On Friday, March 3, 2017 the weather was very good for observing before the epic cold front set in. I was able to map three constellations and one Messier object. I had been viewing M35 for a few weeks since Gemini came back into view over the eastern horizon and decided to log it last week. It was the first time I tried out my dual finderscope. Previous to Friday I had only been using a mini-telescope without a diagonal on it. This was very difficult to use as you had to be a yoga instructor just to get your head behind it.
The dual finderscope I am currently employing has a mini-telescope with a diagonal attached with a red dot finder on the other side. The diagonal eyepiece allows you to stand like a normal person to use it. The red dot finder is perfect to line up with a bright star with no magnification. When both instruments are correctly aligned with the main scope it becomes easy to find objects in the night sky. An image below shows my finderscope setup that attaches to the main scope.
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| Dual Finderscope Arrangement |
M35 is particularly easy to find as it is just above two naked eye stars in Gemini: Eta Geminorum and 1 Geminorum. It is a fairly bright open cluster that spanned approximately 45% of my 48' field of view in a 25mm eyepiece. This would give it an observed angular diameter of 29' which matched closely to the officially recognized size of 28'. I was happy with this outcome since it was the first time I tried measuring a deep-sky object.
Unfortunately the sky was not completely transparent as clouds were rolling in and I was unable to find NGC 2158 located less than half a degree away. The observation record is provided below.
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| M35 Observation Record |
The weather is anticipated to get better next week and I will spend some time this evening putting together an observation plan to catch some Winter sights before they are gone for the year. Also, I am hoping to grab some photographs of the recorded Messier objects to finish off the logs and archive them. These objects will certainly be more exciting to share with pictures attached to them!
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