Virgo Venture - coming up!

[jjones7777]

Greetings all,

The Virgo Venture is coming up with Friday, May 6th being the primary night and Saturday, May 7th being the secondary (should Friday be clouded out) - both at Cherry Grove. As with the Messier Marathon, the Virgo Venture will be CANCELLED IF CLOUDY. The GO/NO GO call will be made by 4:00 pm on Friday and will be available both here on the MAS Star Parties and Events as well as on the MAS information line.

I've attached the the observing list along w/ the Virgo asterism sheet.

Feel free to post your questions on this forum and let us know if you plan on attending. We had such a great time at the Messier Marathon, let's keep it up!

Clear skies!

[Enberg]

I'm excited! Hope to see a good crowd at Cherry Grove. The weather forecast is promising (3 days out). I will be chasing Herschel 400 objects, and I will also bring a beginner's challenge list of objects. The Virgo Venture itself is a fairly challenging hunt for galaxies - my first year, I gave up on finding galaxies and ended up looking at Saturn, the thin crescent moon, and a few easy Messiers that I knew how to find!

[rzylka]

Hello to all, I would just like to introduce myself. My name is Rob Zylka. I will be taking over for Jerry. I have been with the club for a couple years so have met a few of our group but really hope to meet some new star gazers. It looks good so far for Friday. It might even be warm so bring the family. Now remember you don't have to take part in the venture. Just come on down. I just got a new camera, ZWO ASI 120 mc, that I hope someone can help me with. So bring your scope or come on down and have a look even if you don't have your own. So see you soon. Rob

[Deane Clark]

I hope Jerry is OK!

[FF2Rydia]

[quote="Deane Clark"]I hope Jerry is OK![/quote]
He's just out of town this weekend, according to a sticky post in the Observing SIG forum, which also says that he'll still make the go/no-go call.

[Dave Venne]

I'm attending--I want to get an image of Markarian's Chain, something I first observed at a Virgo Venture years ago. It was amazing to see so many galaxies in one field of view!

[rzylka]

Sorry, yes Jerry is just fine. I am just helping out because he had to go out of town. I am sorry for any misunderstanding. See you this weekend, Rob

[jjones7777]

I'm fine - I made the mistake of agreeing to attend the Back Mesa Star Party before I realized the it was the same weekend as the Virgo venture.

Thanks for being concerned, Deane!

[MTBehnke]

As a newbie I really enjoyed the Messier Marathon last month but it will be really nice with the much warmer Virgo Venture this weekend.

I did manage to see 11 of the Virgo galaxies from my house on Monday night, despite the light pollution in the cities. I started by finding M60, then continued across with M59, M58, M87, M86 and M84. I couldn't make out anything in the Markarian's chain, so I'm looking forward to seeing that from CGO. I then swung up to M88, M91 then down to M90 and M89. Before I called it a night I then picked up M49. They were all really faint, fuzzy patches but they were all right where they were supposed to be based on the surrounding stars.

I should be able to walk through them much more quickly this weekend now that I've seen them once. Then I can work on adding to the 37 Messier objects I've seen so far. I've been keeping a log at:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

The Sessions tab is where I've been recording each night's viewing. For the AL Messier list should I be logging each individual object or does just listing what I saw each night and a general description of the night's viewing work? Also, when do you count something as 'observed' - does seeing a fuzzy galaxy count?

Hope to see a lot of you down at CGO this weekend.

Thanks,
Mike

[Enberg]

Mike,

For the AL Observing programs, what seems to work really well for me is to keep a spreadsheet of the list of objects on the program. After each night of observing, I fill in the columns for date, location, equipment used, seeing and transparency (copy/paste makes this go really fast) and then local time and a description of each observation. For galaxies, the description is usually something along the lines of "ff sl elong NE to SW, with brighter CC and indistinct edges. Brightens in AV. Just W of bright triangle of 3 stars, found by starhopping S from Theta Sco." Each AL program will tell you specifically what you need to document, and be sure to meet those requirements at a minimum. I take my field notes via a voice recorder and transcribe them into my computer later.

As far as whether the observation counts for AL program, if you are sure you found it and saw it as a faint fuzzy, then it counts. This hobby is a quest to see it better - a larger scope or better conditions will let you see it in more detail, or astrophotography will bring out details you could never see visually. Also as you get more experienced you will see more, partly because you train your eyes and you know what to look for. I'm finding that the Herschel 400 program, there are a lot of objects where just barely being able to see it is all I'm going to get with my 10" scope in typical MN skies. When I have the chance to see the same object with, say, a 20" dob from the desert southwest, I will see a lot more detail.

I'll see you at the Virgo Venture!!

Nancy

[jjones7777]

Greetings all,

The skies are looking better for Saturday night as NOAA is calling for rain for Friday night. The Canadians haven't weighed in on Saturday yet, but they are agreeing with the Americans about Friday. I'll post the GO/NO GO tomorrow afternoon before 4:00 pm.

[jjones7777]

Greetings all,

The Virgo Venture for tonight, Friday, May 6th - is called OFF. NOAA is calling for 74% cloud cover and a like chance of rain. Tomorrow night looks much, much better.

[rzylka]

OK, Thanks Jerry. Hope for better conditions tomorrow everyone.

[MTBehnke]

Thanks Nancy -

Now that I'm starting to get the hang of finding objects and based on your suggestions I think I'm going to start my Messier list over, spending more time observing vs. seeing and moving to the next one. Looks like the VV log has about 18 of the spring objects, plus a few more NGCs as well so this should be a lot of fun.

Hope to see you there tomorrow night.

Thanks,
Mike

[FF2Rydia]

[quote="Enberg"]ff sl elong NE to SW, with brighter CC and indistinct edges. Brightens in AV. Just W of bright triangle of 3 stars, found by starhopping S from Theta Sco.[/quote]
Do you mind translating those first two sentences, Nancy?

Also, as for the time, I've switched to using UTC in my logs. I also have a little quirk in my dates: so it's sortable in strings that aren't treated as dates, I use the order year, month, date (I adopted that years before starting any astronomy logs, still last century).

[Deane Clark]

[quote="FF2Rydia"][quote="Enberg"]ff sl elong NE to SW, with brighter CC and indistinct edges. Brightens in AV. Just W of bright triangle of 3 stars, found by starhopping S from Theta Sco.[/quote]

Do you mind translating those first two sentences, Nancy?

Also, as for the time, I've switched to using UTC in my logs. I also have a little quirk in my dates: so it's sortable in strings that aren't treated as dates, I use the order year, month, date (I adopted that years before starting any astronomy logs, still last century).[/quote]

I'm guessing "faint fuzzy slightly elongated northeast to southwest with brighter central core. Brightens in averted vision. Found by star hopping south from theta scorpii." In other words, the description of most galaxies in the Herschel 400, right Nancy? (Except for orientation and location.)

[jjones7777]

Greetings all,

Due to the smoke issues, I am going to wait to post the GO-NO GO until 3:30-ish. The weather is fine; it's a question of health and smoke. Stay tuned...

[setnes]

I am cross posting this here. The Virgo Venture is ON for tonight. I plan to be down there as well. I have a new binder full of images and charts to test out. :)

viewtopic.php?f=43&t=8907

[Enberg]

Top marks to Deane who correctly translated my made-up example of a description!! Document what you can see, document how you found it (by starhopping, triangulation, etc).