Saturday, February 4, 2012

AstroFebruary

February is not only a season of hearts but also a season of stars. February also has the National Astronomy Week in it (unfortunately it isn't as national as I hope it could be). There will be different activities by different orgs in the days to come.

I started this month by waking up early to image Saturn. Unfortunately it was cloudy, but I waited until it cleared up, just a couple of minutes before the Sun interferred. This was my first attempt to image the ringed planet using my 6" newtonian ("alpha") and Nikon DSLR.




The following day, I tried to use the newtonian for projection of the Sun. I was able to do a sketch of the sunspot group (AR11410 / AR11413). I'll try to add an image of my sketch here later. For now, here is a link of the sunspot image done by James Kevin Ty of the ALP.

In the evening I imaged the moon and also came across another open cluster in Orion - the NGC 2169/Collinder 38. This is the third collinder object I observed in the Orion constellation. Collinder resembles the number 37, earning the name the '37' cluster. Some observers also see a butterfly in this cluster.





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