Wednesday morning (22.04.09) offered me the perfect opportunity to return to the beautiful double star Albireo in the constellation of Cygnus. I kicked things off at 02:30 BST, and spent a fair amount of time just observing the system with the 12mm plössl which easily revealed the rich amber/yellow of Albireo A and, the vivid blue/green of the smaller Albireo B.
After about twenty minutes I decided to push the magnification up, but just as I was getting ready to insert the 6mm plössl something sped across the field of view. It all happened so fast that I just didn’t really get a chance to identify exactly what it was I saw, but if I were to guess I’d say it was a meteor — perhaps a Lyrid?
Although the higher magnification of the 6mm eyepiece compromised the seeing the view was wonderful nonetheless, and at times both stars resolved clearly in the eyepiece. While Albireo A retained most of it’s yellow hue the smaller B companion suffered some colour reduction, but it’s blueish/green glow was still vaguely evident.
Despite the alluring quality of this double star system I was beginning to succumb to the cold, but I didn’t feel ready to just pack up so I turned my attention to Messier 27 in Vulpecula. I’d spent some time with this deep sky object just over a week ago with the 25×100 binoculars, and I was curious to see just what the Celestron Omni XLT could pull from it. With astronomical twilight already well on it’s way I knew it wouldn’t be the best of observation to be had, but I persevered regardless.
After swapping the 6mm plössl around for the 25mm, and fifteen minutes of careful searching I finally landed on the diaphonous planetary nebula. My previous observation through the 25×100s revealed the nebula as “an opaque almost spherical white smudge”, but the view through the refractor exposed the subtle graduations as well as the “double headed shot” that the 19th century astronomer John Herschel had described. This really was a beautiful sight, but if it wasn’t for the fact that I was frozen to the core and, extremely tired I would have liked to have spent more time observing M27. Had I stayed out observing any longer the next door neighbors may have found me clinging to my telescope in a delirious stupor — hopefully things won’t ever come to that!
I’m glad I took advantage of the clear skies that morning because the weather since then has offered up nothing, but perpetual cloud along with periodic rain. Providing things clear up over the weekend I’m planning on spending some time working on the Binocular Messier Club list by hunting down a group of globular clusters in Ophiuchus. Hopefully I’ll have some new observations to report quite soon!
