Back In the Game - Part 1 / 3

Date: Sat 1st Feb 2014, from 6pm to 11pm: 5hrs
Location: Jon's @ Boulevard
Weather:  Seeing 6/10, Transparency 4/10. No wind. Around 5pm it was completely under cloud and later it was crystal clear... Seeing wasn't great, but absolutely no winds. 
Instruments: Jon's Obsession 25" dob, My Orion 10" dob and TV101 apo. Nikon and Celestron 10x50 binocs

Highlight of the night: Supernova in M82 and Horsehead Nebula

Mercury
Rigel
Jupiter
M47
M23
Orion
Horsehead

?? Lupus pn
Flame neb
?? Pacman neb
Double cluster
?? Neighbors of db
Crab
M81
M82
2 ngcs

??Owl and gal

Sunflower
M94
M101
Leo 65 95 ngc (new)
?? Leo antenna 4

- Aplha gal

Hubble variable
Pleiades
Thor

M44


Mercury, Ori DS Rigel, Jupiter, Pup OC M46-M47, CMa OC M41, Ori Neb M42-M43, Ori Horsehead, Ori Flame Neb 2024, Ori Running Man Neb 1973-5-7, Location Boulevard, 

Per Double Cluster 869-84, Tau Neb M1 Crab, UMa Gal M81-M82-3077-2976, UMa PN M97 Owl, CVn Gal M63 Sunflower, CVn Gal M94, UMa Gal M101 Pinwheel, Leo Gal M65-M66-3628, Leo Gal M95-M96-M105, Mon Hubble Variable Neb 2261, CMa Thors Helmet Neb 2359, Cnc OC M44 Beehive, UMa Gal M108, Leo Gal 3370, Leo Gal 2903, 

Back In the Game - Part 2 / 3

Back In the Game - Part 3 / 3

New Year Kickoff

Date: Sat 5th Jan 2013, from 6pm to 8pm: 2hrs
Location: Jon's @ Boulevard
Weather:  Seeing 7/10, Transparency 4/10. No wind. in the beginning clouds on wester horizon.. central and eastern horizon clear... after two hours transparency messed up and cloud cover was almost everywhere.
Instruments: jon's 16" and TV101. Two Nikon and one Celestron 10x50 binocs

Highlight of the night: kickoff for 2013 after almost two years..


M38, 37, 36: All three clusters looked beautiful in both scopes and binocs. Crystal clear pinpoint stars.

M35: Looked way bigger than the above triplet.. never noticed it before.. in binocs, the difference in  clearly visible

Pleides: simply beautiful in both scopes.. no nebulosity.

Jupiter: watched multiple times. because o no winds, fantastic view.. main two belts + 1 more belt line visible.. southern fainter wider band visible..  5 satellites: 2 on each side and one on southern side..

Veil nebula: spent lot of time on this one.. very nice.. in 16" scope main two components visible.. the middle third one visible as well plus some fuzziness visible around.. in TV101..you can see both easter and western part... but you will notice that western is much brighter than the eastern part (next to the star).. never noticed it before.. no other components visible.. OIII filter was on.

california neb: in TV101, with H-Beta filter. some fuzziness visible.. somewhat hard.. no discernible shape either... without the filter, it was just impossible..

north american neb:  OIII (???) was on.. Large fuzziness object visible..seemed like divided in two parts... no discernible shapes.. again nothing visible without filter.

M42: fabulous. trapezoid was pin point. 4 stars visible with nag31, lowest magnification. very nice nebulous cloud, brightly lit.

ngc2301: Long elongated star cluster with some circular/heart shape cluster in the middle. Clearly visible in binocs or finder.

binoc comparision: compared jon's nikon 10x50 Action with mine nikon 10x50 Action EX. FoV is same. jon'd are not sealed, so image is not crispy in his, when humidity was high.
 
called off the night earlier because of cold and cloud cover.. i have lost my survivial skills in cold.. have to get back in schedule soon..

Recap 2012

TBD

Little one @ Blvd

Date: August 18th 2012, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 11pm (observing time ~3.5hrs), 
Location: Jon's @ Blvd
Weather: fine.. 4/5 seeing.. before sunset it was cloudy, but later clouds just disappeared. Moon - 1st day 
Instruments: Jon's 16" scope and his Williams 80mm scope  


Our little one visited Jon's place in mountains for first time. Slept all the way during the drive. But played for a while at their place. Later got into daycare anxiety mode and just made everybody go nuts..later got back to normal.

Moon: FAILED. Started observation with locating first day phase moon. But it was way too hard. Never found it. It was Ramadan Ed 1st day moon.

Saturn: Saturn-Mars-Spica triplet as visible in evening dusk. Saturn visible nicely. Tried thru Williams 80mm with 9mm, 4mm TMB eyepieces. Saturn rings clearly visible, front rings are on bottom, while the back side f the ring moves upwards. As night moved on, can clearly see the dark gas lanes on the saturn disk. No details / gaps on rings. Still it was impressive what 80mm scope showed from the dark place.

Mars: 80mm is not enough for mars details. Seemed like big orange bright spot in the scope. Going closer to horizon, so dint get a chance to see thru 16" scope.

M6-M7: naked eye visibility. Fits in same view in the binocs ~6deg FoV. Jons 16" scope lot of details on both. Butterfly shape. apparently i got this pair confused with m46-m47 and ended up looking for the planetary nebula in it. Jon reminded me of absence of last year. Hsshh..

Antares GC M4: Visible thru bincs. 800mm with 24mm EP, shows the GC nicely. Very tiny though. With 9mm, i think can resolve some outskirt stars. 

Northern Jewel Box: Looks nice from all three instruments. Binocs show 5-7 stars low on horizon. 80mm has the best view. Cluster fills up 50% of the view. bright stars with some E + 4 + curved shape visible. In Jons 16", view was fully filled with eyepiece. Can see very faint stars. 

M8 - M20: Quick browse thru. Lagoon without filter still shows lot of nebulosity and C shaped dark lane separation clealt from 16" scope. Triffid looks smaller as compared to Lagoon, but whole nebulosity is nice. More I spent time in EP for Triffid, the dark lanes started popping up.

Swan M17: Quick browse again.. but impressive.. distinctive shape and bright stars at the bottom and another one at the center  in the curvature shape. 

Eagle M16: no nebulosity... typical star formation like a symbol of an angle.

M22 GC above star: quick browse thru binocs and 80mm.. is it bigger than Antares GC 

M25 OC Flipped comma: Binocs show the 3 deg view of this object with inverted comma shape. OC at the center of the comma is smaller, but the whole spae makes it beautiful. 

M23: While looking for Crescent nebula ended up on this one. very bright and impressive object. 16" scope view is just lightend bright with this object. lot of yellow white stars. 

Crescent Nebula: Very tiny fuzzy object from the 16" scope.. but its definitely bigger than other planetary nebula objects like saturn nebula or ghost of jupiter. Can not miss the object frm 16" scope.. next to a star. Infact i found this one first rather than way bigger M23 :). Increasing the mags didn't make much difference though in the visibility... There is a GC nearby it.. i think you can definitely distinguish betn the type of these objects i.e. GC vs nebula.

M10-M12: Browsed the Ophiuchus GCs. Very impressive. looks similar in size as well brightness..somehow binocs gave impression that m12 is bigger, but scope shows m10 t be bigger. Hshh.. must be feeling sleepy. Very easy to locate. Probably saw these after a long time. no discernible shape.. but these are definitively bigger than m92 in Hercules (later).

Planetary ngc 6445 Box Nebula (New): Jon showed this planetary. seemed like bright blue circle...very very tiny.. dont remember anything else. Later i was able to locate it smoothly. There is another GC next to it ngc 6440. In moderate view the pair looks nice.. very tiny and faint..probably only possible in high apperture 16" scope

Ngc oc - Ic oc - Ic oc: NGC is definitively looks nice from the16" scope.. but IC objects are better in binocs. ngc-ic and the planetory fits in same view. 

Gc near spica: Jon showed this one. wasnt able to locate it by myself. its seemed like OC, but its loosely connected GC.

M13: Took a long time just to locate HER constellation. I sort of lost the scale of quadrilateral size. It is smaller than what I was thinking. One year gap in observation made me forget lot of things. M13 is fabulous.. supports magnification really well. yellow white stars.. very bright.. 

Gal: Gal near M13.. very faint and tiny as compared the M13. Wasnt able t fit both in the same view of 16" scope.

Planetary: Again.. yet another planetary..

M92: Tiny as compared to M13.. but i compared it immediately with m10-12 pair.. and m92 seems smaller and fainter than those.. Its sort of lost beauty in front of other fabulous GCs in the sky.

Saturn Neb: Easy to locate. White bluish object.. tiny.. 

M Gc.. M oc: browsing all three objects including saturn neb, is an interesting experience. It shows the differences in the object size. The triagnle is so tiny.. OC is very tiny as well.

M30: Viewed thru binocs.. very tiny.. the typical shape sort of shows up but not discernible well from binocs.

Milkyway: the orion and Perseus arms were marvelous.. its like very bright white cloud belt in the sky.. Dark skies rules... simply breathtaking.

Hello Scooter..

Date: March 8th 2012, Thrusday
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 9pm (observing time ~1.5 hrs),
Location: Hyatt Hotel, La Jolla.
Weather: okay.. in light polluted area.. Full moon after 8:30pm
Instruments: Jon's 12.5" scope and np-101 f/7 scope


Highlight of the night was meeting Astronaut Scott Altman aka Scooter.

Attended a private fundraising event by Astronomy Society of Pacifics. They were honoring the Astronaut Scott Altman (Scooter). The organizer and the board member of the ASP, Russ Carroll, invited my friend Jon to setup his telescope for the guests outreach. Jon asked me to help him.. I was more than happy to be there.. got a chance to meet Scooter, had a lil chit chat with him.. got a chance to listen to his funny experiences of piloting the space shuttle and fixing the Hubble space telescope.

After the event Jon and I entertained the guest with the viewing of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Pleiades, M37, M38, Sigma Orionis DS, Orion nebula.

Probably 50% of the guests have never even seen thru a telescope, so they were amazed to see the planets thru the scope. It was fun for me in answering some "fundamental" questions like:
- How do you know that bright star is indeed Jupiter?
- Why does Jupiter has so many moons while we have only one?
- Why are the moons in same vertical line?
- How big are the moons compared to Earth's moon ?
- What is a difference betn a galaxy, nebula, star cluster and a star?

Jon and I spent about 2 hrs talking with guests.. I have done the public outreach after a long time..

Thanks to Jon for asking me to help you.. Thanks Russ for inviting us.. Thanks Scott for sharing your wonderful experiences..

Some photos from Jon and Russ.

Jon and me with Scott Altman

Me in action.. setting the fan for the mirror at the base of the scope..

With Russ.. at the end of the night..

Back to stargazing... Part 1 / 4

Date: Feb 25th 2012 Saturday
Observation Time: 6pm to 12pm (observing time ~5 hrs),
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: good.. few lower clouds on west in the eve..but alter cleared up.. moon 5th day/~30% phase causing light pollution till 8:30pm.. lil windy at sunset and ~11pm. Seeing wasn't that great 5/10.
Instruments: Jon's 16" f/4 scope and np-101 f/7 scope

interesting things of the night were:
- first real dark session after one year gap..
- first observation of Medusa nebula, Rosette nebula, California nebula, Whale Galaxy, Needle Galaxy, plus some more new galaxy fuzzies.
- Comet Garrad C2009/P1 in Draco
- Browsing galaxies from 5" np-101 scope. When sky is clear and its dark, the small scope of np-101 can indeed show so many faint fuzzies. its very impressive. TBD: Should browse Virgo Markarain's chain through this scope next time.

16" scope with parracor: ~2070mm focal length
31mm: 67x
20mm: 103x
16mm: 130x
9mm: 230x
7mm: 295x

np-101 focal length: 540mm
35mm: 15x
31mm: 17x
24mm: 22x
16mm: 34x
7mm:: 77x

Mercury - Just after sunset, mercury visible through binoculars. while locating it, Jon cheated through his digital dumpy level for altitude and I cheated by following jon's scope location thru my binocs. Tried 31mm, 16mm, 7mm nagler on apo... With 7mm @77x, best view. Looked like a solid disk. Environment refraction showing up in apo, with blue/green color on east and orange/red color on west side of mercury disk.

Venus - Next to moon. 7mm @ 77x best view in apo. the phase of Venus is 60% from west. Lil bigger disk than mercury.

Jupiter - good view, but not the brightest view. 16" scope with 20mm Nag2 @ 103x. Big jupter disk with 4 bands visible. sothern side being the thicker band. On second band from south has a lil storm pattern, just next to the center of the band. (TBD: Need to confirm this: ~6pm). 4 moons lurking around, 2 on each side. with binocs, with hand-shaking trouble, western side 2 moons can be easily seen.

Rigel - 16inch scope, With 9mm @ 230x, fabulous view. Rigel looks like white-blue diamond with 4 streaks in each direction, like a sketch. Companion star is visible clearly with very good separation. located on North 89deg from rigel. Very faint as compared to Rigel. Lowed the magnification with 20mm @ 103x. The split is visible, but lil difficult. rigel is way too bright in the view than its companion. Jon mentioned one imp thing.. Lesser the magnification, brighter the star looks in the view. Hence Rigel dominated the view @103x as compared to 230x. this should be an easy split from home as well (TBD)

Orion M42-M43: 16" scope with 20mm @ 103x: Very beautiful view.. 3D perception with dark pillars ad the wings. Can not feet the whole nebula in one view. trapezoid visible, but only 5 stars, bad seeing. Jon mentioned that he can see/feel the red color in the saucer/wing part on upper side. I can't. M43 shows up as mediocre view as compared to M42.

Orion Running Man Neb ngc1973: Made a mistake with location. We pointed from-Inside the wing-to bigger dark pillar-to trapezoid-to dark splitting lane-just above it... its totally wrong.. Infact its outside wing-other side of the wing than m43, and few degrees away from the disk, you can spot the nebulosity. the dark region nearby sort of shows up as running man. Tried with np101, since its easier to get the judgment on location.. overall not very impressive and not very discernible view.

CMa Thor's Helmet - Impressive views with 31mm and 20mm in 16" scope. 20mm @ 103x with O-III filter is the best view. Object shows up as nice big comma shape with think disk at the top. More you focus on the view, more details you get.

CMa Tau - 103x shows up the view.. its a tiny open cluster in the view at this magnification. Central star is brighter than the rest of stars in the cluster. ~25 stars around. All stars are in outward triangular curvature from the central star, as if the ripples flowing outsides.

M93: 10x50 binocs view. Very small and tiny OC, as compared to nearby cousins M46-M47. Nothing impressive. no particular shape either.

Reflection nebula 2467 below m93: very good view in 16" sscope @ 103x with O-III filter. Easier to locate. Fainter and smaller than Thor's helmet. faint C shaped filled disk visible. in np-101, with some efforts, can see something very tiny..

M46-M47 : In np101 with 16mm @32x shows both clusters in same view. Having both of them in same view shows the beauty in both clusters. planetary nebula in m46 not visible. with 7mm@77x, PN shows up nicely with the cluster in the apo. In 16" with 20mm @103x with O-III filter, m46 is marvelous. sprinked stars now seem brighter with bigger apperture. M47 seems very marginal.. Planetory shows up as bright object in intself. neb looks good...

Jon got 10x50 Japanese Celestron regal binoculars. roof prism. but field of view is narrower than my nikkon 10x50. Tried another 7x42 binos. FoV is wider than Regal binocs, but still lower then mine. Still, 7x binocs was nice. Compared m46-m47 and nearby views in the binocs.

Continued..

Back to stargazing... Part 2 / 4

Continued..

California Neb in Perseus ngc1499: (New) Tried it multiple times during the night with np-101 apo. the best view was with 31mm nagler @ 17x with H-beta filter on. very-very faint.. infact i had hard time seeing it, though it was in the view. with filter on can see something, but really not sure abt the shpae or borders. Not very impresive object. (btw, the description says that this neb is in perseus, but still in orion arm of the galaxy.. interesting). this is first time i observed it.. I think i had tried it in past, but failed.

Medusa Nebula (Abell 21)- (New) In Gemini. yet another very-very faint fuzzy.. Tried it 4-5 times during the night. Very hard to see.. in 20mm @103x can see some fuzziness with averted vision. Later after moonset, with O-III filter on, fuzziness shows up lil better. bigger object like thor's helmet, but definitely way too fainter. First observation.

Ghost of Jupiter in Hydra- Very bright object..O-III Filter helps.. in APO with 24mm@ 22x, it shows up as blue star. but there are no other blue stars in the view and hence you know this is the ghost. with jon's 16" scope, with 20mm @ 103x with O-III give fabulous view.. very bright disk of the ghost. can see some patterns in the disk, but cant grasp it. Just for fun, want to check the first observation from oak springs camground..I still remember it, when Jon showed it to me for first time.

Eskimo nebula in Gemini: Very bright object.. more the magnification, you can clearly see the detailes inside.. white disk.. Bright star in the center visible. Its a disk, made with lot of patterns circling around the central star.. wasn't able to locate it in np-101 quickly..

Rosette nebula in Monoceros (New): Very big object.. relatively fainter object.. but with UHC filter on 20mm in np101 (~25x) fills the whole field of view... the star cluster ngc2244 with 6 bright stars is at the center. these are like three pairs. The whole nebulosity surrounds this star cluster in C shape. The C shape itself is very dense. Tried it with 16" scope with 31mm @ 66x. Very bright nebulosity. O-III filter kills the star cluster, but UHC filter works well on this object. First observation.

Hubble variable nebula in Monoceros (New): in 31mm @ 66x, looked like a very tiny, comet spaed object.. it lokks like ideal sketch of comet, or a street llight with light shapde. As we zoom in, there is a nice bright star at the tip. So it must be reflection nebula, with star light reflecting.. as we zoomed in, you can indeed see the curvature at the end of the fuzzy object indicating the light just shows up at that point and doesnt pass thru.. Very interesting object.. saw it first time, need to see it again..

Orion inverted 37 star cluster ngc2169: directly at high magnification, i think. Seemed very dim, though no filter.. perfect interveted 37 shape. 7 shpae has ~3 bright stars, while shpae 3 had 4 or 3 bright stars.. and all other stars are very dim. total ~15 stars.

Continued..

Back to stargazing... Part 3 / 4

Continued...


Perseus double cluster: with apo 24mm @ 24x, both in the view.. these dont seem as impressive as m46-47 pairs.. both of them almost look same.

M36,M37,M38 in Auriga: Apo with 24mm @24x.. single OC seemed bigger than the double cluster itself.. Outside one, i.e. m37, seemed much more beautiful with compressed salt-paper style.

NGC1893 OC, IC-410 object just below m38, next to vertical star alignment: 16" with 20mm @ 103x, simple open star cluster with lil nebulosity lurking around.. but nebulosity is not that prominent.. probably need to see it thru filter.. Jon have shown me this object before, but looks like i never documented it. interestingly, the description of this objects points to another IC object 405 i.e. Flaming Star Nebula, which is just on the opposite side of the vertical star alignment.. it is more prominent and famous.. need to watch it next time..

M1 Crab nebula: Apo @ 24mm @ 22x. I have seen crab so many times and i know its locatino precisly, but just want able to see it at 22x. I was expecting lil fuzzy ball.. but turned out that at 22x this one is very difficult object to observe. Jon was also lil surprised. it was very tiny and very faint fuzzy at this view.. this sort of gives perspective on how fiant and lil these objects are.. we are just exposed to bigger scopes showing these objects much bigger and brighter..

M81-M82: From apo @ 22x can see the bright fuzzy and bright streak objects in the same view.. can not miss it, while browsing.. alsmot as bright as background stars. m81 the elongated one seems brighter.. Later observed with 16" @ 20mm @ 103x.. it looks much better..

Two other ngcs 3077-2976 in the same vicinity.. they definitely seemed smaller and fainter.. but surprisingly, one looks like m82 i.e. elongated shape one, while another one seems elliptical, like m81.. though they are not..

Jon showed yet another ngc 2787 in the vicinity: (New) yet another fuzzy, but much smaller than above ngcs.

Mizar: The triplet system visible from apo @ 22x. Alcor lil far away than Mizar A-B. All white blue..

Leo M65-M66-3628 galaxies: From the 16", seeing wasnt that great so not very clear.. Same one from apo-24mm@22x looks good as well.. ngc not visible in that view.. but cant miss 65-66 pair.. also, from apo this pair seemed fainter than m81-82 pair.

Tried m95-96 triplet from apo, but seemed very hard.. wasn't able to get clear view in apo.. its surprising..

Jon showed yet another triplet in similar area as m65-66.. betn theta and delta leonis. NGC 3607-3608 tiny fuzzies..

Mars - observed multiple times... best view was thru 16" @ 20mm @ 103x at late night, when mars was 45deg west. The dark areas visible clearly.. mainly two dark areas.. one on northen side.. other one on south.. view improved over the period..

Continued..