First light with 10" dob..

Date: 4th July 08, Thursday
Observation Time: 11:30pm to 12:52pm (1:20 hrs)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Seeing was excellent. Heavy light pollution, Red haze in the background.
Instruments: My 10” dob.

Jon loaned me his 10" dob. He mentioned that he is not using it htat frequently and considering my enthu, he offered it to me for a while.

The views in 10" dob are fabulous. with more aperture and 9mm eyepiece, Jupiter was simply fabulous.

Jupiter: Observed at beginning and end of the session, to avg out the seeing conditions. Tried all eyepieces and magnification. 9mm x 2x barlow combo (266x) view was the best. Bright disk... Almost all bands. Upper central one (S) bigger, lower central one (N) smaller and shifted downwards off equator, two more bands on lower side (N). Lower central band had a dark circle at the edge in the center. Upper central dark band on left side (W) has some white saw tooth. and in the same band on the right side there is white circular spot on the upper right corner (NE). some dark spot next to upper band (above central band)on left central and immediately another dark spot at 11pm in next upper band (NW)

4 moons 2 left (W) and 2 right (E). Within an hour, Eastern lower moon shifted from right (E) to left (W) crossing the upper moon. the magnification was so high that all moons look like disks. i never seen moons as disks in my 6" dob.

M8 Lagoon: The nebulosity was almost invisible. Nice cluster in the view. cluster in a shape of crown.. like burger king crown advt... at the center of the crown there is tiny cross. Left side of the crown is some nebulocity.. two stars directly vertical, paralle to crown and are betn nebulosity and crown. another two stars close to each other and at 11 o'clock of the first two brigh stars... this second pair seems to be inside the nebulosity. Exellent view in the thru 25mm x 2x barlow (94x)and 9mm (133x) eyepiece

M20 Triffid: Only the cluster was visible and nebulosity was totally absent. I am not sure if I was looking at correct location. The cluster had nice V shape on the left. In the center had a nice triangle and 7 shape rotated by 90 deg. No nebulousity at all.

M7 Butterfly: found it easily.. shape was easily visible. the bright red star color was absent.. I think its night pollution that killed it. Seems like red whitish background of light pollution in the eyepiece.

M6 Ptolemy: Thought that M6 was easy to catch, but i guess it was too close to horizon.. so just didn't see it.

M22 Globular: Really nice cluster. Around 2 degrees NE from the gamma saggi. wasn;t able to resolve anything at 32mm (38x), but with 16mm and 12mm really nice view.. Infact 9mm (133x) view was excellent. 266x didn't help much. In 9mm almost resolved all stars.. cluster seems ot be devided in 3 parts. Off the center there is group of stars and all others stars are disperesed around it on Left and right side. No colors. 9mm eyepiece almost full in the view.

M28 Globular: NW side of gamma saggi around less than a degree. not able to resolve the stars with any magnification... with higher magnification just lost the cluster. this cluster is really tiny. compared to M22 globular its 1/4th in size. and its brightness seems lighter than M22, but i guess thats because of size.

First session with Jon Issacs...

Date: 28th June 08, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:30pm to 12:00pm (3:30 hrs)
Location: KC, CA
Weather: Seeing was “okay” not excellent. Lil bit windy and after 12:00 winds picked up. Not cold at all. Survived on t-shirt. Lil bit of light pollution on south because of border patrol check-post.
Buddies: Jon Issacs. Only two of us at this dark spot. Plenty of discussions.
Instruments: My 6” dob. Jon’s 12.5 discovery dob. Williams 80mm APO, 10x50 binocs.

Got in touch with Jon thru craigslist. Overall, in this observing session, I wanted to learn as much as possible thru Jon’s 20 years experience. I didn’t have any observation plan. The only thing which I had in mind is to point my 6” dob to each and every object that Jon points thru his 12.5” dob. Compare both views. Try Jon’s eyepieces on my dob, if possible and compare both views.

This is first time I tried the laser collimator. Jon has a nice 1.25” laser collimator. Initially I collimated my scope with my collimation cap. It wasn’t perfect, but almost there. With laser collimator, I realized how easy and precise collimation can be. Jon mentioned that my mirror cell seems to be push-pull cell and described me the use of locking vs collimating screws. In the process, we realized that my focuser tube is also having some problem. Optics doesn’t align properly when focuser tube is fully inwards vs fully outwards. Need to find out more.

Tried the collimation star test on Vega, but Jon mentioned that star tests are pretty good on small apertures or refractors. For big apertures its hard to see those concentric circles. Also seeing wasn’t good enough to try it on my scope.

Double Double: Able to resolve it at 96x only (25mm x 2x). Jon was able to resolve it with lower magnification. My vision is still not fully adapted to these observations. I also tried Jon’s 9mm eyepiece (135x), and seemed like it showed me high contrast in the view than my 25mm x 2x combo.

Saturn: It was close to horizon and was still under dusk. Seeing wasn’t that great. A moon aligned on left side of the rings and titan, aligned at 4 o’clock of rings, were clearly visible in my scope. Again, Cassini division eluded me. In Jon’s 12.5”, Saturn was beautiful & crisp. One more moon was visible next to the first one I saw in my scope. Rings were nice, but I didn’t pay attention to Cassini division. Damn it !!

M57: Ring Nebula: While observing for Ring nebula, got acquitted to left eyed finder on Jon’s 12.5” dob. He also mentioned a trick for locating objects thru finder by using both eyes so that the brain creates combined image of cross-hairs of finder on the naked eye sky image and it helps to quickly locate the objects. Its was lil bit difficult for me in the beginning, but I got used to it while locating star clusters in later session.

Because of dusk, the Ring nebula wasn’t a clear view, on my scope initially it looked like out of focus star, but with Jon’s 12.5 nebulosity was clear. We should have tried it late night. Also use of filter would have been useful.

I need to confirm and understand the location of Ring nebula in the map.

Omega Centauri: Initially wasn’t able to find it with naked eye. But browse thru binocular really helped. Thru Jon’s 12.5”, it was simply fabulous. I was able to resolve the stars in the outskirts of the globular, but the center was too dense. Whole eyepiece was filled up with the globular (don’t remember the magnification). Thru my scope, it was a nice image too.. but Jon had a better contrast than mine. Again it was too low on horizon and border patrol strong lights were killing it.

M4: Fabulous view thru Jon’s 12.5”. In my scope, the M4 and globular NGC 6144, next to Antares, were in same eyepiece view. Pretty nice.

Northern Jewel Box: NGC 6231: I always heard abt it, but never looked at it. Jon pointed to it. In the binocs, APO and finally in my scope. Beautiful !! didn't pay much attention to colors.

M6: Ptolemy’s cluster: It always looks better in wide angle or binoculars.

M7: Butterfly cluster: this is first time I indeed saw the butterfly shape in this cluster. The red star the end of the butterfly body was noteworthy. With my 32mm (38x) color of the red star was noteworthy, but with 3x barlow on it (76x), the color went down to orange. Jon’s 16mm Nagler (76x) eyepiece view was much wide angular than my 16mm setup. It looked nice thru Jon’s 80mm refractor.

M11: wild duck cluster: Nice view in 12.5” dob. Unable to see the shape: flock of flying ducks. I didn’t try it in my scope. We were star-hopping just too fast :), but I confirmed the location thru my binoculars.

M80: Jon pointed to it.. I saw it and forgot :). Just too fast star hopping !!

M8: Lagoon Nebula: While looking for M11 wild duck cluster in my scope, I accidently, pointed to a nebulous object and Jon mentioned that I am infact pointing to Lagoon nebula. I have seen and pointed to Lagoon before (8 months back), but I have just forgotten it completely.

Browsed through binoculars to locate Lagoon. M6 -> M7 -> Lagoon -> Triffid

The nebula also had a star cluster located at 2 o’clock of it. (NGC 6530). Fabulous view thru my 23mm (38x). We tried Jon’s Luminicon deep sky filter on it and nebulosity indeed became brighter. Lagoon was sort of in a circular shape. Second part of nebulosity was lying 1 o’clock to this circular shape and was bifurcated by a dark lane. Also I felt that another nebulosity part was there around 5 o’clock of this circular shape. No dark lane, but separation was clearly visible. Nice view thru Jon’s 12/5” dob. was able to see bright stars at the core of the nebula. Missed the hourglass nebula inside Lagoon. Need to observe carefully and with high magnification.

Missed Triffid and Swan.. instead we moved to Dumbbell nebula.

M27: Dumbbell Nebula: the interesting part of M27 was to indeed find it. Jon gave me amazing star-hopping session with binoculars to locate and confirm dumbbell nebula.

Altair -> three stars aligned with Altair in middle. -> 9 o’clock of Altair around 5 deg N (left) -> three sections aligned: Wider pair of stars + below it, shorter pair of stars + below it, single bright star. -> In between the middle shorter pair and single bright star, there are three stars in a cluster and M71 globular is next to it. -> back to middle shorter pair of stars and move to N (left) around 5 deg. Bright star. 4 o’clock of which is dumbbell nebula. -> Pair of stars at 9 o’clock of dumbbell is aligned to point to dumbbell -> Pair of stars at 11 o’clock of dumbbell is aligned to point to dumbbell

Also, From Altair -> Move to 11” 4 deg and see the Coat Hanger. This star alignment is fabulous and looks like real coat hanger :). Coat hanger extended W (up), points directly to dumbbell nebula.

Jon’s star-hopping skills are indeed commendable.

With this knowledge of alignments thru binoculars, it took me less than a minute to point my scope to dumbbell nebula.

Another fabulous view thru my 32mm (38x) and 25mm (48x). Had filter on 25mm. really bright nebulosity. Didn’t observe thru 12.5”

Leo triplet: M65 M67 NGC3628. With my previous TDS experience, I found it easily. Bad seeing and its was at 5 deg from horizon hill. Better look in 12.5”. Was able to see lil bit of dust lane in NGC3628

Jupiter: Extremely bright. 4 bands visible. 3 moons visible on right and one on left. 3 moons were not as a pointed star but more-ever like a disk..

Canes Venatici Galaxy Cluster: Hickson68 This is Jon’s favorite object. Observed thru 12.5” dob. Kite formation – First vertex is a Bright star. Below it was a tiny galaxy (NGC5350) as a second vertex and pair of galaxies as third vertex (NGC5354 & NGC5353). All three aligned in a straight line. Pair seemed to be brighter than stand alone one. Below it, there is another faint galaxy (NGC5355), edge on, at the fourth vertex aligned in a straight line with first vertex bright star. In the same eyepiece view, way down, there is another bright star and above it a bright and big galaxy (NGC 5371)… this was brighter and bigger than any other galaxies in the view. Jon didn’t remember numbers for these objects, but pointed to them with his excellent star-hopping skills. I didn’t have stamina to find them by myself :). Also there is supposed to be 5th member in Hickson 68 group in the same eyepiece view. Need careful observation next time.

M51: Whirlpool Galaxy While browsing in Ursa-Major, I asked Jon to look for M51 and M101. Again, both of us had excellent star-hopping session for these objects thru binoculars. M51 was an easy catch. Saw thru 16mm Nagler on my scope. Compared to (32mm x 2x) barlow combo, 16mm Nagler contrast view was great. Bad seeing, so hard to see the spiral structure. On12.5” dob, spiral structure was somewhat visible, but because bad seeing and less enthu, I didn’t delve into details.

M101: Thru binoculars it was easy catch, but I wasn’t able to catch it on my scope. I was too tired I guess.

Veil Nebula: Jon pointed his 12.5” dob on both parts of nebula. In first part, central bright star (52 Cygnus). Nebulosity on both side. Right side nebulosity brighter than left side, but left side size is bigger than the right side. Second part thru my scope. Impressive view. Tried with 32mm filter. Also tried to understand the precise location. Pretty easy to confirm location because of 52 Cygnus star. Now I have read more description abt this nebula, I should be able to observe it in finer details.

Alberio: Just before leaving, I pointed to Alberio to see the colors. Immediate split with 32mm. nice golden and green/bluish pair.

Overall, It was great session. More than 20 DSOs and two planets. Two doubles. Learnt a lot abt telescope, eyepieces, collimation and star-hopping. Jon also mentioned that he liked my technique of star hopping thru clock positions. It was first time he heard abt it and indeed liked it. On the negative side, I felt like we rushed really fast in the whole session. It should have been lil bit slow with details observations and discussing those. Also whole session was without dinner :). If I would have eaten something in the middle, I would have preferred to stay longer.

Any way, Last two months or last 8-10 weeks are THE BEST time of my astronomy life. Moving to "next level" pretty fast, unexpectedly.