A few nights later, Dan joined me and we met up with Jim Sofia at Bootland Farm. Jim had his beautiful 18” and I set out my 12.5” PortaBall. The sky was very humid with poor transparency, but the seeing was remarkably good. I spent a good part of the night observing globular clusters and small, bright planetary nebulae (Blue Snowball, Saturn nebula, Eskimo, Blinking, and others — they all looked sharp and well defined). The steady seeing allowed the central star in M57 to be quite readily visible at times through Jim’s scope! Jim also treated us to Uranus and Neptune; they both have such beautiful colours! I especially loved comparing views and exploring what the sky had to offer. The highlight was 21P/Giacobini-Zinner — my first ever good look at this comet. At low power, we could see a broad faint tail and definite motion against the stars after just a few minutes. Lots of fun!
I then observed meteors for over an hour near dawn. I saw 14 of them (breakdown: 6 Perseids, 2 Eridanids, 1 antihelion, 1 North Delta Aquariid and 4 sporadics).
August 18/19 2018, 06:45-08:00 UT (02:45-04:00 EDT)
Location: Bootland Farm (Stewartville), Ontario, Canada
(Long: -76 deg 29′; Lat: 45 deg 23′)
Observed showers:
kappa Cygnids (KCG) – 19:16 (289) +55
Antihelion (ANT) – 22:36 (339) -09
Northern delta Aquariids (NDA) – 23:28 (352) +04
Southern Delta Aquariids (SDA) – 23:58 (359) -09
eta Eridanids (ERI) – 03:24 (051) -10
Perseids (PER) – 03:46 (057) +59
06:45-08:00 UT (02:45-04:00 EDT); clear; 1/5 trans; F 1.00; LM 6.19; facing S60 deg; teff 1.23 hr
PER: six: 0; +2; +3(2); +4; +5
ERI: two: +4; +5
ANT: one: +5
NDA: one: +3
Sporadics: four: +1; +2; +4; +5
Total meteors: Fourteen
Thank you Jim and Dan for the good company! Clear skies!
Pierre Martin
Ottawa, Ontario
