Pig and Sky Updates

Yep, you probably guessed it, the way my luck goes, didn’t ya? I spent all that time cutting my yard and the resident wild pig (feral hog) decided to give it a manicure. In this first picture, you can see where she is in relationship to my deck where my telescope is now sitting:

This next picture is a closer shot of her trying to make up her mind just what she wants to do next. Eat something or dig some more?

She decided to pose broadside since someone was taking her picture:

“Oh the heck with it” she says as she pretends to be a bull dozer:

Later that evening after dark, she broke down the dogs’ fence. My dogs try to call her in, to my dismay. My wife is afraid that the pig will kill our little dogs, so when she (the pig not my wife) comes around, I got to gather them up and get them in the house. Not an easy chore when they are barking and nipping at the pig’s nose on the other side of a fence that she can easily come through. In fact, my wife worries that the pig will knock down the deck.

Update on the viewing with the telescope. Being old and tired (me, not the scope) I don’t stay up very late, so miss out on some good viewing throughout the night. If I don’t post a blog some morning, I may have stayed up all night.

First, since I told you about Jupiter’s moon movement, let me update Jupiter for you. Last night there were only three of her moons visible, two on one side and one on the other with a big gap between Jupiter and the two moons. I guess one was hiding behind Jupiter, since I didn’t see any new spot on her face. Of course, I didn’t spend any time looking for it.

I found M15, a beautiful globular cluster and then just started scanning the sky overhead. It just amazes me to see how many stars are really up there, all the ones that you can’t see with the naked eye (especially from this area). There is not an empty spot anywhere. While just randomly scanning I came across a beautiful “Diffuse Nebula”. Not sure its name; will have to do some research. But it was fairly good sized and bright enough to see clearly. It was not symmetrical but had a jagged uneven shape. Smother edge on one side and uneven “fingers” on the other.

It was probably close to where M27 is supposed to be, but M27 is a planetary nebula and the one I saw was not. I just love to look into the night sky!