General Session - October 7, 2021

Planets: Venus
Moon: Waxing Crescent 3.1%
Asterism: Big Dipper, Little Dipper
Constellations: Ophiuchus, Serpens Cauda, Serpens Caput
Stars:  Arcturus, Polaris, Mizar/Alcor, ζ Ophiuchus
Messier Objects: M10, M12
Milky Way

Location: Site 14 on Ell Island, Kejimkujik National Park, NS
Date: 2021-10-07
Time: 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM ADT
Equipment: Visual, 10x42 IS Binoculars
Temperature: 16° C
SQM: 21.64 - 21.40
Transparency: Very Good (4)
Seeing: Very Good (4)

Earlier this evening, the 3.1% Waxing Moon shone through the layers of sunset colours and Venus appeared at sunset as well.  8:04 PM Signs of the Milky Way were appearing at the tree line edge on our shore. Quite bright in that area.  We watched the night skies as Arcturus, the Big Dipper's stars (including Alcor-Mizar), Ophiuchus, Serpens Cauda and Serpens Caput appeared. We followed the Big Dipper's pointer stars to Polaris in the Little Dipper; we definitely saw the 4 stars in its bucket but sure if the remaining 3 starts in the constellation were really seen or were just imagined. 8:13 PM There is no wind to speak of and the lake is dead calm for another night. So unusual for this Lake to remain calm for so many days and nights in a row!

8:17 PM
Venus is very red when it was approximately 1° above the horizon, as it sank between the trees of an adjacent island. Beautiful!

In binoculars, M10 and M12 appeared as faint fuzzies in Ophiuchus. I used ζ Ophiuchus as the starting point to star hop up the constellation to find these two Messier Objects.

9:22 PM
Jerry asked how to find M10 and M12, and if there were stars in the globular clusters that you could see. I hadn't noticed before but I did take a closer look with the binoculars. I wasn't sure whether or not I could see a few pinpoints of light or not in each cluster.