Stargaze 01/23/11

At the service road, we observed M42 through the binoculars, which was in Orion southeast of the belt. We observed Jupiter and its moons in the telescope on low power, and on high power the red stripe was easily visible. We also saw the double cluster in Casseopeia by following one of the arms of the worm asterism. Through the telescope, we saw M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, and could make out the elliptical shape. The Almaak binary star revealed differences in chromatic perception, since the bigger star was reported as both red and gold, while the smaller was blue or purple. We saw Murphak, Algol, and a cluster that resembled a butterfly in Perseus. We looked at Trapezium and, while we could easily see the 4 vertices, the 5th star was hard to discern. Finally, we saw the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini. Total time: 2 hours