Day 89 - Thursday 19th June 2014

Still cloudy with bits of Sun this morning but refreshingly cool. The wind does seem to be getting up and looking dark. (10:46 a.m.)

Next Sunday is International Sun Day and Andy Devey has asked me to help him in some "Sidewalk Astronomy" down on Garrucha Sea front and to use one of his telescopes to let the public view the Sun.

This is the press release on Spectrum FM's (local radio station) Facebook page.

I spotted that it was clear in Auberry California and that the 610mm (24 inch)  telescope T24 was available so I decided to test out this telescope with an image of M13 which was quite high in the sky.

This is the telescope data:

This is the telescope

and this is the image of Messier 13 the globular cluster

The galaxy visible at top right (about 2 o clock) is IC 4617

Here are the SKyX details which are taken from the Revised IC Catalog.

Object Name: IC 4617
Object Type: Spiral Galaxy
RA (2000.0): 16h 42m 08s
Dec (2000.0): +36° 41' 03"
Dec (Topocentric): +36° 39' 38"
RA (Topocentric): 16h 42m 41s
Major Axis: 1.2
Minor Axis: 0.4
Axis Position Angle:  32° 00'
Magnitude: 15.20
Source Catalog: Revised IC
Blue mag: 16.0
Constellation: HER
Surface brightness: 14.3

 There are a number of other galaxies in this field but are all at least 4 magnitudes fainter than IC 2617 - and not visible!

Finally - a clear night and my C14 almost ready to go. I spent the evening until about 2 a.m.  getting the focus sorted out and using T-Point to build up a document. I will insert images in tomorrow's blog.