Hi Patrick, I had the same awful problem last night -- frost! Today I'm buying a little hair dryer. Also, anyone have any suggestions about what to use for a dew shield? I bought something earlier but it's too rubbery to maintain a shape. Thanks, Joe --- On Tue, 12/1/09, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote: From: Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Nova in this evening's sky (Pictures) To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 1:34 AM Hi Joe (and anyone else interested), I got 50 shots tonight and their average is about .15 magnitude fainter than the same time last night. patrick On 30 Nov 2009, at 10:55, Joe Bauman wrote:
Very nice. I'm going to try tonight. Thanks, Joe
--- On Mon, 11/30/09, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
From: Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Nova in this evening's sky (Pictures) To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Monday, November 30, 2009, 1:14 AM
I got a few pictures of the nova as it was about to transit.
Admittedly it's not much to look at. It measured about magnitude 9.05.
But that makes it all the more astounding to me that the guy was able to find it with small binoculars and no computer. Apparently he has the sky memorized down to who knows what magnitude. Impressive.
Unfortunately 9th magnitude is pretty bright for my setup so even with a red filter I was only able to go 2" (3" saturated the chip). But it's there.
I could have gone longer to bring out the background but that would have had the nova saturating the chip and made accurate magnitude determination impossible.
I could not find any amateur pre-discovery shots so I used the POSS. Here's the POSS image with one of mine next to it. Arrows indicate the nova before and after.
If the weather holds I'm going to see about getting pictures every clear night for a while so I can see how it fades.
http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/nova01.jpg
Looks like the progenitor star is listed in the Hubble Guide Star catalog as 5325:1837. Position (2000): RA 04 47 54 Dec -10 10 43
patrick
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