Saturday, June 6, 2015 - AAVSO Spring Meeting (Part 3)

  

  Group photo of participants at the AAVSO Spring Meeting, from the Facebook page. Adrian and I arrived a little too late to get in on the photo session, unfortunately! 

  If I find out that another AAVSO meeting will be taking place at a location within easy traveling distance, and if I have the time, I'm going to be there throughout the event from start to finish. Even though it was thrilling to be at the banquet, it was a little disappointing at the same time. Most of the other participants had been able to renew acquaintances or get to know each other from Thursday through Saturday. We were arriving right at the tail end of everything. I didn't have a lot of time to introduce myself or talk to many other people. Plus, I think most of them were eager to get back to their hotels and/or get back home. The banquet didn't last very long.

  When we first walked in, the first person I ended up talking to was Mike Simonsen of Imlay City, Michigan. I knew this because of the name tag hanging around his neck. Mike wasn't aware of this, but he was familiar to me. He often posted information about observing on the AAVSO website and I'd also read his posts on his own site. He is a prolific observer who has the awesome ability (to me) of making thousands of variable star estimates per year from the not-so-pristine skies of Michigan, sometimes in frigid weather. Although he seems most involved with cataclysmic variables, he's also written posts to encourage visual observers, and I also know that he's been active with the Charts and Sequences group. Mike was at the raffle table selling tickets to about ten prizes, from eyepieces to color imagers to books. When I asked him who to see about getting a name tag, explaining that we'd just arrived, he pointed us in the direction of Rebecca Turner (who I'd corresponded with through email prior to registering for the meeting).

  Rebecca Turner was, therefore, the second person we met in person. As soon as I introduced myself and Adrian, she went to work. She not only obtained name tags for us, but she also handed us cards to let the servers know we'd signed up for the braised ribs main course. Rebecca was a tall, younger woman who seemed to radiate enthusiasm and energy.

  Adrian and I went back to the raffle table and bought eleven tickets from Mike, and I put most of them in the boxes for the solar system color imager and the video imager that were being offered. Then we sat down at one of the big empty round tables in the room to take in everything that was going on. Most of the others were milling around and talking in small groups by the cash bar near the back of the room, then started drifting to the other tables.

  Two men asked if the seats to our right were taken and had a seat with us. The one closest to me introduced himself as Richard Glassner, from Jefferson City, Missouri. He was a recent retiree who had worked in the nuclear industry, and had just recently joined the AAVSO. He told me that he was starting out as a visual observer and used binoculars; he hadn't bought a telescope yet. I agreed with him that for learning the night sky and getting started in variable star observing, binoculars were the way to go. The other man was quiet and reserved, and introduced himself as Tom Bretl from Plymouth, Minnesota. The name was familiar to me, but I didn't realize until I returned home and checked that Tom was the Charts and Sequences Section Leader. Others sat down to our left; next to Adrian was Marco Ciocca from Richmond, Kentucky. He spent much of the meal chatting with a man to his left (who's name I never caught) about CCD observing; a technical discussion that was really out of my expertise. Marco did show us an image of the galaxy M101 that he'd taken once, on the screen of his cell phone.

  (Just as a side note, while we were sitting there making small talk, word got out and spread around the room that at Belmont, American Pharaoh had won the race and become the first horse in 37 years to win the Triple Crown!)

  Also, while we were waiting for the meal to begin, Stella Kafka started to walk around the banquet room from table to table, determined to talk to every participant even if they had spoken before. Stella had just become the new AAVSO Director earlier this year, taking the reigns from Arne Henden (who was sitting with his wife at a nearby table; I never had the chance to break in and talk to him). Stella seemed very personable. She asked me how long I'd been in the organization and whether I observed visually or otherwise. She said that she was just a beginner at actual variable star observing herself, but she was eager to get started, and pleased to lead the organization. She seemed outgoing, genuinely grateful to meet the observers, and energetic. I think she'll make a fine Director.

  After the meal was over, Rebecca Turner led everyone through a trivia contest where each table was a team, and we wrote our answers to the questions on paper. Unfortunately for me, the questions were over the papers that had been presented over the last few days, and I was clueless. Marco seemed to know all the answers. Then the raffle was held, with Mike Simonsen taking over at the microphone as Master of Ceremonies. His enthusiasm and sense of humor really showed through during this event. Richard, at our table, had bought a real pile of raffle tickets. He ended up winning four of the ten prizes!

  After Rebecca had tallied up the answers from the trivia game and announced the winning table, Stella went to the microphone to thank us all for coming, and to encourage all to keep observing and sending in star estimates to Headquarters.

  Then the banquet started breaking up, though it wasn't even 9:00 PM and still light outside. It seemed like I'd gone to the bar to get a beer and turned around to find a half-empty room. I would have liked to have talked to the eight or so observers from Indiana who were on the attendee list, but I never even found out where they were in the room. I'd spotted Barbara Harris at another table; a Council Member who'd caused a stir in the amateur astronomy community in 2010 when she'd detected the recurrent nova U Scorpii in outburst in predawn skies. However, I never had the chance to meet her in person. I had some last talks with Richard and Tom, finished my beer, and then Adrian and I decided to head back to Indianapolis.

  Out in the parking lot, we ran into Mike Simonsen one last time and talked with him just a little more, then had one last drive through the Ball State campus before heading back down I-69 to Indianapolis.

  Even though the meeting was brief for me, I'd have to write that it gave me more inspiration than I'd had before to make variable star observing a priority. I'd wavered a lot over the last few years about whether to stay with it, or put more time into other projects like meteor observing or lunar work. But even this short exposure to other members and staff gave my enthusiasm a boost. I still think there are important niches that a visual observer can fill, and valuable data to be gathered at the eyepiece.

Saturday, June 6, 2015 - AAVSO Spring Meeting (Part 2)

  Back in June 1983 I attended a week-long summer course for high school students at Ball State University. This was just before my senior year. For a few days I lived like a college student. I was housed in a dorm room with a roommate, I ate in the cafeteria and spent time in the rec room with the other high schoolers, and I attended classes at the Cooper Science Complex. This was 32 years ago. I wrote some notes about the experience in the journal that I kept then, but I don't remember it all that well. I do remember that the Cooper complex had a big planetarium inside of it and it had a roll-off roof observatory on top with several telescopes inside.

  On Saturday afternoon June 6th I had the chance to drive through the campus and walk around the south part of it with Adrian for the first time since taking that course back in 1983. It was a nice day; mostly cloudy but bright with some sunshine, light winds, and the temperature stayed in the mid-70's°F range.

  We'd found the Student Center (where the banquet was going to be held) and parked in the lot there, but we were an hour and a half early, so we walked around and took in some of the sights. The place seemed almost deserted! After all, the spring semester was over, and the students were mainly gone. We found the Cooper Science Complex where most of the meetings had taken place for the past three days, but this building seemed quiet and deserted from the outside also. (I realized, after reading through the itinerary again, that the last Paper Session had probably ended right before we got there, and the participants had probably scattered back to their hotel rooms to get ready for the banquet.) We walked back to the Student Center and waited for people to start arriving. Here are some photos I took with my cell phone during this quiet tour.

  The Beneficence Statue ("Benny") on the Ball State Campus.

The Ball State Student Center 

(where the AAVSO Banquet was held).

  The outside of the Cooper Science Complex at Ball State.

 

Though this isn't the clearest photo of the afternoon, I had to add this. While we were walking around the campus, we happened to see an all-black morph Gray Squirrel! I'm not sure I've ever seen one of these before first-hand! 

Saturday June 6, 2015 - AAVSO Spring Meeting (Part 1)

  I joined the American Association of Variable Star Observers in June, 1984, right after graduating from LaPorte High School. I contributed about 350 estimates when I could (since I was also attending IU and didn't have access to my 6" Newtonian) between then and 1991. Then I sort of dropped out for a decade. After finishing college, throughout the 1990's, I was mainly living in apartments on the Indianapolis south side with no telescope and, really, no place to observe. After Adrian and I finally bought our home in 2001, and I had a fairly dark back yard to observe from and my 6" telescope back, I re-joined the AAVSO. I've kept my membership up through now and I've made about 1,600 other estimates since then.

  The AAVSO is one of the oldest amateur astronomy organizations still in existence; founded in 1911. It's also still one of the best ways for observers with telescopes (or even binoculars) to contribute important data to science. The idea behind the AAVSO was that since professional astronomers didn't have constant access to telescopes and couldn't focus all of their time monitoring the behavior of variable stars, they could instead recruit amateurs to gather the data on the brightness changes of these stars. The variable stars were identified and charts of these stars along with nearby stars of constant brightness were created. Amateurs could then record the magnitude of these variables (along with the constant stars used, chart used, and date and time) and send these reports to the headquarters of the organization.

  Visual observing was the "norm" through most of the AAVSO's history. Some brightness estimates were also obtained through photography. By the 1960's and 1970's, photoelectric photometers were used more and more, and then by the 1980's and especially 1990's more amateurs started using CCD imaging and computer software to obtain very accurate magnitude estimates. Since CCD cameras became popular, the number of estimates in the AAVSO database skyrocketed. When I joined in 1984 there were just a few million estimates stored over the last seventy three years. In 2015 the number had surpassed 28 million data points.

  I briefly tried to learn how to do CCD observing back in 2010. Arne Henden (the Director) arranged the loan of a camera to me. At first, bad winter weather kept me from using it at all. By the time spring arrived I had one night where I tried it out on my 10" scope, using the Moon as a target. But I realized that night that the telescope's focusing mount didn't have the traveling length to let the camera focus, and I also found out that the mount's drive had stopped working, and I wasn't sure how to fix that. In the end, I thanked Arne and the people at headquarters for the loan, but I packed it up and sent it back to them, defeated. It looked like I'd remain a visual observer for quite a while longer.

  There's been a big debate going on over the last 15 years about the value of observing variable stars visually versus the value of observing them through photometry and CCD imaging. Plus, there are also automatic sky surveys in place now, where most of the night sky is often imaged every few nights from robotic telescopes in dark sky locations. Data on variable stars is gathered automatically with these surveys. CCD imaging provides detailed and extremely accurate data on individual stars. Visual observing often seems obsolete. It's often made me reconsider my AAVSO membership.

  In the end, I've become convinced that there's still a lot of value to making visual estimates and sending these in to the AAVSO. The automatic surveys depend on funding, and aren't always online gathering data. They don't cover the whole sky. While CCD imaging is far more accurate than making brightness estimates by eye, the CCD observers tend to concentrate on just one star per night or just a few. Visual observers can cover dozens of variable stars, and they don't need to spend time deriving a star's magnitude with computer software.

  Also, partly thanks to my correspondence over the last few years with (AAVSO member) Mike Poxon in the UK, I've realized that visual observers can fill some "niches" that aren't covered by those preprogrammed all-sky surveys or CCD imagers. Mike turned me on to observing Young Stellar Objects mainly because these stars can exhibit quick surges and fades in brightness that happen too fast for the surveys to document thoroughly, and many of them aren't covered by the observers using CCD imaging. In addition to this, there seemed to be a lot of Eclipsing Binary Stars that seem to be neglected by all observers, and that might show brightness changes outside of the predicted eclipses. I've started a personal list of these stars to observe. Mike's new program of observing "Algols that might be UXOR's" that we've discussed through email this year seems to combine both of these special interests. (I'll try to describe this in more detail in another entry.)

  The AAVSO has two annual meetings per year. In the fall they've almost always met at the Headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Spring meetings are held in various locations in and out of the USA. I realized, in March, that this year the annual spring meeting would happen at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana ... just a little over an hour away from the Indianapolis south side! This was the closest meeting that I'd ever seen. And I was kicking myself! I'd started 2015 with a lot of paid days off at work, but I didn't have many left after February (because of the partial shutdown at the plant caused by the dock strike on the West Coast, and illness). The meeting was going to take place from Thursday, June 4 - Saturday, June 6. All I could really hope for was to attend some of the Saturday events. And Saturday the 6th was also Adrian's birthday! It looked like I'd miss out again.

  However, after talking to Adrian about it, she told me she'd be interested in going. I did some email correspondence with Rebecca Turner at AAVSO Headquarters, explaining my situation, and she offered us a reduced rate for just Saturday late afternoon and evening. By early May I completed the online registration and paid the fee. This was exciting! It had been over 30 years since I first joined. The only other member I'd ever met face-to-face was Mark Bradbury (BMK) in Greenwood, and this had been by coincidence since he'd ended up working at CTB with me when I was employed there. This would be my first chance ever to talk to some people I'd only emailed before. I was really looking forward to it, even though we'd only be able to attend the late Saturday events.

Winter Weather Notes for the End of February / First Week of March

  This has been an unusual Winter, as far as snowfall. I've written this before, but things got a lot stranger right at the end!

  Between November 1st through February 15th, total snow accumulation for Indianapolis was just 8.8 inches. The most snow cover we'd had on the ground at once was about 2.5" and this had happened in the middle of November during a rare early snowstorm. There had been almost no snow at all during December. All through January and the first half of February we had small snow events that put 2" to 1" or less snow amounts on the ground (usually less than 1"). Few of these snow covers lasted more than a few days.

  Then from February 16th through March 1st; just 13 days time, we received a total of 16.7" of snow ... nearly twice as much as we'd had in the previous 107 days! There were small snow events from Monday the 16th through Wednesday the 18th that put 2" of accumulation down, followed by bitterly cold air. Then our first really serious snowstorm of the season arrived on Saturday, February 21st (see previous entry). This gave us just short of 6" in less than a day, and at least 7" of snow cover total.

  The last week of February itself was colder than normal with some minor snow systems. By Saturday the 28th we still had about 4" - 5" on the ground. But starting on the evening of the 28th through much of Sunday, March 1st, an even more potent late snowstorm passed slowly through the area and put down nearly 8" of new snow. We now had a foot or more on the ground! Here are photos I snapped that morning; two from the front yard and two from the back patio.

  The only good thing about this biggest winter storm was that since, this time, we'd received over 6" of snowfall, the city actually mobilized their private contractors to plow subdivisions like ours. Though our neighborhood streets were nearly impassable for most of Sunday the 1st, they were plowed by sunset. They were still snow covered, but they were drivable.

  Monday March 2nd was a mostly sunny day that got above the freezing point, so there was a little snow melt during the day. Then two more systems moved through on Tuesday the 3rd and Wednesday the 4th that made things a little strange. Both were southern systems. On the 3rd we started out with some nasty freezing rain in the morning through noon, but during the afternoon the air warmed enough for precipitation to turn to light regular rain and dense fog. After this system moved out, there was a major snowstorm that passed just south of Indianapolis and ended up bringing us hardly any snow, thankfully. Parts of Kentucky had over a foot of it, and counties close to the Ohio River also received several inches.

  There was one last big surge of Arctic air on Thursday the 5th and Friday the 6th. Low temperatures on both days were in the single digits °F while high temperatures stayed below freezing. The up-and-down weather had reduced our snow cover to about 5" - 6" by Saturday the 7th.

  Looking back, I'm going to think of Saturday, March 7th as the start of what became a much needed Spring Thaw. We reached 42°F on a sunny afternoon, and the snow and ice melt accelerated. I spent much of Saturday afternoon clearing snow and ice from most of the patio, hoping to get some Lunar Observing and Photography in after nightfall. Just to compare how everything looked six days after the first batch of photos, here are some I took on Saturday afternoon the 7th from the back yard. (Note: The cover on the grill looks beat up mainly due to hail storms last May!)
 

  There was much better spring-like weather to come as March really got underway! In hindsight, it looks like the last two weeks of February and the first days of March were Winter's Big Last Blast!
 

Saturday February 21, 2015 - Winter Weather Notes and an Evening Grouping of Venus, Mars, and the Waxing Crescent Moon

  This has not only been a tough time of year to get out to do some observing, it's been difficult to even work up the motivation to observe. Cold air, bitter wind chills, and snow all over my back porch always sap my enthusiasm to carry the telescope outside, get it assembled, and shiver while standing and staring through the eyepiece. It's especially tough on my hands; I've never figured out how to change eyepieces, work the telescope's control paddle, and take notes while wearing gloves. Usually my fingers get numb and painful within fifteen minutes of exposure, and I'm usually retreating back inside to warm up after just half an hour. Winter skies have some of the best targets and the season often features the darkest and most transparent conditions, but it also gives me the worst environment for doing amateur astronomy.

  Last winter (2013-2014) was a horrible one. It had the worst cold snaps in twenty years and the heaviest snow accumulation in thirty years! I did very little observing then. For obvious reasons!

  This winter things have been a lot different. We've definitely had some long, harsh cold snaps (with some big thaws here and there) but what was amazing, at least up to February, was the lack of snow. The most accumulation we had on the ground was 2.5" in mid-November. That was gone in days. We had some very minor "dustings" of snow cover in late November all the way through December. On January 5th and 6th we had a 2" snowfall that stayed on the ground, then more minor snowfalls through the rest of that month. There was slightly worse weather in February, with several 1" to 1.5" snowfalls scattered through the month. And, as I mentioned, we've had several surges of very cold Arctic air in those months.

  This past week has been the harshest of all for the winter. On Monday the 16th we ended up on the edge of a southern winter storm system which ended up giving us about 1.5" of snow all over the ground. This was followed by a strong, windy blast of cold air that was preceded by another inch of snowfall Tuesday evening the 17th through Wednesday morning the 18th. Wind chills in Indianapolis went below zero°F from the daylight hours of Wednesday and stayed there through Friday afternoon the 20th. We had issues with blowing and drifting snow, especially on Wednesday. It was brutal!

  (I should write here that New Moon occurred at 6:47 PM EST on Wednesday February 18th.)

  By Friday the 20th things looked like they were improving. The latest "polar vortex" had moved on and south winds had temperatures climbing back into the teens°F by afternoon. But we were under a Winter Storm Warning by afternoon, with another southern system expected to clobber us Saturday. Anywhere from 4" - 7" of accumulation was expected in Indianapolis. 2" or so of snow cover still remained on the ground.

  There were some light flurries on Friday evening the 19th. At midnight, as Saturday began, the snow started falling steadily, from big wet flakes to smaller pellets. There was an extra inch on the ground by 1:30 AM and at least 2" of new snow everywhere by 3:00 AM. Winds were light and the temperature was rising all night. At midnight we'd been at 16°F with a wind chill of 6°F but by sunrise (at 7:29 AM) we were at 21°F without much of a wind chill. Snow kept falling in bands throughout this morning and finally tapered off by about 2:00 PM. From what I can see, the south side of Indianapolis received about 5" of new snow from this system, and we ended up with 7" on the ground total including the accumulation we'd had from the systems earlier this week. This was how the front yard and driveway looked by 2:00 PM today. This wasn't a big storm by last winter's standards, but it was by far the storm with the heaviest snowfall we'd had this winter.

  Sunshine started to break out on Saturday afternoon, and winds stayed light. By afternoon we crept above the freezing point for the first time in nine days (since the evening of Wednesday February 11) and peaked at 35°F by 4:00 PM. It was actually a pleasant feeling afternoon after being in the deep freeze for over a week! Clouds started moving in again by dusk and temperatures started falling. By midnight, under overcast skies, we were down to 20°F with calm winds. I'd spent the day shoveling and sweeping the front sidewalk and driveway, and clearing the snow from the Civic. Here's how things looked by about 5:00 PM.

  Overcast skies on Friday night the 20th had spoiled my view of a close grouping of the Waxing Crescent Moon, Venus, and Mars. However, on Saturday evening the 21st the sky at dusk was clear enough to see all three of these objects in a slightly different arrangement.At 6:45 PM (about 18 minutes after sunset) I stepped out the back door with the 7x50 binoculars to have a look. The Moon was a thin bright fingernail shape just three days past New Moon, with Earthshine clearly visible on the unlit part. It was about 13 degrees above Venus, which was easy to see with the naked eye even as sunset had been happening. Using the binoculars first, then with the naked eye, I could see much dimmer Mars extremely close to the upper right of Venus (just 26' away, or less than half a degree!) I made a rough sketch of how they all looked this evening and included it below.

Saturday, January 3 - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - Clouded out for the Quadrantid peak

 
  By midnight as Saturday the 3rd began, the peak of the Quadrantids was less than 24 hours away (since the IMO was predicting it for 9:00 PM EST January 3, or 2:00 UT January 4). As expected, conditions in my area made observing anything impossible. There was such a thick cloud overcast that not even the bright Waxing Gibbous Moon could be seen. By 1:00 AM light rain showers moved in, and rain and drizzle continued for the next few hours. Temperatures remained just above the freezing point, so by 4:00 AM I saw no sign of freezing rain, sleet, or snow. I also noticed that the National Weather Service had removed the Winter Weather Advisory from counties just to our north, though it remained in place for the northern third of Indiana.

  By sunrise (8:06 AM) we'd climbed to 35°F, and temperatures kept climbing all day long. At the same time, bands of rain kept moving through all during the daylight hours and winds were light to moderate. At sunset (5:32 PM) we'd reached an unreal 52°F. It was a gloomy, wet, and muddy day, but at least the air felt springlike! I should also mention that the Air Pressure fell from 30.18" near the start of the day to 29.73" by 5:00 PM as the center of this low pressure system passed, then started to recover a little after dark.

  After dark on the 3rd, the back edge of this big system with the cold front started to work its way into the area. The main line of rain had moved on, but smaller bands started to enter Indianapolis by midnight. Winds also started to pick up. At midnight we were back down to 44°F with a wind chill a few degrees colder.

  The best time for me to observe the short, sharp-peaking Quadrantid Meteor Shower would have been from midnight to dawn on Sunday the 4th. The display would have been winding down by that time, but I'm sure I still could have seen several. But the weather just didn't cooperate at all. For hours after midnight we had periods of light rain and drizzle along with mist and fog, then maybe some broken clouds around 4:00 AM - 5:00 AM, but definitely overcast skies from dawn through sunrise (at 8:06 AM again). Winds became strong and gusty. By sunrise we'd dropped to 34°F but wind chills were in the low 20's°F range. The Pressure fell back to 29.73" between 3:00 AM - 5:00 AM before starting to rise again.

  After daybreak on Sunday, things didn't improve much. The sky stayed gloomy and overcast and we had some brief periods of light drizzle and light rain. Winds remained strong and gusty. By 10:00 AM we'd dropped to the freezing point, and by Noon we were down to 31°F with a wind chill of 20°F. By 1:00 PM a mix of rain, sleet, and snow pellets starting falling; the gusty winds made the ice bits "ping" against the windows. As the afternoon went on this changed to bigger flakes of snow whipped by the wind, and it fell hard enough to whiten the grass. This was the first real coating of snow I'd seen in over 2 weeks, and it was also the first measurable snow of 2015.

  Sunset on Sunday was at 5:33 PM. By dusk it was still windy with light snow falling. Roads were starting to get slick with ice patches here and there. The snow tapered off later in the evening, but it remained overcast, windy, and cold through midnight. By midnight it was 12°F with the wind out of the west at 18 mph giving us a wind chill of -5°F. (Wind gusts at midnight were still as high as 29 mph!)

  Full Moon occurred at 11:53 PM EST on Sunday the 4th (4:53 UT January 5). There may have been a few fast-moving "holes" in the overcast by midnight, but it was too cloudy to even get a decent naked-eye look at the Moon.

  And that was how this year's Quadrantid Meteor Shower went for me this year. As I've written, it would have been a difficult shower to observe anyway because of bright moonlight interference, but in the end it didn't matter since the big weather system interfered anyway! The next major annual meteor shower was over three months away; so this part of my amateur astronomy hobby was over for a while!

Catch-Up Notes - PM Sunday, December 28, 2014 - Binocular Observation of Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2

 
  I'd been reading about Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2 online since at least November 2014. This was the fifth discovery of Australian amateur Terry Lovejoy, who had found it in August in the southern constellation Puppis on wide-field images that he'd taken with an 8" telescope. At the time of discovery, the comet was at a faint 15th magnitude. However, it was expected to become a fine binocular object (and perhaps a faint naked eye object) by the end of December throughout January, and possibly beyond, as it slowly crossed into northern skies. I downloaded a couple of finder charts for it from the Sky and Telescope magazine website in early December, and thought I might be able to spot it in southern skies below Orion by Christmastime.

  My first chance to see it, with clear evening skies, and the comet placed high enough above the southern horizon, was on Sunday evening December 28th. Sunset that day took place at 5:27 PM (we'd already gained 11 minutes of daylight since the earliest sunsets that ended on December 13th). Sunrise the next day would occur at 8:05 AM (it would happen at 8:06 AM from December 31st - January 9th). The Moon was just about four hours past First Quarter at sunset, in central Pisces. (First Quarter Moon had occurred at 1:31 PM EST that afternoon.)

  During the day on Sunday, I wasn't really expecting to get a look at Comet Lovejoy or anything else. All day long we'd had a layer of thick clouds in place, left over after light rain and drizzle before dawn. We'd spent the daylight hours a few degrees below the freezing point with wind chills in the low 20's°F range. By sunset we were at 29°F and there was still no sign of clearing skies.

  By 9:00 PM (2:00 UT Dec. 29) the NWS Website was reporting broken clouds and even mostly clear skies, but every time I looked outside all I saw was the just-past-First Quarter Moon shining through a thick veil of clouds. By that time we were down to 25°F with almost no wind chill. However, when I looked outside at 10:30 PM (3:30 UT Dec. 29) I saw that the sky had cleared out a lot, with a few stray clouds that seemed to be scudding off to the south.

  By 11:00 PM (4:00 UT Dec. 29) I put on my old tennis shoes and my winter coat, and put the 16x50 binoculars around my neck. I walked out past the back yard and through the gate to the easement by Feather Run, to get a good view of the southern sky. The ground was still a little muddy but the grass in the easement, which was all bent over into piles and frost-covered, crunched under my shoes. There was still a lot of moonlight around from the Moon, which was still fairly high up in the West-Southwest.

  I was sure of the position of the comet from the charts I'd downloaded, in Lepus. I'd had some careful looks at them before going outside. I used the Moon to focus the binoculars carefully. I also got a few good looks at M-42 (the Great Orion Nebula) before lowering the binoculars to the south.

  Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2 was easy to find using the 16x50 binoculars! It was clearly a smudge of light; a glow maybe 10' in diameter, just a degree or so east of the 5th magnitude star HIP 25045. It was also very close to the globular cluster M-79, though I can't write for sure that I was able to spot this Messier object. After taking a lot of long looks at this comet, I went back inside the house. I printed out a chart from my Starry Nights planetarium program on the computer and drew the rough appearance and location of the comet on it. This is it below:

    Through the predawn hours it remained mostly clear outside with just a few high clouds here and there. I thought about staying up to do some meteor observing, but we were still pretty far from the peak of the Quadrantid Meteor Shower and I just wasn't prepared to sit out and freeze with little chance of reward. By 3:00 AM it was 22°F with a wind chill of 15°F. I hoped for clearer and at least slightly milder nights soon.