I added another picture I had taken yesterday to the page of sky photos.  This time, I used Gimp a little to enhance the stars and darken the skyglow.  Antares now looks reddish-yellow.  Scorpius is low where I live and in binoculars, Anteres is a boiling mass of changing colors.  I have yet to be able to observe M4 in Scorpius.

 

The smeared bright object on the lower left of the photo is Jupiter.

No telephoto, just the DSC F717, 30 second exposure (I figured out how to do that yesterday) on my telescope tripod.  Note how Mizar and Alcor are well seperated and easily visible.  Note also that a 30-second exposure amplifies a streetlight-lit tree to daylight levels.

 

I took this and several other pictures tonight in my front yard.  It was a better night that my other attempt at astrophotography.

 

Note that although the Milky Way cannot be seen from Bowie because of all the light, it is just visible in the Summer Triangle picture.

I realized I had sketched the comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 when it was in Lyra, thus capturing, by pencil, an image paralleling the photograph I took yesterday.  So, I prepended that observation to that page--it is now the first observation of the three comet observatoins on the page.

 

Tonight appears to be a bad night for observing.

I thought I'd look through the telesocpe tonight, as the Clear Sky Clock seemed to be in my favor.  But--it was so hazy I could see very little.  I tried something "easy" (M13), but couldn't find it.  So I used my binoculars....I couldn't find it there either!  It has to be a bad night if I can't find M13 in binoculars.  In very dark skies, it is a naked eye object (globular cluster).  So, instead I tried mounting my digital camera to the scope to see if I could take pictures of Alkaid, Vega, and Arcturus (all of which were visible).  That is my first attempt at astrophotography.  Now, I didn't mount the camera to the "visual back" where the eyepiece goes; that's an advanced topic for me.  I just bolted it onto the tube and used the mount as a very expensive tripod for the camera.  I selected "A" mode (I forgot what it stands for...I couldn't find a time-release mode or "bulb" mode to control the exposure time) which did 10-second exposures. I used my Sony DSC F717 which is not really an astro camera, though it is a very good, easy to use camera for the usual purposes.

 

Here is the page of pictures (Alkaid is not there because it turned out to be out of focus).

 

Notice that color is evident.  The telephoto lense of the camera split the double Epsilon Lyrae next to Vega (on a good night in a dark sky, it can be split by the unaided eye).  Notice also that I took the picture of Vega through the top of a tree.

 

Now, since I mentioned M13, I decided to add an older observation of M13.

I decided to walk with my binoculars to a park 1/8 of a mile from my house, a wide-open space with trees far enough that I could see down to the horizon.  I tried and failed to find M4 in Scorpius, most likely because in the east, there was a glow from the rising moon and from Annapolis.

 

So, to make sure it wasn't a complete loss, I found a nice binocular target, perhaps the binocular analog to Alberio, the telescopic double I posted about earlier today.  I chose the naked-eye optical double in the Northern Cross.  If you look at the cross (currently, it rises in the east on its side, the top points north, the crossbar east and west), look above and to the right of the center of the crossbar.  If the sky is dark enough, you will see a pair of stars.  In binoculars, it resolves to three stars, two orange and one bluish-green.  There are other, fainter stars in the field too, particularly since it is in the Milky Way.

 

 

The Clear Sky clock nearest me (in Annapolis) suggests tonight is a good night to observe:

 

not tonight anyway.  Of course, I work tomorrow and don't want to be up late tonight.  I also play saxophone in a community band and we have a concert tonight.

 

So instead, I'll post a prior observation.

 

Coma Berenices (Berenice's Hair) is a faint constellation.  It is easily visible to the naked eye in dark rural skies, such as at my parents' house near Moorefield, West Virginia.  There are two stars, and a star cluster (the hair itself).  The legend is Princess Berenice offerred her hair to Zeus and left it on an altar.  The hair was stolen, but her servents convinced her that Zeus took the hair and placed it in the sky.  The asterism that used to represent Leo's fluffy tail was then renamed.

 

The cluster has several naked-eye stars (in dark skies, but not in Bowie) and the dimmer stars leave the impression of nebulosity.  In binoculars, it is beautiful--the brightest stars are just brilliant.

 

Here is my drawing of the star cluster in Coma Berenices.