Strange Quarks

Last night’s observation of ASASSN-16ma was with 7×50 binoculars rather than my Meade LX-90 8″ SCT. The nova is now on the verge of naked eye visibility!

I estimated the nova at magnitude 5.5 last night with one before mine at 5.4 and two subsequent observations of 5.8 and another at 5.9. Mine are highlighted in purple as usual.

Here’s the section of Sagittarius of interest as it currently appears from Adelaide, low in the south-western sky at around 9pm:

The nova is just west of the circled star HIP 90012, the 6.2 (labeled 62) magnitude star near the middle of this AAVSO finder chart:

If you rotate this chart 90 degrees to the right, it will have roughly the same orientation as the Stellarium sky scene.

Alnasl is the star labeled 30 (magnitude 3.0) at bottom right of the finder chart. Kaus Media corresponds to the label 27 and Kaus Borealis with the star labeled 28. Kaus Australis and Φ Sagittarii do not appear on the finder chart, but would be off to the left of the unrotated chart.

As I write this, the sky here in Adelaide is quite overcast, so there may be no observation from me tonight.

This entry was posted on November 8, 2016 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Astronomy, Science, Variable Stars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.