I began around 10:30 pm doing review with a partial star hop tour of the Virgo Realm of the Galaxies on the SPOC Ealing. The Ealing DSC is down, so it was back to star hopping. Sky brightness 20.3 or an ZLM of about 5.6. The sky was clear from horizon to horizon but seeing was poor - 2/5, measured from a warm up and alignment 3 arcsec double - eps Boo. Temp was 37 F. Fogging on the Telrad, but not other finders was a problem. Using the eastern route into the Realm using eps Vir and rho Virgo as guideposts, a RA slew from eps Vir took me across m10.2 galaxy NGC4762 and its faint smaller companion NGC4754. Continuing the RA slew brought me to v8.8 M60. The v 13.3 companion galaxy NGC4649 was not visible. A 52mm was used as an eyepiece finder, while a 25mm and 20mm e.p.s at 203x and 254x gave the best contrast. Losing an eyepiece TFOV in declination and a further RA slew brought M59 and then M58 into view. Then I switched to doubles - running two of the Bootes double trio suggested in Gary Seronik's column in the new June issue of ST: del Boo and mu Boo. The companion to mu Boo has a great bluish color.
From below the horizon, the nearly 3/4 Moon was beginning to lighten the eastern sky. By this time, Sag and Oph and Jupiter were rising. This week's ST e-bulletin and the June issue of ST noted that dwarf planet Vesta (dia. 501) is currently naked eye and is at its brightest in the last 18 years. Vesta could be easily detected in the light-polluted southeast sky nearly midway between eta and zeta Oph. eta and zeta Oph and Vesta are the three brightest objects in that region.
Then the Moon rose. I switched to hunting M40 in the northwest sky and after the Moon and Jupiter rose to around 15 degs alt, I took a few minutes to view both in poor seeing. With a light blue filter at 334x, Jupiter yielded up four or five bands, but as expected, little detail. Dorsa Smirnov in eastern Serenitatis was illuminated with low angle light and was visible for its entire 150km length. This was a nice end to wet weekend that otherwise curtailed visual astronomy. - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net