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Observer's Archives - Feb- Mar 1999Website archive 1995-2013 |
Victoria Centre is part of the national Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, which is dedicated to bringing information about astronomy to the general public. |
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Comet Linear On the morning of March 15th Comet Linear approached the celestial pole and appeared to stand still for several hours starting at 1:00am PST. Though the weather didn't hold out a group of us at the Pearson College Observatory observed the comet through Peter Schlatter's 20" Tectron Dobsonian just hours before this photograph was taken. Using a 180mm/2.8 telephoto and Fuji Super G 800 the area around the celestial pole was photographed using a time exposure of 20 minutes. 
Planetary Conjunctions Editor's Note: On Wednesday evening February 17th many of us had the opportunity to see the beginnings of the Venus and Jupiter conjunction. As we approach February 23rd Venus and Jupiter will visually start to close in on each other. The weather has not been too cooperative but there is a chance that we will see the close conjunction on the 23rd.  The 22nd didn't look promising but there was a break in the wind and rain with a wonderfully clear view of Venus and Jupiter getting ever closer. It didn't stay clear for long though as the clouds rolled in covering the sky.  It's the 24th and in Victoria we missed our opportunity yesterday for the closest point of the Venus and Jupiter conjunction. The skies were totally obscured by cloud, not even worth venturing out just in case ! This evening you could see the more brilliant Venus swap places with Jupiter. The Pronto with its 3 degree view (30mm eyepiece) showed the pair beautifully. With the addition of a 2.5x Barlow you could make out the four visible moons of Jupiter.  On March 19th at dusk a very young crescent moon was seen along side Saturn and Venus in the South South West direction. The planets appeared only 2.3 degrees apart. The following view was taken in Sooke that evening. 
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