...continued.
Globular Hunting:
My own discovery of NGC 6638, sparked some enthu in me and i started browsing all tiny globulars within Sagittarius :). I spotted NGC 6624 GC, next to Kaus Media star (delta). Again, next to Alnasl (Gamma) were NGC 6528 GC, NGC 6522 GC, NGC 6558, NGC 6569. All of them were bluish and fuzzy in color probably 3-5 arc minutes in size. 6569 was lil bit brighter and bigger in size than 6558. (Right)
Neptune : When I was moving to Kaus Australis, I heard people talking abt "Neptune" from next pad. Fellow "Gilbert" showed me Neptune in his 10 inch Meade Cassegrain. Neptune was white in color.. "a dot" in the view.. having on board computer indeed helps... According to gilbert, if you make it lil bit out of focus, you can see a out-of-focus disk for that "dot", but other stars still remain as pointed dots and thats the key to identify. hmmm.. After some discussions and with few more objects, i realized that his telescope his not properly aligned. When i asked him to point to Uranus, which i have seen before, it didn't show anything. Also pointing to Mizar in UMa implied its completely out of alignment..so i am really not sure what i saw was really Neptune :)..
Because of Neptune, I got distracted from my GC starhopping and inturn afterwards I realized that I missed some nice globs M69, M70 and M54... any way.. next time !!
Veil nebula : missed - need to read more... nebulousity wasn't visible at all...means i felt something smoky around star 52, but the shape wasn't discernible. Filter would have really helped.
M31 Andromeda - M32 - M110: Because of Veil nebula frustration, i picked best object for nice view. M31-M32-M110.. was awesome.. M31 just doesn't fit into any eyepiece. binocular shows its real size. M31 and M32 fir in same view (36x). M32 is tiny, but still really bright and its ecliptic shape is clearly visible. M110 is indeed faint. Probably fainter than M33-Triangulum galaxy (Wrong) and all high mags just killed it. I tried to put some high mags on M32 to catch any glimpses inside. but i can see only the bright core. I wonder what kind of aperture or magnification you need to see all Andromeda globular clusters. (???)
M33 Triangulum: I misinterpreted the map and it took hell lot of time to get M33 in the view. Binocular really helped here. Probably I spent more than 10-15 mins just to find M33 in binocs and in turn in the dob. It was disappointing.. Again, i didn't see much in the view.. it seemed to be brighter than M110.. but it was hard to see any shape or arms. (??)
M27 Dumbbell: After frustrating M33, I moved to familiar one. Altair + coat hanger and M27 dumbbell the starhopping session i learnt from Jon is so precise and imprinted in my brain, that it didn't take much time to locate M27. Infact coat-hanger was visible with just naked eyes. M27 view was fabulous. I caught it dob, within a minute.
Jupiter: At the end of session pointed to Jupiter. 36x or 76x wasn't impressive. but 135x was THE best. Higher magnification of 270x didn't help. Wasn't able to focus clearly. NEB, NTB, Equatorial zone & SEB were clearly visible. STB was lil bit hard. Sawtooth in SEB was nice. I saw great red spot also. Again.. only the shape was perfectly visible. Need to read more (??)
Moon: Moon rise just washed out whole deep sky... Browsing to moon thru dob was nice. It was too low..
Problem Faced:
- Dob movement not smooth. spring system
- Observations at zenith. Lost direction sense in the view. Chair height.
- Judgment of distances within a field of view.
TBDs:
- Laser Collimator
- Chair with proper height.
- Deep Sky Filter
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