Crumby's Telescope Tomfoolery Notes and Addendum

Tonight I was going to stay up and gaze at the northeast part of the sky, but the clouds got in the way again. Earlier though I espied M6 and M7, plus the Lagoon and Trifid nebulas in Saggitarius. For some reason I could see the nebulosity really well tonight before the moon came up. That Orion Ultrablock filter is turning out to be right handy for nebulosity. Tonight was the most nebulosity I have ever seen outside of Orion. I could see the nebulosity even without the filter.

But then as soon as I turned around to look the other way, the clouds covered up the northeast quadrant about when the stars I wanted to espy were getting up high enough. One night closer. Patience is no virtue. It's off to the Ample Bosoms, Praise the Goddess.
_____

Special Movie Review

We went to see the new pirate movie. The movie theater doubles as a restaurant and serves up a delicious hamburger with swiss cheese on it. Also, they have Negra Modelo, the best commercial ale you can get in these parts. I had both a hamburger and a Negra Modelo while enjoying the pirate movie.

The pirate movie was very interesting because Davy Jones had an octopus for a head and all Davy Jones' crew had fish, crustacean, mollusc or echinoderm parts attached. It was lotsa fun figuring out what Phylum the different crew members primarily belonged to. And, a giant squid-like animal, some sort of mollusc, attacked everyone. I only got bored very briefly during a couple of the chase scene/sword fights. It is very unusual for me to be relatively still and seated for anywhere near that long, 2.5 hours, without getting bored and aggravated. So give that particular pirate movie three big coyote yips.
_____

Addendum

But lo I was awakened from repose upon the Ample Bosoms by the need to perform a certain ablution common to Druids and upon completion of my ablution I said to myself, "Crumby, you are erect and bushy-tailed, ye might as well go outside and look around." So that's what I did do, head out into the stygian darkness, a stygian darkness lit up only by wasteful electric night lights, the moon, and airplanes zooming aloft, blinking, plus a few other sources of light that need not be detailed in this venue. Once my eyes adjusted to the stygian darkness of the east pasture and my sensory apparati focused in on the heavens, I noticed that the very quadrant of the night sky that I was very interested in was naked of clouds and all those newly arrived heavenly bodies were laid bare to my keen, spectacle enhanced vision.

The area of the naked night sky of interest stretched from Cassiopeia to a little ways short of the moon and almost to the CB zenith. Expeditiously, I gathered up the many telescopery items required and positioned all these items so that they should be handy. For a while I couldn't figure out what was what and the dawn would come anon in a couple of hours or a little more. "Good Goddess," I whined, "hep me, please, please, hep me."

Then the merciful White Goddess had pity on Her ovate and focused me in on two stars, to whit, Alnach and Mirach belonging to the Lady Andromeda and otherwise known as Alpha and Beta Andromeda. Once I focused in on those two, all the other stars patterned up around those two. All righty then, Praise the Goddess. Ye know the Lady Andromeda was also attacked by a sea creature of an undetermined phyla, come to think of it, so that's the movie review connection.

Working from the bottom up, binaries espied were Struve 331 and Eta Persei, then Alnach and Iota 6 Trianguli. Triangulum is troubling on account of its too long of a triangle to fit in the 8x50 binoculars or the 9x60 finder. Or so it seemed to me.

All these are very nice mutiple stars and I felt very fortunate to espy them all. Hark though, the Andromeda galaxy was visible in the binoculars so I decided to look at that galaxy awhile. The Andromeda galaxy is the finest galactic smudge visible in the night sky from the CB.

Then the cloudy curtain was drawn while I was negotiating around in Aries so I didn't get to look around much in those parts, but I did figure out the disposition of Aries, Cetus and Pisces, all very promising constellations. And, of course, above all that was Pegasus, the flying horse, galloping along.

If you fool around with Cartes du Ciel, the most cool, free, electric star chartery, you can set the thing up so that Pegasus gallops along, virtually, on the computer screen. What will those clever Gauls think of next?

Surely, all those known and liked had a Happy Bastille Day just like the Crumby Ovate.