wanting more. I know that's always the case, but this time the limits were with the skies and not my equipment.

I eventually found Omega Centauri, but between the sky glow and the small scope I was only able to barely resolve a few stars. I learned to identify the southern cross and corvus and which star was Alpha Centauri. I may even have seen proxima, though I couldn't pick it out from the stars in the field.

I also got crappy views of the jewel box cluster and the Eta Carinae nebula, down in the murk above the city. The LPA filter helped with the nebula, but not much. I certainly couldn't see the Coal Sack.

I did try looking at some stuff more northerly and higher in the sky. Looking at stuff near the zenith is a real pain with the alt/az mount that came with the scope, but I managed. The seeing was always too poor for really good views of Mars, Saturn or Jupiter, but the view of the Orion nebula was surprisingly good. I felt like I could see nearly as much detail through my 5" refractor here as with my 15" dob from in BC. Presumably that's because Orion is nearly always still in the murk when I get to look at it from BC. I also saw M78 in Orion; I don't know why I had never noticed it before. Other favourites like the Andromeda galaxies don't look like much from in the city here; certainly nothing like the view I had from Death Valley.

For some reason, I didn't get around to looking at Venus much. I had thought I might follow the phase change, but I guess we were often away from home around sunset.

We tried to go to a village out in the mountains to find darker skies, but instead we found rain and very cold temperatures. Michelle came down with a cold and it was impossible to find warm air in the mountains, even in our cabana, so we retreated to warmer climes. Maybe I'll have better luck on the way home. We will be in a few reasonably dark places the next few weeks, but at lower elevation and with more humidity. Still, it's possible that the seeing will be better than here in Oaxaca.

Don't get me wrong: it has been a great trip so far, even though my high hopes for great nights of observing have been somewhat dashed.