Skydome Observers' Group

Skydome Observers' Group Meeting Report - 30 June 2008 Planets We started our session looking at Saturn as it heads towards the western horizon and finished up taking in Jupiter rising in the East. We didn't see the GRS (Great Red Spot) as it was on the far side of Jupiter, but we hope to 'spot' it during one of the observing sessions over the next few months. For details on its transit time (when it is in the middle of the planet - it is visible for a maximum of 1.5 hours on either side of this time) check out this Sky & Telescope link and select 'Transit Times' (7th item in the list - you will be prompted to register with the S&T site to access this if you haven't already done so). Special Guests Comet C/2007 W1 Boattini - now visible in Puppis. We spent a significant amount of time looking at this comet, some members being impressed and others not being impressed at all. It was described as looking like a star with a fuzzy cloud around it. We found it using binoculars and then compared the view in all the scopes. From the sky charts it looks like it has now set in the evening sky and would only be visible at dusk with Matariki rising. Deep Space Objects With a perfect observing night we picked up on some of our May galaxy targets: M63 - Sunflower - no flowers seen, but we did detect this faint fuzzy! NGC4631 - referred to as the Herring or Whale galaxy - 25 million light-years away M64 - The black eye galaxy Coming Up A bright ISS pass: Date Mag Starts Alt. Az. Max. Alt. Az. Ends Alt. Az. Sunday 29th June -0.5 17:57:34 10° W 18:00:05 25° SSW 18:02:36 10° SSE Apologies: The next observing session will be on Wednesday 2nd July, not Tuesday 1st as previously advertised. Here is a sample of what we will try for from Paul Kemp JOG lists.