Eyes Full Of Stars

During this month’s lunar dark time, I got the imaging gear out to work the sky again and attempt to capture some new pictures. Before going out, I spent some time going through my boxes of adapters, connecting rings and focal reducers. I managed to get a set together that now allows me to image targets with my Celestron 11″ SCT at shorter focal lengths than I used to get my image of the Dumbbell nebula. Shorter focal lengths give me a wider field of view and collect more light in the equivalent exposure times. That means I can go for bigger targets and get more detail during my imaging sessions.

Pluto. No matter how you think of it, dwarf planet, regular planet or isolated world on the remote outskirts of the solar system, Pluto’s presence is indisputable. It was there yesterday, its there today and it will be there tomorrow. Since its reclassification in August 2006, the subject of Pluto has stoked public interest in a way not seen since the announcement of its discovery 80 years ago.

Trying to view Pluto through a telescope can be quite difficult. Ordinarily, it appears ’star-like’, a faint point of light that will not resolve into a planetary disc. Without a detailed set of charts to guide your observation, it can be hard to identify Pluto hidden in the midst of a rich star field.

This week, let’s turn our attention to the southern horizon and explore the summer constellation Scorpius. Located in the direction of center of the Milky Way galaxy, this part of the sky is rich with star clusters and nebulae. I love to spend a lazy evening scanning around this area with binoculars.

Get out and face south and look for a lopsided ‘T’ pattern of stars. This area forms the top of the body, the head and the claws of the scorpion.

Look, up in the air! Its a bird! Its a plane! No, its the Air Force’s X-37B robotic spacecraft. Currently on its maiden voyage, the five and a half ton X-37B was carried to orbit on April 22^nd by an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The project has been something of an open secret since its early design stages 11 years ago when it was under development by NASA. However, since launch, the Air Force has remained quiet about the X-37B’s whereabouts. But, it took less than a month for a worldwide cadre of amateur sky watchers to sleuth out the details of its orbit.