Muscat, Oman Observations – Saturday 29 September 2012

Location: Chedi Hotel Muscat, Oman
Conditions: Warm, Patchy cloud. Misty and hazy. Coastal location. (Northern coast)
Equipment: Naked eye, Celestron Skymaster 15×50 binoculars
Highlights: Moon, Tycho, Jupiter

22:30 I had been expecting to get clear skies in Oman. Muscat is a city of about 3/4 million people that sprawls long and narrow along the Northern coast. Light pollution is a problem and this is not helped by the haze and mist. I suspect a certain amount of that is due to dust from the mountainous landscape and the desert interior. A certain amount will have been due to humidity, probably because of the coastal location. I was surprised at the amount of patchy cloud that came over as the evening progressed. I’d noticed similar in Dubai the night before. It was also full Moon, reaching the zenith at around 23:00 and washing out a lot of the sky. The moon was bright enough to cast sharp shadows and being on the approach to the airport several of these were cast by planes.

After dinner, down at a cafe on the Corniche in Muttrrah, we went out by the Long Pool at the Chedi with a beer and the bins. Lay on a divan by the pool looking right up at a full moon. A was asking about the big white crater with the lines coming off it – I identified Tycho for her.
I set the bins up on the tripod to get a look at Jupiter which was about 30° up in the West. Through binoculars Jupiter appeared very orange due to the dust. Seeing and transparency not great.
I thought I’d spotted two moons around the 7 o’clock position. As my eyes got used to it i noticed the closest one in to Jupiter had one at it’s 10 o’clock position. A bit later I spotted another at Jupiter’s 2 o,clock position.

I made a quick sketch and used SkySafari+ to identify which moon was which.

A Lebanese couple came past and were curious about what I was looking at. They’d seen people around the resort before with binoculars or telescopes but never taken a look so I showed them Jupiter and it’s moons.

It’s interesting to compare my experience of observing from The Chedi in Muscat, Oman with that of of a fellow member of the Stargazer’s Lounge forum who was in Oman a few days before me. It seems like I was following him round.