Venus the Planet, not the Love Goddess

The last twain mornings I have spurned the Ample Bosoms and headed on out. By 4:30 AM I was all set up, both mornings. Yesterday morning the big attraction was M14. Until yesterday morning I had spurned M14. That’s because early on in my average amateur astronomy career I must have looked for M14 and failed to espy it. That probably pissed me off. So naturally I never looked for M14 after that again until yesterday morning.

Actually, M14 is an easy hop from Gamma Ophiuci. At 100x though, there was no twinkle so the heck with M14. Yes. If you wish to espy globulars why fuck around with M14? Especially since M4 and M13 are so handy. Well, I needed to espy M14 to fluff up my Messier globulars. M14 was the last. Boo hoo hoo. No more new Messier globulars for me.

The feature this morning was Venus getting occluded by Moon. Course that would be later so I needed to kill time. I decided to play, How much fits in the field of the Bushnell Voyager Family Tabletop Telescope? Easy that, lots. For example, employing a 32mm plossl, the Trifid, Lagoon and M21 all fit. Plus, they are all identifiable.

After that there was plenty of time for more wide field highjinks. Lots more time. The fact is, fickle Ogma was up by the time the occlusion actually occurred at around 7:17 to 7:19 AM. Course by then, the telescope had long been tracking just Moon and Venus.

Earlier though, I took this picture of Moon and Venus. It’s hand held.

Watching an occlusion is like watching the paint dry, fairly interesting. But this one freaked me out cause Moon appeared to be backing up relative to Venus. No what I mean? Freaked me out.

This may be a new species for the Gaines Greek Whatever plant list done a few years back. It's behind the world class liquor store. Matelea texensis. Endemic