My Best Astro-Blunders

(Plain Text Version)

Intrusive Lights

For many years, I lived in a rural setting in Southern Michigan.  It was a pleasure to have a dark sky and freedom from nearby lights.  At the telescope one night, I was bothered by a light from the cornfield behind me.  I ignored it for quite a while, but it persisted.  At last, I turned around and found that my annoyance was caused by the Northern Lights.  A few seconds later, the aurora ended and did not return. 

Don’t forget…

When I was a brand-new observer, I heard many stories of people traveling to a dark-sky site, only to find that they had forgotten to pack their eyepieces.  I resolved not to make this mistake, so I always triple-checked this item when I packed the car.  One night, I arrived at a club event and found that I hadn’t brought the telescope.

The Mystery of the Great Square

Some blunders are obvious, but this one was hard to solve.  I was performing a “Two Star Alignment” which requires careful aim of the telescope at two known stars.  This enables a digital system to locate numerous objects easily.

The Great Square of Pegasus was well placed, so I aimed at the brightest of the four stars. The system asked me the name of the star.  Since it was the brightest of the four stars, I entered “Alpha Pegasi.”

I was quite baffled when the system couldn’t complete the alignment.

When I dug deeper into the problem, I had a surprise: Only three of the stars of the Great Square belong to Pegasus.  I had picked the one which belongs to Andromeda.

Manney’s Comet?

While I was searching for an object with my telescope, I was startled to find a bright, fuzzy ball.  I hadn’t heard any reports of a new comet.  My breath slowed and my pulse picked up as I wondered how such a bold object could have been missed by so many experts.  I checked my planetarium app and found that I was looking at a globular cluster.  Over 200 years ago, Charles Messier had included it in his list of comet look-alikes.  After a laugh, I realized that he had compiled this list to help people like me to be a little more humble.

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