Looking north, almost at the zenith and in line with the meridian was the constellation Perseus. Through a 70mm refractor at 20x I was able to make out an interesting chain of stars around Mirphak or alpha Persei, the lead star of the constellation. It's an interesting chain snaking, as if dancing, around Mirphak.
I made a sketch on GIMP 2 here:
Although skies were clear, light pollution was really bad. Bortle Scale of 9, bright inner-city lights with Hongqiao airport less than 5km away and its runway lights blasting up to the north of where I was. There're definitely more stars in this chain and I could only catch a hint of them with averted vision. The Pole Star was barely visible.
More on star associations and this particular one here:
http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=2565
More on Perseus the next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment