Date: Sept 28th 2009, Monday
Observation Time: 8pm to 9pm (~1 hr)
Location: SD home
Weather: Okay. Moon 77% illuminated.
Instruments: Celestron Nexstar 80GT GOTO Refractor f/5
Used Virtual Moon Atlas to browse thru Moon's features near terminator. Considering the refractor size, it provides interesting features near the terminator. Initially I accidentally picked up the 999mm refractor size and looked for corresponding features, but soon realized that they were too tiny to browse..even hard to see with my max mag @200x with barlowed 4mm TMB EP. After switching to 50mm refractor size, I got the decent features around 10-15 in count.
Crater Euler,
Crater Lambert,
Crater Copernicus,
Sinus Iridum,
Motes Carpatus,
Crater Bullialdus,
While browsing, it seemed like there is pattern in the alignment of these craters.. e.g. Bullialdus and its near by craters A & B are aligned so closely to it, as if they are created becasue of the impact in primary crater. Same thing abt Copernicus-Reinhold-Lanseberg or Archemedies-Timocharis-Lambert-Euler alignment.. considering the distances, I am sure they are not related..but considering the curved pattern just felt like it.
The 6mm @ 66x was definitely sharp image. 2mm @ 200x wasn't helpful at all. Just not able to focus. I think limitation of the scope, should not be the problem with seeing. 3mm @ 133x was okay but still not good..but 4mm @ 100x was the max discernible magnification. So stayed with it.
also, I realized that for more details this aperture is not at all enough.. Limitation on EPs as well small aperture is not good for serious observation. Need to switch to my 10" dob for detailed observation. OR atleast need 4-5" aperture with long focal length refractor..
Also need to get the V block filter. TBD
Monday, September 28, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Faint Fuzzies with the refractor & moonlight..
Date: Sept 24th 2009, Thursday
Observation Time: 8pm to 9pm (~1 hr)
Location: SD home
Weather: Okay. Moon 45% illuminated.
Instruments: Celestron Nexstar 80GT GOTO Refractor f/5
Moon: 6th day: Observed with TMB eyepieces + barlow. Overall 6mm, 4mm and 3mm ,2mm were still nice views.. extreme zoom with 2mm @ 200x wasn't sharp and too wavy.. but high zoom indeed shows lot of details and gives a feeling of moon walk.
- Crater Posidonius at the edge of mare serenitatis was nice.. you can see tiny crates inside it.
- The white ridge, Dorsa Smirnov, inside mare serenitatis was visible clearly and showed its existence.
- Crater Plinius central mountain visibile.. seemed like 2 peaks.
- Crater Theophilius, Cyrillus, Catharina seemed to be connected with crater edges on East side.
Jupiter: Yday watched jupiter, today just tried TMB EPs with high mags.. 2mm @200x was bad.. probably 3mm @ 133x was max i was able to push. Jupiter bands were visible...sort of.. really hard to focus because of R&P. Tried red filter too.. still not that clear.. non-filter view is much better and clear.
M28 - Yday i missed this one, and today while just browsing for M22, I ended up on this one. In 32mm @ 13x clearly visible. Fuzzy tiny and sort of visible. With barlow @ 26x shows some detail, surely kills some brightness.. wasn't able to resolve any details.. but just glad that you can see this fuzzy so clearly at @13x though heavy moonlight is present. This must be visible from my binocs.
M22: Visible in 32mm, thought can not fit both m22 and m28 in same view. With high mags 6mm @ 66x shows marvellous views of M22. can clearly resolve the stars. Though moonlite is present, I was impressed with the quality of the image and the resolution.
M55: Tried hunting for M55, but moonlite kills everything. hunting thru 32mm.. With barlowed 32mm shows some vignetting while searching the object. Lil hard to use. 25mm Elux is better to use after 32mm, instead of barlowed focal 16mm.
Refractor GOTO ran out of battery. Seems to be a trouble for long term.
Need to hunt some double stars.
Overall I am happy with the tiny refractor what it can do, considering its limitations.
Observation Time: 8pm to 9pm (~1 hr)
Location: SD home
Weather: Okay. Moon 45% illuminated.
Instruments: Celestron Nexstar 80GT GOTO Refractor f/5
Moon: 6th day: Observed with TMB eyepieces + barlow. Overall 6mm, 4mm and 3mm ,2mm were still nice views.. extreme zoom with 2mm @ 200x wasn't sharp and too wavy.. but high zoom indeed shows lot of details and gives a feeling of moon walk.
- Crater Posidonius at the edge of mare serenitatis was nice.. you can see tiny crates inside it.
- The white ridge, Dorsa Smirnov, inside mare serenitatis was visible clearly and showed its existence.
- Crater Plinius central mountain visibile.. seemed like 2 peaks.
- Crater Theophilius, Cyrillus, Catharina seemed to be connected with crater edges on East side.
Jupiter: Yday watched jupiter, today just tried TMB EPs with high mags.. 2mm @200x was bad.. probably 3mm @ 133x was max i was able to push. Jupiter bands were visible...sort of.. really hard to focus because of R&P. Tried red filter too.. still not that clear.. non-filter view is much better and clear.
M28 - Yday i missed this one, and today while just browsing for M22, I ended up on this one. In 32mm @ 13x clearly visible. Fuzzy tiny and sort of visible. With barlow @ 26x shows some detail, surely kills some brightness.. wasn't able to resolve any details.. but just glad that you can see this fuzzy so clearly at @13x though heavy moonlight is present. This must be visible from my binocs.
M22: Visible in 32mm, thought can not fit both m22 and m28 in same view. With high mags 6mm @ 66x shows marvellous views of M22. can clearly resolve the stars. Though moonlite is present, I was impressed with the quality of the image and the resolution.
M55: Tried hunting for M55, but moonlite kills everything. hunting thru 32mm.. With barlowed 32mm shows some vignetting while searching the object. Lil hard to use. 25mm Elux is better to use after 32mm, instead of barlowed focal 16mm.
Refractor GOTO ran out of battery. Seems to be a trouble for long term.
Need to hunt some double stars.
Overall I am happy with the tiny refractor what it can do, considering its limitations.
Nexstar 80mm Refractor EP Comparision
Date: Sept 23rd 2009, Wednesday
Observation Time: 8pm to 8:45pm (45mins)
Location: SD home
Weather: Okay. Moon 30% illuminated.
Instruments: Celestron Nexstar 80GT GOTO Refractor f/5
Buddies: Ashwin
Trying to understand which EPs are good for this refractor considering just basic needs. So did a quick eyepiece comparision with Ashwin on moon and jupiter.
10mm SMA vs 10mm Xcel
25mm SMA vs 25mm Elux
The scope came with the SMA EPs, but i am just trying if better EPs can make a huge difference for a newbie observer.
Tried it on Moon. (30% illuminated)
25mm => 16x
25mm + 2x barlow 12.5mm => 32x
10mm => 40x
10mm + 2x barlow 5mm => 80x
10mm SMA vs 10mm Xcel: Xcel defintely gives more wide field and better eye relief. The image seemed to be same in brightness. With 2x barlow on, Ashwin picked up 3 different objects at various locations and compared. with barlowed image, he noticed that Xcel gives sharper image. Also to him, xcel seemed to be better in brightness. On other side, Xcel is lil bit bulkier than SMA.
25mm SMA vs 22mm Elux: Ashwin didn't find any difference in the views with this one. Not much different except eye relief. Barlowed image also dint have a huge impact with Elux.
Jupiter: 25mm din't provide much magnification here. With 10mm and barlowed image, definitely gave lil more in the Jupiter. At 10mm 50x, Ashwin had hard time seeing any bands on jupiter. Probably i can see them, because i know they are there. with 5mm 100x, he can make out the bands on the disk.. but color aberration indeed hampers the image.
M22: Wasn't a great view of M22 in 2mm @20x. Moon Light pollution also just makes it bad.
Overall with the EP comparison, I realized that it doesn't make huge difference for a beginner to differentiate.. probably for my dad, it wont make any difference either :) !!
Observation Time: 8pm to 8:45pm (45mins)
Location: SD home
Weather: Okay. Moon 30% illuminated.
Instruments: Celestron Nexstar 80GT GOTO Refractor f/5
Buddies: Ashwin
Trying to understand which EPs are good for this refractor considering just basic needs. So did a quick eyepiece comparision with Ashwin on moon and jupiter.
10mm SMA vs 10mm Xcel
25mm SMA vs 25mm Elux
The scope came with the SMA EPs, but i am just trying if better EPs can make a huge difference for a newbie observer.
Tried it on Moon. (30% illuminated)
25mm => 16x
25mm + 2x barlow 12.5mm => 32x
10mm => 40x
10mm + 2x barlow 5mm => 80x
10mm SMA vs 10mm Xcel: Xcel defintely gives more wide field and better eye relief. The image seemed to be same in brightness. With 2x barlow on, Ashwin picked up 3 different objects at various locations and compared. with barlowed image, he noticed that Xcel gives sharper image. Also to him, xcel seemed to be better in brightness. On other side, Xcel is lil bit bulkier than SMA.
25mm SMA vs 22mm Elux: Ashwin didn't find any difference in the views with this one. Not much different except eye relief. Barlowed image also dint have a huge impact with Elux.
Jupiter: 25mm din't provide much magnification here. With 10mm and barlowed image, definitely gave lil more in the Jupiter. At 10mm 50x, Ashwin had hard time seeing any bands on jupiter. Probably i can see them, because i know they are there. with 5mm 100x, he can make out the bands on the disk.. but color aberration indeed hampers the image.
M22: Wasn't a great view of M22 in 2mm @20x. Moon Light pollution also just makes it bad.
Overall with the EP comparison, I realized that it doesn't make huge difference for a beginner to differentiate.. probably for my dad, it wont make any difference either :) !!
Monday, September 21, 2009
Friday Night with Oreo Cookies - I
Date: Sept 18th 2009, Friday
Observation Time: 8pm to 1:30am (5.5 hrs)
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Chillier !!
Instruments: Jon's 12.5" dob, Jon's Celestron 100mm f/5 achromat. Didn't open my 10" dob.
Buddies: Jon
Jon and I decided to observe on Friday night rather than usual Sat night. Jon had some work to finish at home on sat because of Francis's Bday. Being Friday, leaving from work and reaching to Blvd was lil hectic.. both of us were hungry too. Had some funtime having Oreo Cookies and Milk. I don't even remember when was the last time I had cookies and milk.. probably when i was a kid :) ..and since friday, Jon is pulling my legs for recommending oreo cookies with milk :)..
Decided to operate only one scope 12.5" and work together..
From M8 to M7 South-west browsing for dark lanes and deep sky objects NGC 6544-6553 (New): This was an interesting experiment, browsing thru this region with 12.5" scope and 28mm Williams UWAN (50x). Just wanted to see the milky way details.. Clearly milky way stars were crowded together..lot of dark lanes around.. and lot of tiny clusters.. Out of all these, Two GCs 6544-6553, next to M8, were indeed popping in the eye. They are at the SE corner of the M8. Indeed small, but noticeable.. the whole southern area seems lil crowded and indeed bright.
Baade's window NGC 6522-6528 (New): Recently read abt this in CN Small wonders article. Mentioned to Jon abt two GCs close to galactic center. First globular 6522 is an easy catch, makes an equi triangle with two bright stars Gamma Saggi & W Saggi. The second globular 6528 is at the center of this triangle. 2nd GC 6528 is definitely faint and smaller than first GC 6522. Thru 4" refractor on 35mm Panoptic, 14x, can easily see first GC, but requires lil bit of averted vision for second one..still not that difficult, if you know where to look at.
Mentioned to Jon that i need to try 3 nebulas in Cygnus. N American + Pelican, Crescent planetory and Veil third component called Pickering's Triangle.
North American Nebula and Pelican Nebula (New): Being a huge and faint object, this one always eluded me. With 28mm UWAN, 50x, I can barely see anything fuzzy in the view. The problem is the wide field of 3deg, required by this object. The only thing which i saw is a crowded region and probably some dark lanes. With OIII filter on, probably i can make out the lane connecting the Northern America part to the southern side.. still want able to see much of the northen american shape. some west coast parts may be lil brighter.. Off the east coast, Pelican nebula was definitely visible.. again..no dark lanes or pelical visible.. probably requires lil magnification.. but definitely the fuzzy part off the coast of florida was visible.
Tried both again in the refractor.. but that was without filter.. so nothing much to see in there. Without filter these objects are indeed difficult.
M30: Wanted to just see it again for details with jon's scope. At 87x, with 16T2, GC with curved A is visible..but higher magnification indeed shows it well. 9mm and 4.5mm nagler shows all details. 9mm nagler at 140x resolves the cluster at outskirts.. the alignment with the A shape is indeed looks nice. Are the A shape stars part of this cluster or just in the view? Update: Yes.. these stars are part of the cluster. these are huge red-giants in the cluster on a horizontal branch. With high exposure photograph, you can see all faint stars in M30 which indeed covers the whole A shape.
M72-M73: In order to look for Saturn nebula thru jon's scope, checked both M72 and M73. M72 was definitely resolvable at outskirts with 16T2 (87x). M73 triangular asterism of 4 stars is visible. I wasn't aware there are 4, till i read abt it. One of the vertex is sort of double with a faint star.
Saturn Nebula: Higher aperture and better eyepieces indeed shows these objects better than my scope. Lil small but bright..sort of giving the hint saturn rings around it. defintely supports higher mags, but cant see much details. tried till 7mm Nag (200x).. also tried the OIII filter.. jon mentioned that object already being bright, filter doesn't help much.
Because of Cookies and milk dinner, Jon was feeling sleepy and went to lie down in motor home. He slept for 1.5 hrs.. In the mean time, with jon's scope and all his excellent eyepieces and filters, I enjoyed the night at fullest.
M55 (New): This GC is marvelous and huge as compared to most of messier GCs. Easy binocular object, just always missed it. Easily resolvable at lower magnifications. don't remember any details.
M75 (New): Compared to its neighbors M55, M75 is a hard object. Wasn't visible at all in the binocular.. Spent hell lot of time in locating this object. Barely visible in finder. This one is probably 1/5 in size of his bigger cousin and not that bright either... nothing special abt it.. just yet another M object.
Veil Nebula: Pickering's triangle: Veil was as usual marvelous in Jon's scope. Broom and veil both visible nicely in 28mm uwan with filter on. Next to the broom, there is third part visible. This is indeed faint as compared to first two parts.. but definitely visible. Triangular fuzziness is visible. I wasn't aware abt the 3rd component before reading abt it. so wanted to take a look.
M57 ring: Ring was tiny in 28mm uwan @ 50x. but as you bump up the magnification, M57 indeed shows its true size. with filter on the nebulosity indeed becomes brighter. The donut shape is stronger. With filter on the 2" star vanished..but without filter this one shows up nicely.
Continued..
Observation Time: 8pm to 1:30am (5.5 hrs)
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Chillier !!
Instruments: Jon's 12.5" dob, Jon's Celestron 100mm f/5 achromat. Didn't open my 10" dob.
Buddies: Jon
Jon and I decided to observe on Friday night rather than usual Sat night. Jon had some work to finish at home on sat because of Francis's Bday. Being Friday, leaving from work and reaching to Blvd was lil hectic.. both of us were hungry too. Had some funtime having Oreo Cookies and Milk. I don't even remember when was the last time I had cookies and milk.. probably when i was a kid :) ..and since friday, Jon is pulling my legs for recommending oreo cookies with milk :)..
Decided to operate only one scope 12.5" and work together..
From M8 to M7 South-west browsing for dark lanes and deep sky objects NGC 6544-6553 (New): This was an interesting experiment, browsing thru this region with 12.5" scope and 28mm Williams UWAN (50x). Just wanted to see the milky way details.. Clearly milky way stars were crowded together..lot of dark lanes around.. and lot of tiny clusters.. Out of all these, Two GCs 6544-6553, next to M8, were indeed popping in the eye. They are at the SE corner of the M8. Indeed small, but noticeable.. the whole southern area seems lil crowded and indeed bright.
Baade's window NGC 6522-6528 (New): Recently read abt this in CN Small wonders article. Mentioned to Jon abt two GCs close to galactic center. First globular 6522 is an easy catch, makes an equi triangle with two bright stars Gamma Saggi & W Saggi. The second globular 6528 is at the center of this triangle. 2nd GC 6528 is definitely faint and smaller than first GC 6522. Thru 4" refractor on 35mm Panoptic, 14x, can easily see first GC, but requires lil bit of averted vision for second one..still not that difficult, if you know where to look at.
Mentioned to Jon that i need to try 3 nebulas in Cygnus. N American + Pelican, Crescent planetory and Veil third component called Pickering's Triangle.
North American Nebula and Pelican Nebula (New): Being a huge and faint object, this one always eluded me. With 28mm UWAN, 50x, I can barely see anything fuzzy in the view. The problem is the wide field of 3deg, required by this object. The only thing which i saw is a crowded region and probably some dark lanes. With OIII filter on, probably i can make out the lane connecting the Northern America part to the southern side.. still want able to see much of the northen american shape. some west coast parts may be lil brighter.. Off the east coast, Pelican nebula was definitely visible.. again..no dark lanes or pelical visible.. probably requires lil magnification.. but definitely the fuzzy part off the coast of florida was visible.
Tried both again in the refractor.. but that was without filter.. so nothing much to see in there. Without filter these objects are indeed difficult.
M30: Wanted to just see it again for details with jon's scope. At 87x, with 16T2, GC with curved A is visible..but higher magnification indeed shows it well. 9mm and 4.5mm nagler shows all details. 9mm nagler at 140x resolves the cluster at outskirts.. the alignment with the A shape is indeed looks nice. Are the A shape stars part of this cluster or just in the view? Update: Yes.. these stars are part of the cluster. these are huge red-giants in the cluster on a horizontal branch. With high exposure photograph, you can see all faint stars in M30 which indeed covers the whole A shape.
M72-M73: In order to look for Saturn nebula thru jon's scope, checked both M72 and M73. M72 was definitely resolvable at outskirts with 16T2 (87x). M73 triangular asterism of 4 stars is visible. I wasn't aware there are 4, till i read abt it. One of the vertex is sort of double with a faint star.
Saturn Nebula: Higher aperture and better eyepieces indeed shows these objects better than my scope. Lil small but bright..sort of giving the hint saturn rings around it. defintely supports higher mags, but cant see much details. tried till 7mm Nag (200x).. also tried the OIII filter.. jon mentioned that object already being bright, filter doesn't help much.
Because of Cookies and milk dinner, Jon was feeling sleepy and went to lie down in motor home. He slept for 1.5 hrs.. In the mean time, with jon's scope and all his excellent eyepieces and filters, I enjoyed the night at fullest.
M55 (New): This GC is marvelous and huge as compared to most of messier GCs. Easy binocular object, just always missed it. Easily resolvable at lower magnifications. don't remember any details.
M75 (New): Compared to its neighbors M55, M75 is a hard object. Wasn't visible at all in the binocular.. Spent hell lot of time in locating this object. Barely visible in finder. This one is probably 1/5 in size of his bigger cousin and not that bright either... nothing special abt it.. just yet another M object.
Veil Nebula: Pickering's triangle: Veil was as usual marvelous in Jon's scope. Broom and veil both visible nicely in 28mm uwan with filter on. Next to the broom, there is third part visible. This is indeed faint as compared to first two parts.. but definitely visible. Triangular fuzziness is visible. I wasn't aware abt the 3rd component before reading abt it. so wanted to take a look.
M57 ring: Ring was tiny in 28mm uwan @ 50x. but as you bump up the magnification, M57 indeed shows its true size. with filter on the nebulosity indeed becomes brighter. The donut shape is stronger. With filter on the 2" star vanished..but without filter this one shows up nicely.
Continued..
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Friday Night with Oreo Cookies - II
Continued..
Blinking PN 6826: There is huge difference betn this one and M57. Compared to their sizes, this one is really really tiny. probably its 1/5th the size of ring. Easy to locate. I think i saw it @ 50x. As I bumped up the mag to 87x with 16T2, the blinking star inside the PN was sort of visible.. More the mags, the blinking effect just went away and bright white star in the bluish disk stays nicely. Unlike M57, this disk is not donut shaped.. the disk is complete, no hole, and the star is perfect white. The blue color depth keeps on reducing from edge to center, probably because of the existence of the star. the more you look at the star more brighter it seems. Blinking PN was masterpiece of the night.
M39 (New): Naked eye object. Thru binocs or lowest mag shows the stars in pyramid/triangle shape. Whole triangle is filled up with stars. Its indeed beautiful.
M29: While hunting for Crescent Nebula, browsed thru this one. Its a small open cluster. Not that impressive for an open cluster..around 15 stars. It shows sort of butterfly shape or outwards curved H. Because of the shape definitely stands out in the view.
Crescent Nebula (New): This is indeed a hard object. In 28mm @ 50x or at higher magnification also, nothing is visible in direct sight. If looked carefully at correct location, then with 50x, i can see the typical curved fuzziness, but still really really faint. After adding the filter, nebula shows up.. With 16T2 @ 87x, it indeed shows the typical Epsilon E-C shape. It fills up around 25% of the eyepiece in center. It is indeed fainter than veil pickering part. Jon wasn't even able to find it. But i got it luckily and then figured out the exact location from M29 and deneb. Should be able to find it next time.
Helix Nebula: Just wanted to take a look thru bigger aperture. Din't make much difference. Filter helps to brighten it up, but then it still din't show any details in the helix. Interesting thing to note is, I can see 4 bright stars inside/on the helix. Some of them seem to be behind the helix too. Being closet PN, probably should highly magnify it to see the details.
Scl GC 288 + Sculptor Gal 253: Both of them are easy catch. Can't fit them in same view @50x with UWAN 82deg, but they are close.. probably in the same view in Ethos 100deg may be possible. The GC is resolvable @ 87x in 16T2, seemed like yellow stars sprinkled on bluish cluster disk. the galaxy is also huge.. it feels up 80% of the 16T2 eyepiece. being sort of edge on, seemed pretty thick too. I felt like i saw some mottling or vertical line/gap on the left side of the galaxy, lil bit like M82 ?? TBD.
Sculptor Dwarf Gal: Failed. The skymap shows it pretty huge object... and so i tried to look for it..Fought for it but didn't find it. Jon also tried it but failed.. when we checked the details of the object, the description indeed shows huge size, but surface brightness is +17.0 magnitude. Completely useless. Need bigger aperture or is it just a photographic object?
MCG -06-03-015 Sculptor Dwarf, Constellation: Sculptor, Dimension: 40.0'x 31.0', Magnitude: 10.50, Surface Brightness: 17.10, Description: vvL,eeF,lE ESO 351-G030,Member of Local Group,large and dim
M34: Tired..so revisiting something. Messed up the location. Picked up wrong stars in perseus and andromeda to look for it. It indeed seems like bouquet or probably diwali cracker - zaad.
M52: Hunt for bubble in Cassiopeia starts with M52 cluster.. because of the filter, cluster is dim, but still the bright star, at the edge of the cluster, seems prominent. With 87x, this one seems interesting. dint try high mags without filter.
Bubble nebula: failed. After the inspiration from Crescent nebula, tried for bubble nebula. Jon mentioned to use H-beta filter on this. He also said that he has tried for it a lot but failed. Indeed hard object. Wasn't even sure how its supposed to look like or how faint it is..
M31-M32-M110: Quick browse thru refractor.. M32 and M110 are indeed tiny with 14x 35mm panoptic.
Pleiades M45: All bluish stars..no fuzziness. Didn't fit in the same view of Pan 14x.
Cygnus PN 7048 (Failed) 7026 (New): Initially we started looking for 7048. It was indeed hard to locate. Later I realized that in cloudy nights article i read abt 7026 and not 7048.. So we switched to 7026. Jon found 7026 quickly. Next to Cyg 63. This one exactly looks that 6441 GC next to G scorpi star. Really close to the bright star. Indeed big, all white in color. Considering the location of 7026, I should be able to locate it next time. 7048 seems to be lil bit tough object and indeed lil bit difficult to locate. Not sure if its worth observing.
Planetary Nebula NGC 7026, Constellation: Cygnus, Dimension: 0.4'x 0.2', Magnitude: 12.00, Surface Brightness: 8.50, Description: pB,biN
Planetary Nebula NGC 7048, Constellation: Cygnus, Dimension: 1.0'x 0.8', Magnitude: 11.00, Surface Brightness: 12.20, Description: pF,pL,dif,iR,vlbM
The whole confusion betn 7048 and 7026 happened because my pocket sky atlas maps 7048 but doesn't even show 7026, though 7026 seems brighter than 7048. I think surface brightness makes a huge difference and pocket atlas should have considered it in the mapping. Same thing also applies for Scultor dwarf. The skymap shows it to be a huge object, but otherwise it was really hard to see visually because of lower surface brightness.
Milkyway Alignment: Over the last 3 months i have seen how milky way moves around the northen celestial pole..e.g. how the milky way in saggitarus rotates much faster than the one in cygnus or much less rotation in cassiopeia, but again much wider angled rotation in Orion. Obviously southern parts are gonna move-rotate much faster and wider as compared to northern objects, but the interesting part here is that..because milkyway is a single line or disk, it moves around and shows the real alignment. All the arms and dust lanes shows the disk rotating precisely.. So is it actually rotating around galactic north star? Where is the galactic north pole ?? Probably 23N of north pole..not sure TBD. Milkyway must be rotating around it. Need to see the relationship betn celestial pole (earth), Ecliptic pole (solar system alignment), galactic pole (milkyway alignment)
Blinking PN 6826: There is huge difference betn this one and M57. Compared to their sizes, this one is really really tiny. probably its 1/5th the size of ring. Easy to locate. I think i saw it @ 50x. As I bumped up the mag to 87x with 16T2, the blinking star inside the PN was sort of visible.. More the mags, the blinking effect just went away and bright white star in the bluish disk stays nicely. Unlike M57, this disk is not donut shaped.. the disk is complete, no hole, and the star is perfect white. The blue color depth keeps on reducing from edge to center, probably because of the existence of the star. the more you look at the star more brighter it seems. Blinking PN was masterpiece of the night.
M39 (New): Naked eye object. Thru binocs or lowest mag shows the stars in pyramid/triangle shape. Whole triangle is filled up with stars. Its indeed beautiful.
M29: While hunting for Crescent Nebula, browsed thru this one. Its a small open cluster. Not that impressive for an open cluster..around 15 stars. It shows sort of butterfly shape or outwards curved H. Because of the shape definitely stands out in the view.
Crescent Nebula (New): This is indeed a hard object. In 28mm @ 50x or at higher magnification also, nothing is visible in direct sight. If looked carefully at correct location, then with 50x, i can see the typical curved fuzziness, but still really really faint. After adding the filter, nebula shows up.. With 16T2 @ 87x, it indeed shows the typical Epsilon E-C shape. It fills up around 25% of the eyepiece in center. It is indeed fainter than veil pickering part. Jon wasn't even able to find it. But i got it luckily and then figured out the exact location from M29 and deneb. Should be able to find it next time.
Helix Nebula: Just wanted to take a look thru bigger aperture. Din't make much difference. Filter helps to brighten it up, but then it still din't show any details in the helix. Interesting thing to note is, I can see 4 bright stars inside/on the helix. Some of them seem to be behind the helix too. Being closet PN, probably should highly magnify it to see the details.
Scl GC 288 + Sculptor Gal 253: Both of them are easy catch. Can't fit them in same view @50x with UWAN 82deg, but they are close.. probably in the same view in Ethos 100deg may be possible. The GC is resolvable @ 87x in 16T2, seemed like yellow stars sprinkled on bluish cluster disk. the galaxy is also huge.. it feels up 80% of the 16T2 eyepiece. being sort of edge on, seemed pretty thick too. I felt like i saw some mottling or vertical line/gap on the left side of the galaxy, lil bit like M82 ?? TBD.
Sculptor Dwarf Gal: Failed. The skymap shows it pretty huge object... and so i tried to look for it..Fought for it but didn't find it. Jon also tried it but failed.. when we checked the details of the object, the description indeed shows huge size, but surface brightness is +17.0 magnitude. Completely useless. Need bigger aperture or is it just a photographic object?
MCG -06-03-015 Sculptor Dwarf, Constellation: Sculptor, Dimension: 40.0'x 31.0', Magnitude: 10.50, Surface Brightness: 17.10, Description: vvL,eeF,lE ESO 351-G030,Member of Local Group,large and dim
M34: Tired..so revisiting something. Messed up the location. Picked up wrong stars in perseus and andromeda to look for it. It indeed seems like bouquet or probably diwali cracker - zaad.
M52: Hunt for bubble in Cassiopeia starts with M52 cluster.. because of the filter, cluster is dim, but still the bright star, at the edge of the cluster, seems prominent. With 87x, this one seems interesting. dint try high mags without filter.
Bubble nebula: failed. After the inspiration from Crescent nebula, tried for bubble nebula. Jon mentioned to use H-beta filter on this. He also said that he has tried for it a lot but failed. Indeed hard object. Wasn't even sure how its supposed to look like or how faint it is..
M31-M32-M110: Quick browse thru refractor.. M32 and M110 are indeed tiny with 14x 35mm panoptic.
Pleiades M45: All bluish stars..no fuzziness. Didn't fit in the same view of Pan 14x.
Cygnus PN 7048 (Failed) 7026 (New): Initially we started looking for 7048. It was indeed hard to locate. Later I realized that in cloudy nights article i read abt 7026 and not 7048.. So we switched to 7026. Jon found 7026 quickly. Next to Cyg 63. This one exactly looks that 6441 GC next to G scorpi star. Really close to the bright star. Indeed big, all white in color. Considering the location of 7026, I should be able to locate it next time. 7048 seems to be lil bit tough object and indeed lil bit difficult to locate. Not sure if its worth observing.
Planetary Nebula NGC 7026, Constellation: Cygnus, Dimension: 0.4'x 0.2', Magnitude: 12.00, Surface Brightness: 8.50, Description: pB,biN
Planetary Nebula NGC 7048, Constellation: Cygnus, Dimension: 1.0'x 0.8', Magnitude: 11.00, Surface Brightness: 12.20, Description: pF,pL,dif,iR,vlbM
The whole confusion betn 7048 and 7026 happened because my pocket sky atlas maps 7048 but doesn't even show 7026, though 7026 seems brighter than 7048. I think surface brightness makes a huge difference and pocket atlas should have considered it in the mapping. Same thing also applies for Scultor dwarf. The skymap shows it to be a huge object, but otherwise it was really hard to see visually because of lower surface brightness.
Milkyway Alignment: Over the last 3 months i have seen how milky way moves around the northen celestial pole..e.g. how the milky way in saggitarus rotates much faster than the one in cygnus or much less rotation in cassiopeia, but again much wider angled rotation in Orion. Obviously southern parts are gonna move-rotate much faster and wider as compared to northern objects, but the interesting part here is that..because milkyway is a single line or disk, it moves around and shows the real alignment. All the arms and dust lanes shows the disk rotating precisely.. So is it actually rotating around galactic north star? Where is the galactic north pole ?? Probably 23N of north pole..not sure TBD. Milkyway must be rotating around it. Need to see the relationship betn celestial pole (earth), Ecliptic pole (solar system alignment), galactic pole (milkyway alignment)
Labels:
And Gal M31-M32-M110,
Aqr Helix PN 7293,
Cas OC M52,
Cas PN Bubble,
Cyg Blinking PN 6826,
Cyg Neb Crescent 6888,
Cyg OC M29,
Cyg OC M39,
Cyg PN 7026,
Cyg PN 7048,
Location Boulevard,
MilkyWay,
Per OC M34,
Scl Dwarf Gal,
Scl Gal 253,
Scl GC 288,
Tau OC M45 Pleiades
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Getting Into The Rhythm - I
Date: Sept 13th 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 1:00am (5.5 hrs)
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Moderate Seeing, Good Transparency. Windy whole night.. chillier !!
Instruments: Jon's 12.5" dob, My 10" dob, Jon's Celestron 100mm f/5 achromat. Bino browsing.
Buddies: Jon
Had 2 sessions after coming back from India..but in this session I felt like my usual rhythm is back. After normal browsing, spent lot of detailed viewings in Capricorn, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Perseus, Aquila, Hercules etc.. total 5.5 hrs observing was excellent..
Just after sunset, browsed few bright usual candidates thry my scope and Jon's refractor.
M7-M6: Nice viewing. Pin point stars.. butterfly red star seemed orange. there is a GC next to M7, but missed it. need to find out TBD.
6441 Tiny Glb next to G scorpi: while looking for M7, ended up at this GC next to G Scorpi. GC is small, but bright.. Initially felt like shape of 8..but its not.. surprisingly, its also visible thru 10x50 binocs thru averted vision. How much is magnitude of this TBD?
N Jewl box: Quick browsing.. seemed lil tiny in the nagler..
M4 Antares & 6144: M4 next to antares is definitely resolvable in 17mm nagler 76x. 6144 seemed lil smaller.. but its definitely not tiny.. its just really faint so lil tricky to observe.. seemed like egg shaped..
Alberio: In the pair, the green star seemed bluish..probably not dark enough yet after sunset
With Jon's refractor, did lil browsing. Used his Williams 28mm UWAN. Excellent viewing. Lagoon, Triffid, Swan, Eagle, Wild duck M11, M4 Antares.
Pipe nebula in Oph: Its dark nebula. Lil bit visible thru naked eye, if you know what you are looking for. Binoc browsing with Jon.. Refractor browsing with 28mm UWAN wasn;t much helpful
M23 OC: In Saggi, saw thru binoculars. Easy to spot.. preety wide and big.
M25 OC: In saggi, opposite of M23..located at the center of the inverted comma-spiral. Thru binocs.. Not as dense as M23 OC.
M22 GC, M28 GC: Opposite ends of lambda saggi star. M28 smaller, but still visible thru binoculars clearly.. usual bluish in color.
M62 GC (New): Yet another GC in sco. Smaller than M4. Easy to locate.
Veil Nebula: Observed this one multiple times during the night. All viewings were excellent.
- ~8pm: Being at zenith, hard to point the scope. Jon pointed this one thru his 16.5". Both components visible.
- ~8:15pm: In the refractor, filter on, with 28mm UWAN. You can fit complete Veil loop in the view. Excellent. I don't even remember if I have seen the complete Veil before. Tried 35mm Panoptic on this one. UWAN view was definitely better than panoptic. Mag + extra Fov definitely helps to capture better view.
- ~10pm: In Jon's 16.5 scope with his 16T2 nagler, we compared 2 OIII filters on veil, Celestron 2" & Orion 1.25". I wasn't aware abt which filter is ON. Jon was testing both filters blindly without knowing them. First (Ori 1.25") seemed to give brighter view of the nebulosity than second one (Cel 2"). Ori 1.25" was cheaper than Cel 2" filter.
- ~11:45pm: In my 10" dob, 17T4 nagler, with Cel 2" filter, Saw the veil. Without filter the nebulosity is not that clear. In first componet "broomstick", the bigger part on one side of star 52 is clearly visible, but the opposite side wasn't clearly visible. With filter ON, the nebulosity extends and shows its real length.
- In the skyMap, they show third component for veil nebula towards star52, but I/we didn't see it. Need to talk with Jon abt this. TBD.
Capricorn browsing:
M30: Distinctive curved H shape stars with the GC on the right vertical line. Easy to catch and easy to remember. 9x15 Finder shows it faintly. Visited this one after almost an year.
M72 GC: Yet another GC
M73 Asterism: Being close to M72 GC, Easy to spot. Asterism triangle.
Saturn nebula 7009: Easy to spot after observing M72, M73. In 10", 17T4 70x, Bluish. Tiny. Ring shape lil visible. Tried to locate it in Jon's 16.5", 22T4 54x, just wasn't able to find it. instead of following usual m72-m73 line, I went from opposite side with a bright star, but just lost it.
Continued..
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 1:00am (5.5 hrs)
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Moderate Seeing, Good Transparency. Windy whole night.. chillier !!
Instruments: Jon's 12.5" dob, My 10" dob, Jon's Celestron 100mm f/5 achromat. Bino browsing.
Buddies: Jon
Had 2 sessions after coming back from India..but in this session I felt like my usual rhythm is back. After normal browsing, spent lot of detailed viewings in Capricorn, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Perseus, Aquila, Hercules etc.. total 5.5 hrs observing was excellent..
Just after sunset, browsed few bright usual candidates thry my scope and Jon's refractor.
M7-M6: Nice viewing. Pin point stars.. butterfly red star seemed orange. there is a GC next to M7, but missed it. need to find out TBD.
6441 Tiny Glb next to G scorpi: while looking for M7, ended up at this GC next to G Scorpi. GC is small, but bright.. Initially felt like shape of 8..but its not.. surprisingly, its also visible thru 10x50 binocs thru averted vision. How much is magnitude of this TBD?
N Jewl box: Quick browsing.. seemed lil tiny in the nagler..
M4 Antares & 6144: M4 next to antares is definitely resolvable in 17mm nagler 76x. 6144 seemed lil smaller.. but its definitely not tiny.. its just really faint so lil tricky to observe.. seemed like egg shaped..
Alberio: In the pair, the green star seemed bluish..probably not dark enough yet after sunset
With Jon's refractor, did lil browsing. Used his Williams 28mm UWAN. Excellent viewing. Lagoon, Triffid, Swan, Eagle, Wild duck M11, M4 Antares.
Pipe nebula in Oph: Its dark nebula. Lil bit visible thru naked eye, if you know what you are looking for. Binoc browsing with Jon.. Refractor browsing with 28mm UWAN wasn;t much helpful
M23 OC: In Saggi, saw thru binoculars. Easy to spot.. preety wide and big.
M25 OC: In saggi, opposite of M23..located at the center of the inverted comma-spiral. Thru binocs.. Not as dense as M23 OC.
M22 GC, M28 GC: Opposite ends of lambda saggi star. M28 smaller, but still visible thru binoculars clearly.. usual bluish in color.
M62 GC (New): Yet another GC in sco. Smaller than M4. Easy to locate.
Veil Nebula: Observed this one multiple times during the night. All viewings were excellent.
- ~8pm: Being at zenith, hard to point the scope. Jon pointed this one thru his 16.5". Both components visible.
- ~8:15pm: In the refractor, filter on, with 28mm UWAN. You can fit complete Veil loop in the view. Excellent. I don't even remember if I have seen the complete Veil before. Tried 35mm Panoptic on this one. UWAN view was definitely better than panoptic. Mag + extra Fov definitely helps to capture better view.
- ~10pm: In Jon's 16.5 scope with his 16T2 nagler, we compared 2 OIII filters on veil, Celestron 2" & Orion 1.25". I wasn't aware abt which filter is ON. Jon was testing both filters blindly without knowing them. First (Ori 1.25") seemed to give brighter view of the nebulosity than second one (Cel 2"). Ori 1.25" was cheaper than Cel 2" filter.
- ~11:45pm: In my 10" dob, 17T4 nagler, with Cel 2" filter, Saw the veil. Without filter the nebulosity is not that clear. In first componet "broomstick", the bigger part on one side of star 52 is clearly visible, but the opposite side wasn't clearly visible. With filter ON, the nebulosity extends and shows its real length.
- In the skyMap, they show third component for veil nebula towards star52, but I/we didn't see it. Need to talk with Jon abt this. TBD.
Capricorn browsing:
M30: Distinctive curved H shape stars with the GC on the right vertical line. Easy to catch and easy to remember. 9x15 Finder shows it faintly. Visited this one after almost an year.
M72 GC: Yet another GC
M73 Asterism: Being close to M72 GC, Easy to spot. Asterism triangle.
Saturn nebula 7009: Easy to spot after observing M72, M73. In 10", 17T4 70x, Bluish. Tiny. Ring shape lil visible. Tried to locate it in Jon's 16.5", 22T4 54x, just wasn't able to find it. instead of following usual m72-m73 line, I went from opposite side with a bright star, but just lost it.
Continued..
Labels:
Aqr GC M72 - OC M73,
Aqr Saturn PN 7009,
Cap GC M30,
Cyg Veil Neb,
Location Boulevard,
Location MTRP,
Lyr DS Alberio,
Oph GC M62,
Oph Pipe Neb,
Sco GC 6441,
Sco GC M4-6144,
Sco N JewelBox,
Sco OC M6 Butterfly- OC M7 Ptolemy,
Sgr GC M22-M28,
Sgr OC M23-M24-M25
Getting Into The Rhythm - II
Continued..
Andromeda/Pegasus browsing:
M31 Andromeda: M31-M32-M110 fits in edge-to-edge in GSO 30mm superview eyepiece in my dob (40x). The EP itself gives the feeling of dust lane in Andromeda. In Jon's 16.5" with 22T4 54x, Andromeda seems brighter. M110 is definitely bigger and elongated than M32..probably lil fainter though.
M33 Triangulum: Always forget the location. My 9x15 finder shows this one. In 17T4 70x, its fainter. Seemed circular.. Can't see any spiral structure. In Jon's 16.5", 22T4 54x, seems brighter and shape is visible..but missed lot of details.. need to watch carefully next time. TBD
Blue snowball 7662: Easy catch, if you know where to look at. really tiny, but bright. Bluish. which one is bigger Saturn PN in Capri or snowball in Andromeda. I think Saturn PN. TBD.
7331 Edge-on Gal: Was Lil tricky to find it.. I know where to look at, but in 30mm, 40x, its hard to find. The edge on shape shows clearly in 17T4, 70x. Definitely bright, but tiny edge on. If 7331 is so hard to locate and see.. then forget abt Stephan's quintet.. read more on magnitude and size differences. TBD
Little Dumbbell M76: Visited after an year.. little dumbbell is really little. Hard to see any dumbbell shape.. but increasing the magnification indeed helps.. brightness is not deemed.
After this had lil bit of bino and naked eye browsing.. trying to get a perspective on milky way.. how things are aligned wr.t perseus, cassiopea, cygnus, saggi etc. Are Cassi-Perseus in different arm than Cyg+ -Saggi. Lot of Nebs are aligned here.
Double cluster: Nice view in 30mm 40x.
M34 OC: Easy to catch. but just don't remember the shape. very less number of bright stars..
M52 OC: May be lil difficult to catch, because it doesn't have anything prominent..but the lil concentrated stars make it probably easier to find it. Definitely small. apart from faint star concentration, ony one bright star at the edge.. not sure if is the field star or actual cluster star.
M103 OC: Does it have the shape of flower bouquet.. dont remember much. probably around 10-15 bright stars to make that shape.
Hercules Browsing:
M13 GC: simply wow..and really huge in 17T4 nagler 70x. It probably fills up the 60-70% of eyepiece.
Gal next to M13: Indeed faint, but visible in my scope in 17T4 70x. Seemed elongated.. In Jon's scope it was definitely brighter and you can miss it. while observing this galaxy, i realized that to take the full advantage of the Nagler view, i need to take out my glasses. I was voiding it tok eep the visin at 20-20, so Jon and I can watch everything at same time..but becasue of that i was loosing lot of details on the object also. Infact initially i missed this galaxy also, but once i took out the glasses I realized how bright it was as comared to my scope.. surprisingly, removing glasses made a huge difference.
Hercules PN 6210: Remembered this one from 6 moths back and asked Jon to point to it..Its interesting to see how Jon remembers the location so smoothly. Again really really tiny little but bright PN.. Can confuse it with a blue star at lower mags. dont remeber any other details.
Continued..
Andromeda/Pegasus browsing:
M31 Andromeda: M31-M32-M110 fits in edge-to-edge in GSO 30mm superview eyepiece in my dob (40x). The EP itself gives the feeling of dust lane in Andromeda. In Jon's 16.5" with 22T4 54x, Andromeda seems brighter. M110 is definitely bigger and elongated than M32..probably lil fainter though.
M33 Triangulum: Always forget the location. My 9x15 finder shows this one. In 17T4 70x, its fainter. Seemed circular.. Can't see any spiral structure. In Jon's 16.5", 22T4 54x, seems brighter and shape is visible..but missed lot of details.. need to watch carefully next time. TBD
Blue snowball 7662: Easy catch, if you know where to look at. really tiny, but bright. Bluish. which one is bigger Saturn PN in Capri or snowball in Andromeda. I think Saturn PN. TBD.
7331 Edge-on Gal: Was Lil tricky to find it.. I know where to look at, but in 30mm, 40x, its hard to find. The edge on shape shows clearly in 17T4, 70x. Definitely bright, but tiny edge on. If 7331 is so hard to locate and see.. then forget abt Stephan's quintet.. read more on magnitude and size differences. TBD
Little Dumbbell M76: Visited after an year.. little dumbbell is really little. Hard to see any dumbbell shape.. but increasing the magnification indeed helps.. brightness is not deemed.
After this had lil bit of bino and naked eye browsing.. trying to get a perspective on milky way.. how things are aligned wr.t perseus, cassiopea, cygnus, saggi etc. Are Cassi-Perseus in different arm than Cyg+ -Saggi. Lot of Nebs are aligned here.
Double cluster: Nice view in 30mm 40x.
M34 OC: Easy to catch. but just don't remember the shape. very less number of bright stars..
M52 OC: May be lil difficult to catch, because it doesn't have anything prominent..but the lil concentrated stars make it probably easier to find it. Definitely small. apart from faint star concentration, ony one bright star at the edge.. not sure if is the field star or actual cluster star.
M103 OC: Does it have the shape of flower bouquet.. dont remember much. probably around 10-15 bright stars to make that shape.
Hercules Browsing:
M13 GC: simply wow..and really huge in 17T4 nagler 70x. It probably fills up the 60-70% of eyepiece.
Gal next to M13: Indeed faint, but visible in my scope in 17T4 70x. Seemed elongated.. In Jon's scope it was definitely brighter and you can miss it. while observing this galaxy, i realized that to take the full advantage of the Nagler view, i need to take out my glasses. I was voiding it tok eep the visin at 20-20, so Jon and I can watch everything at same time..but becasue of that i was loosing lot of details on the object also. Infact initially i missed this galaxy also, but once i took out the glasses I realized how bright it was as comared to my scope.. surprisingly, removing glasses made a huge difference.
Hercules PN 6210: Remembered this one from 6 moths back and asked Jon to point to it..Its interesting to see how Jon remembers the location so smoothly. Again really really tiny little but bright PN.. Can confuse it with a blue star at lower mags. dont remeber any other details.
Continued..
Getting Into The Rhythm - III
Continue..
Helix nebula: Observed this one again after long time. In 17T4 70x fills up the center and probably lil smaller than lagoon nebula. but lagoon is brighter than Helix. With Cel 2" OIII filter, increases the contrast heavily. Everything is white fuzzy, can not see any details.Center doesnt have much fussiness, but dont see any star in the middle either.
With filter ON, checked veil and little dumbbell again.
North American nebula: It is hard to see anything here. Probably the size. with filter on 17T4, 70x, its not gonna help much. Need to try Jon's refractor UWAN combo with filter ON. or my 30mm with filter.
M27 Dumbbell: Without filter also, its an awesome sight. With filter, can clearly see more fuziness just outskirts of the dumbbell.
M57 Ring: At 70x, 17T4, the ring is tiny, but with filter ON it shows huge contrast. Donut shape is marvelous. the brightness definitely pops up in the eye. Distinctive bluish color. More mags on this one is better, but because of filter i stayed with 17T4 only.
Because the filter was still on.. looked for nearby tiny PNs in skymap.
Aquila pn: triple cave: one of them 6804: Jon had never seen this before.. in some sense its difficult to locate. Definitely faint that our usual tiny PNs (snowball, saturn)..but stil you can see it. Exactly between two field stars. HArd to find it in jon's scope.. not sure why.. After 10mins search, we got this one on his scope. Lil brighter in his scope.. surely bigger aperture helps. Map says there should be 2 PNs with 0.5 deg view.. but we saw only one. They are +12.6, +11.2 mags.. 6804 is fainter but bigger than 6803. 6803 is definitely harder.. will try next time. 6807 in triple cave doesn't seem feasible to me..
http://www.umich.edu/~lowbrows/reflections/2002/dscobel.7.html
Aquila globular: In the process, saw a globular..but its not even mentioned in my skymap. Need to read more. check wikisky. (Read more.. there is no globular here..probably just concentration of stars and nothing more.. false alarm)
Sculptor GC 288, Gal 253:
Just before moonrise, asked Jon for older Sculptor galaxy. somehow both of us had hard time o nthis one becase of mismatched location of "TBD" star. but i figred out the correct location and we saw both GC and the gla.. Both objects, esp GC shows up in finder smoothly. Gal is NW of it in 2-3 deg apart. Gal is way too elongated and seemed like a white strip. both objects are indeed bright. Need to read more details.
Moon: Observed moon thru refractor. Din't see much color problem in achro. Probabaly because moon was still on horizon..not too bright..and more yellowish than white.. Jon's 16.5" shows marvellous views of moon..no doubt.. seeing was bad being moon on horizon..
Jupiter: Observed Jupiter multiple times during the night.. thru all instruments.
1 sat + disk + 3 sat alignment. Binoc showed it clearly too. thoug hinitially seeing was bad, jupiter was again a masterpiece.. crispy shot 180x.. 3 bands so clearly visible.. with some dark spot at the center on NE band.
For Next time:
Saggi: m54, m70, m69, GC in M7, m18-swan, m55
Aquila: m11-26,
Capri: m75
Oph: m9
Sco: m19, m80
Peg: m15
Cyg: m29, blinking pn, Veil third component, m39
Her: m92
Lyr: m56
Cassi-Per: Try to picturize shapes in messier OCS.
Scl and For browsing
what is LDN ? how to observe them? Lynds dark nebula catalog..skipping it for a while.
Helix nebula: Observed this one again after long time. In 17T4 70x fills up the center and probably lil smaller than lagoon nebula. but lagoon is brighter than Helix. With Cel 2" OIII filter, increases the contrast heavily. Everything is white fuzzy, can not see any details.Center doesnt have much fussiness, but dont see any star in the middle either.
With filter ON, checked veil and little dumbbell again.
North American nebula: It is hard to see anything here. Probably the size. with filter on 17T4, 70x, its not gonna help much. Need to try Jon's refractor UWAN combo with filter ON. or my 30mm with filter.
M27 Dumbbell: Without filter also, its an awesome sight. With filter, can clearly see more fuziness just outskirts of the dumbbell.
M57 Ring: At 70x, 17T4, the ring is tiny, but with filter ON it shows huge contrast. Donut shape is marvelous. the brightness definitely pops up in the eye. Distinctive bluish color. More mags on this one is better, but because of filter i stayed with 17T4 only.
Because the filter was still on.. looked for nearby tiny PNs in skymap.
Aquila pn: triple cave: one of them 6804: Jon had never seen this before.. in some sense its difficult to locate. Definitely faint that our usual tiny PNs (snowball, saturn)..but stil you can see it. Exactly between two field stars. HArd to find it in jon's scope.. not sure why.. After 10mins search, we got this one on his scope. Lil brighter in his scope.. surely bigger aperture helps. Map says there should be 2 PNs with 0.5 deg view.. but we saw only one. They are +12.6, +11.2 mags.. 6804 is fainter but bigger than 6803. 6803 is definitely harder.. will try next time. 6807 in triple cave doesn't seem feasible to me..
http://www.umich.edu/~lowbrows/reflections/2002/dscobel.7.html
Aquila globular: In the process, saw a globular..but its not even mentioned in my skymap. Need to read more. check wikisky. (Read more.. there is no globular here..probably just concentration of stars and nothing more.. false alarm)
Sculptor GC 288, Gal 253:
Just before moonrise, asked Jon for older Sculptor galaxy. somehow both of us had hard time o nthis one becase of mismatched location of "TBD" star. but i figred out the correct location and we saw both GC and the gla.. Both objects, esp GC shows up in finder smoothly. Gal is NW of it in 2-3 deg apart. Gal is way too elongated and seemed like a white strip. both objects are indeed bright. Need to read more details.
Moon: Observed moon thru refractor. Din't see much color problem in achro. Probabaly because moon was still on horizon..not too bright..and more yellowish than white.. Jon's 16.5" shows marvellous views of moon..no doubt.. seeing was bad being moon on horizon..
Jupiter: Observed Jupiter multiple times during the night.. thru all instruments.
1 sat + disk + 3 sat alignment. Binoc showed it clearly too. thoug hinitially seeing was bad, jupiter was again a masterpiece.. crispy shot 180x.. 3 bands so clearly visible.. with some dark spot at the center on NE band.
For Next time:
Saggi: m54, m70, m69, GC in M7, m18-swan, m55
Aquila: m11-26,
Capri: m75
Oph: m9
Sco: m19, m80
Peg: m15
Cyg: m29, blinking pn, Veil third component, m39
Her: m92
Lyr: m56
Cassi-Per: Try to picturize shapes in messier OCS.
Scl and For browsing
what is LDN ? how to observe them? Lynds dark nebula catalog..skipping it for a while.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Independance Night
Date: August 15th 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 10:30pm (2.5 hrs)
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Exellent Seeing and Transparency. Lil bit windy.. and chillier later though in summer.
Instruments: Jon's 12.5" dob, My 10" dob.
Buddies: Jon and his friend Rick wih his Twins.
Total Objects: 15 = 14 + Jupiter
New Objects: 3
Tried iPhone software SkyVoyager for guidance. Overall, excellent experince using it. For whole night, I didn't even touch my paper sky atlas. The best part is the object descriptions are also available and it helps to observe the object with its description in your head. Helps in understanding the object.
The trouble with the softwar was:
- Night mode vision is really not that Red. so for faint objects, was loosing the darkness adpting.
- Doesn't have any recently observed object lists. would have helped to remmebe rhte browsing order next day.
Jupiter: Indeed bright view, 4 satellites 3 on one side and one on other side of the Jupiter disk. Two dark gaseous strips clearly visible. Becasue of wind not a stable view. Also after sunset, not yet dark enough to see the details.
M7 Ptolemy, M6 Butterfly: Wonderful views of M7 and M6 in 17mm Nagler.
M22 Globular: Bright Globular in 17mm. No realization of any shape or any colors.
Tried Jon's Celestron OIII filter on varoius Nebulas with 17mm Nagler.
M8 Lagoon: In non filter view, can see the lagoon island, a dark lane and some fuzziness on other side wiht a star cluster. Filter view really brings up the fuzziness and shows how much fuziness is indeed there. The dark lane shows full version of inverted "C". The size of the lagoon got increased and the other side of the darkness C is all fuziness. The filter indeed helps to see the fuziness, but it deemed the cluster. In jon's 12.5" scope, stars were lil brighter.
M20 Triffid: In non filter view, Triffid doesn't show much in 17mm (76x). Filter view indeed helps to bring the nebulocity and was able to see one dark lane and second one with averted vision. More magnification would have helped. Overall, first time I understood the difference betn the size of Lagoon and Triffid. Lagoon is probably 3-4 times bigger than triffid.
M17 Swan: In non filter view, M17 shows the typical "2" shape, but the filter brings all the fuziness surrounding "2". Again size of total fuziness is lil smaller than lagoon and more dispersed.
Veil Nebula: It was indeed hard to see the veil without any filter in my 10" dob. the nebulocity near Cyg 52 is still visible. But the second component was hard to find. With filter, almost all background stars were gone and the cyg52 nebulocity easily pops up.. the witchb room shape shows up immediately with all corners. the second circular component also easy to find and shows up nicely.. its surely fainter than first component.
M57 Ring: In 10mm Xcel can clearly see the ring structure, but it gave a feeling that its not focused. In Jon's 9mm Nagler, its indeed a sharp view and ring structure seems to be focused. I indeed felt the difference in two eyepieces clearly :). Ngler rules !! Filter didn't make much difference.. porbably ring was lil brighter, but i like the ring with stars around so didn't like the filter view much. probbaly needs more magnification with filter.
M11 Wild duck cluster: In 17mm Nag, Its a maervellous view..clear represntation of salt and paper cluster. One bright orange star is in the view. which outshines the cluster. not sure if it is in field of view or in cluster itself. Wih 9mm Nag, the bright star sort of lost the color, but it indeed showed the details on the cluster. the V shape of stars was visible clearly. also the surrounding dark lane V was also visible. probably V shapes imples the name wild duck (group) cluster.
M71 globular (New): Searched at wrong location and jon made fun of my star hopping skills :). M71 really tiny and not at all impressive.. just yet another GC type.
M27 Dumbell: Was marvellous and easy to pick up. Shows up easily in the finder. Dumbell conrast indeed supports high magnification. Too much nebulocity without filter itself. Din't try the filter.
M51 Whirpool Gal: Good view in 17mm Nag. You cna clearly see the 8 shape. The bridge betn the pair is not visible. some averted vision gives the feeling of spiral shape or dark lanes in M51. Infact in 9mm magnification, the spiral shape thru averted vision is visible.
Stephan's Quintet Galaxies (New): Jon tried to show this one, but it was indeed hard. Probbaly pushed the limits of 12.5" scope. Was looking into nothingness. With heavy averted vision probabaly saw two galaxies really close to each other in UL and BR line. surely not the object for 10" scope.
NGC7331 Galaxy (New): Saw it first time.. Edge on galaxy.. really really tiny. Still 30mm superview showed it. In 17mm Nagler it shows the edge on shape clearly. Din't get a chance to try the 10mm or 9mm view.
Overall, Din't observe too many objects. Left early. Still whatever objects I watched were with careful observations, with filter. Also iphone sw made the observations insightful. Astornomy sessions are surely getting better.
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 10:30pm (2.5 hrs)
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Exellent Seeing and Transparency. Lil bit windy.. and chillier later though in summer.
Instruments: Jon's 12.5" dob, My 10" dob.
Buddies: Jon and his friend Rick wih his Twins.
Total Objects: 15 = 14 + Jupiter
New Objects: 3
Tried iPhone software SkyVoyager for guidance. Overall, excellent experince using it. For whole night, I didn't even touch my paper sky atlas. The best part is the object descriptions are also available and it helps to observe the object with its description in your head. Helps in understanding the object.
The trouble with the softwar was:
- Night mode vision is really not that Red. so for faint objects, was loosing the darkness adpting.
- Doesn't have any recently observed object lists. would have helped to remmebe rhte browsing order next day.
Jupiter: Indeed bright view, 4 satellites 3 on one side and one on other side of the Jupiter disk. Two dark gaseous strips clearly visible. Becasue of wind not a stable view. Also after sunset, not yet dark enough to see the details.
M7 Ptolemy, M6 Butterfly: Wonderful views of M7 and M6 in 17mm Nagler.
M22 Globular: Bright Globular in 17mm. No realization of any shape or any colors.
Tried Jon's Celestron OIII filter on varoius Nebulas with 17mm Nagler.
M8 Lagoon: In non filter view, can see the lagoon island, a dark lane and some fuzziness on other side wiht a star cluster. Filter view really brings up the fuzziness and shows how much fuziness is indeed there. The dark lane shows full version of inverted "C". The size of the lagoon got increased and the other side of the darkness C is all fuziness. The filter indeed helps to see the fuziness, but it deemed the cluster. In jon's 12.5" scope, stars were lil brighter.
M20 Triffid: In non filter view, Triffid doesn't show much in 17mm (76x). Filter view indeed helps to bring the nebulocity and was able to see one dark lane and second one with averted vision. More magnification would have helped. Overall, first time I understood the difference betn the size of Lagoon and Triffid. Lagoon is probably 3-4 times bigger than triffid.
M17 Swan: In non filter view, M17 shows the typical "2" shape, but the filter brings all the fuziness surrounding "2". Again size of total fuziness is lil smaller than lagoon and more dispersed.
Veil Nebula: It was indeed hard to see the veil without any filter in my 10" dob. the nebulocity near Cyg 52 is still visible. But the second component was hard to find. With filter, almost all background stars were gone and the cyg52 nebulocity easily pops up.. the witchb room shape shows up immediately with all corners. the second circular component also easy to find and shows up nicely.. its surely fainter than first component.
M57 Ring: In 10mm Xcel can clearly see the ring structure, but it gave a feeling that its not focused. In Jon's 9mm Nagler, its indeed a sharp view and ring structure seems to be focused. I indeed felt the difference in two eyepieces clearly :). Ngler rules !! Filter didn't make much difference.. porbably ring was lil brighter, but i like the ring with stars around so didn't like the filter view much. probbaly needs more magnification with filter.
M11 Wild duck cluster: In 17mm Nag, Its a maervellous view..clear represntation of salt and paper cluster. One bright orange star is in the view. which outshines the cluster. not sure if it is in field of view or in cluster itself. Wih 9mm Nag, the bright star sort of lost the color, but it indeed showed the details on the cluster. the V shape of stars was visible clearly. also the surrounding dark lane V was also visible. probably V shapes imples the name wild duck (group) cluster.
M71 globular (New): Searched at wrong location and jon made fun of my star hopping skills :). M71 really tiny and not at all impressive.. just yet another GC type.
M27 Dumbell: Was marvellous and easy to pick up. Shows up easily in the finder. Dumbell conrast indeed supports high magnification. Too much nebulocity without filter itself. Din't try the filter.
M51 Whirpool Gal: Good view in 17mm Nag. You cna clearly see the 8 shape. The bridge betn the pair is not visible. some averted vision gives the feeling of spiral shape or dark lanes in M51. Infact in 9mm magnification, the spiral shape thru averted vision is visible.
Stephan's Quintet Galaxies (New): Jon tried to show this one, but it was indeed hard. Probbaly pushed the limits of 12.5" scope. Was looking into nothingness. With heavy averted vision probabaly saw two galaxies really close to each other in UL and BR line. surely not the object for 10" scope.
NGC7331 Galaxy (New): Saw it first time.. Edge on galaxy.. really really tiny. Still 30mm superview showed it. In 17mm Nagler it shows the edge on shape clearly. Din't get a chance to try the 10mm or 9mm view.
Overall, Din't observe too many objects. Left early. Still whatever objects I watched were with careful observations, with filter. Also iphone sw made the observations insightful. Astornomy sessions are surely getting better.
Labels:
Cyg Veil Neb,
Jupiter,
Location Boulevard,
Lyr PN M57 Ring,
Peg Gal 7331,
Peg Stephan's Quintet,
Sco OC M6 Butterfly- OC M7 Ptolemy,
Sct OC M11 Wild Duck,
Sge GC M71,
Sgr GC M22,
Sgr Neb M17 Swan,
Sgr Neb M20 Triffid,
Sgr Neb M8 Lagoon,
Vul PN M27 Dumbbell
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Summer 09 Kickoff
Tested Celestron Nextar Refractor
Tested Nagler 17mm
Collimation wasn't perfect either.
M57 Ring Nebula - Jon's 30mm eyepiece
Double Double
Refractor Browsing:
Drifts slowily while looking for object.
M7-M6
Saggitarius browsing
m11 wild duck cluster
m57 - tiny
double double
Alberio
Nagler browsing :
Saggi browsing: Lagoon, Triffid, Swan, Eagle, GC
M7-M6
nebulocity.. sharpness
blue flash nebula - location
m27 dumbell
m71 gc
M13
M3
Jupiter
Opphiuchus M10 M12
Nebula on upper top corner 6572?
M52
Blue snowball
M31
Tested Nagler 17mm
Collimation wasn't perfect either.
M57 Ring Nebula - Jon's 30mm eyepiece
Double Double
Refractor Browsing:
Drifts slowily while looking for object.
M7-M6
Saggitarius browsing
m11 wild duck cluster
m57 - tiny
double double
Alberio
Nagler browsing :
Saggi browsing: Lagoon, Triffid, Swan, Eagle, GC
M7-M6
nebulocity.. sharpness
blue flash nebula - location
m27 dumbell
m71 gc
M13
M3
Jupiter
Opphiuchus M10 M12
Nebula on upper top corner 6572?
M52
Blue snowball
M31
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Co-hosting 22" SDAA Observatory. II
Date: April 18th 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 2:00pm (7 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Weather is okay.. Transparency is good, but seeing is not good..
Instruments: SDAA Lipp Observatory 22" RC, f/7 (FL: ~4000mm),
Nagler 31T2 EP, 20T5 EP
31T2 => 129x
20T5 => 200x
Buddies: Jim and public.
Volunteered to co-host SDAA public star party with the observatory scope. First time, handled such a huge scope, on EQ fork mount. In the beginning had hard time due to huge mount, new type of mount, poor alignment and awkward finder. But After few hours got confotable with telerad-31T2 EP and normal star-hopping..
7pm: Some admin stuff to open observatory. Tried to align on Sirius. Didn't collimate (??)
M46 OC: Pretty nice. pinpoint stars. bright.. PN was also bright, blue in color. The middle star is visible and bright. not sure if the star is part of cluster or PN.
Orion 73 cluster (New): OC in orion, with asterism in shape of 73, but each digit inverted L-R.
Saturn: Bright. 4 moons visible. titan + 1 on left and other two on right. Other two were really close. rings and shadow of ring visible. higher mags didn't help. seeing was bad .. visited saturn 3-4 times throughout the night, but seeing never improved.
M97 Owl: Failed. digital setting circles not setup correctly.. too frustrating..
M81-82: Initially Failed. I was replying again on encoders. After few attempts, somebody (Pete) helped to point it. Can not fit both in same view.. was worried to move it because i may loose it again :).. The mottling on M81 clearly visible.. also vertical dark lane was visible. M82 was bright, but no details.
M51 whirlpool: Jim pointed to this one.. Spiral structure clearly visible. Bright spots inside M51 visible clearly. Probably thats what i saw other night with Jon. People were saying with averted vision connection betn both galaxies visible.
4965 Gal in Coma (New): Marvelous. Way better than M104, How the hell Messier missed it.. Huge, filled up complete eyepiece view. bigger than m104, edge-on, dust lane clearly visible and its thick.. core wasn't that bright.. the object was so impressive that i wasn;t sure if its really the object or the scope.. whatever.. unforgettable view.
M84 + Markarains Chain: all galaxies were huge..and chain clearly visible.. again lil skeptical of moving the scope, but shows so many galaxies in the view.. clearly 5 visible in the same view. Tried to realign encoders. Revisited again at the end of the session. See details below..
For re-alignment, moved to Arcturus. just too bright in this scope. Because of the brightness, hard to see where is the center of the view, so not a good star for realignment. Tried M51 again after realignment. DEC encoder is setup correctly, but RA is still off. but with DEC inline still helps to get the object in view, by moving thru RA.
A recticle-crosshair eyepiece is better/perfect way to get object in center. also whats the point in aligning on a DSO, considering its size ??
Eskimo nebula in Gem (New): Jim pointed to this one. Marvelous view. perfect round shape. outer disk is brighter, inner part is darker. no hint of star. probably same size as M57 (??)
After this, the scope was solely operated by me. Decided to just starhop with telerad. Perfect star hopping and very little help from the encoders. Overall reminded me how helpful it is to observe with Jon.
M104 Sombrero: Really nice view. better than Jon's 16.5" scope. magnification also adds up. still smaller than 4965 Coma galaxy.
M13 GC: Wow.. masterpiece.. All outskirt stars resolved. also, few stars at the core resolved. 20T5 EP also helps. Jim tried meade 14mm UWA, but stars weren't pinpoint.. both seeing as well as "meade-vs-nagler" to blame.
M92 GC: sort of naked eye. This one looks like "M13 in my 10" scope" :).. looks amazingly impressive. Almost all stars outskirts resolved and few at the core. This 22" scope makes every object beautiful :)
PN in Hercules: Easy Starhop after yesterday's session with Jon. Bright blue color disk.
Gal next to M13 (New): Yesterday Jon showed me this one, and today while pointing towards M13, I saw this. Tiny little fuzzy.
M65-M66-3628:
Corvus PN: Looks like a galaxy rather than PN. no bluish color, so easy to confuse with galaxy. bright star at the enter.. just too bright, looks like tiny core of the galaxy. Never seen like this before.
Corvus Antenna Galaxies: Awesome view. both galaxies clearly visible, but antennas not visible.. seeing matters. Still "merging" of two galaxies clearly visible.
Ghost of Jupiter: bright bluish disk. both disk and inside ring visible. middle star clearly visible. 20mm same image.. tried 14mm meade UWA EP, but extension tube trouble. wanted to try filter also, but skipped it.
M83 seashell: Easy catch. Huge object.Observed it yesterday for first time and already star-hopped to it today :). Bright core..
Omega Centauri GC: Little low on horizon. Ladder requirement. almost resolves every star. fills up ~40% of 31T2.
Centaurus A Gal (New): Easy catch. Perfect starhop (??). Was lil skeptical to observe something new on this huge scope without finder, but starhop was easy to catch this one. Bright, the middle dark lane is huge.. its like 3 or 4 times the size of 4965 galxy dust lane. Its perfect "hamburger" shape. both sides (buns) are bright. but consdering the size of dust lane, whole galaxy is not that huge. Need to read more abt this one (??)
Leo 2903 Gal: Perfect Edge-on easy catch. Don't remember much.
Leo Gama Gal doublets: Gamma was hard to split in 129x. surprising. bad seeing? Galaxies visible nicely. Again too small as comapred to any other galaxies i saw tonight. also i am impressed that my 10" scope shows this one clearly.
Leo 3521 Gal (New): Lil bit difficult star hop. Info says "spiral galaxy", but hard to see clearly.. surely face on.. probably same size as antenna galaxies.
M57 Ring Nebula: Apperture helps. huge ring. blue color discernible. middle star not visible..surprised..
M53: Failed: Picked up wrong Alpha coma star, also somehow encoders pointed it somewhere else..
Coma/Virgo Galactic cluster: spent more than 30mins in Coma and upper Virgo galactic cluster.
M98-M99
Markarains Chain with M88-M91
4371
M87--4478
M89
Overall, though started lil slow and with nervousness, finished with complete enthusiasm. till 2am I was going on-and-on without any food :)..
Marvelous experience because of:
- Able to handle such a Huge scope first time
- Handling new type EQ fork mount compared to my dob mount.
- Every object looks beautiful in this aperture. Was completely overwhelmed.
- Survived smoothly at the end, though started under huge peer pressure :)
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 2:00pm (7 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Weather is okay.. Transparency is good, but seeing is not good..
Instruments: SDAA Lipp Observatory 22" RC, f/7 (FL: ~4000mm),
Nagler 31T2 EP, 20T5 EP
31T2 => 129x
20T5 => 200x
Buddies: Jim and public.
Volunteered to co-host SDAA public star party with the observatory scope. First time, handled such a huge scope, on EQ fork mount. In the beginning had hard time due to huge mount, new type of mount, poor alignment and awkward finder. But After few hours got confotable with telerad-31T2 EP and normal star-hopping..
7pm: Some admin stuff to open observatory. Tried to align on Sirius. Didn't collimate (??)
M46 OC: Pretty nice. pinpoint stars. bright.. PN was also bright, blue in color. The middle star is visible and bright. not sure if the star is part of cluster or PN.
Orion 73 cluster (New): OC in orion, with asterism in shape of 73, but each digit inverted L-R.
Saturn: Bright. 4 moons visible. titan + 1 on left and other two on right. Other two were really close. rings and shadow of ring visible. higher mags didn't help. seeing was bad .. visited saturn 3-4 times throughout the night, but seeing never improved.
M97 Owl: Failed. digital setting circles not setup correctly.. too frustrating..
M81-82: Initially Failed. I was replying again on encoders. After few attempts, somebody (Pete) helped to point it. Can not fit both in same view.. was worried to move it because i may loose it again :).. The mottling on M81 clearly visible.. also vertical dark lane was visible. M82 was bright, but no details.
M51 whirlpool: Jim pointed to this one.. Spiral structure clearly visible. Bright spots inside M51 visible clearly. Probably thats what i saw other night with Jon. People were saying with averted vision connection betn both galaxies visible.
4965 Gal in Coma (New): Marvelous. Way better than M104, How the hell Messier missed it.. Huge, filled up complete eyepiece view. bigger than m104, edge-on, dust lane clearly visible and its thick.. core wasn't that bright.. the object was so impressive that i wasn;t sure if its really the object or the scope.. whatever.. unforgettable view.
M84 + Markarains Chain: all galaxies were huge..and chain clearly visible.. again lil skeptical of moving the scope, but shows so many galaxies in the view.. clearly 5 visible in the same view. Tried to realign encoders. Revisited again at the end of the session. See details below..
For re-alignment, moved to Arcturus. just too bright in this scope. Because of the brightness, hard to see where is the center of the view, so not a good star for realignment. Tried M51 again after realignment. DEC encoder is setup correctly, but RA is still off. but with DEC inline still helps to get the object in view, by moving thru RA.
A recticle-crosshair eyepiece is better/perfect way to get object in center. also whats the point in aligning on a DSO, considering its size ??
Eskimo nebula in Gem (New): Jim pointed to this one. Marvelous view. perfect round shape. outer disk is brighter, inner part is darker. no hint of star. probably same size as M57 (??)
After this, the scope was solely operated by me. Decided to just starhop with telerad. Perfect star hopping and very little help from the encoders. Overall reminded me how helpful it is to observe with Jon.
M104 Sombrero: Really nice view. better than Jon's 16.5" scope. magnification also adds up. still smaller than 4965 Coma galaxy.
M13 GC: Wow.. masterpiece.. All outskirt stars resolved. also, few stars at the core resolved. 20T5 EP also helps. Jim tried meade 14mm UWA, but stars weren't pinpoint.. both seeing as well as "meade-vs-nagler" to blame.
M92 GC: sort of naked eye. This one looks like "M13 in my 10" scope" :).. looks amazingly impressive. Almost all stars outskirts resolved and few at the core. This 22" scope makes every object beautiful :)
PN in Hercules: Easy Starhop after yesterday's session with Jon. Bright blue color disk.
Gal next to M13 (New): Yesterday Jon showed me this one, and today while pointing towards M13, I saw this. Tiny little fuzzy.
M65-M66-3628:
Corvus PN: Looks like a galaxy rather than PN. no bluish color, so easy to confuse with galaxy. bright star at the enter.. just too bright, looks like tiny core of the galaxy. Never seen like this before.
Corvus Antenna Galaxies: Awesome view. both galaxies clearly visible, but antennas not visible.. seeing matters. Still "merging" of two galaxies clearly visible.
Ghost of Jupiter: bright bluish disk. both disk and inside ring visible. middle star clearly visible. 20mm same image.. tried 14mm meade UWA EP, but extension tube trouble. wanted to try filter also, but skipped it.
M83 seashell: Easy catch. Huge object.Observed it yesterday for first time and already star-hopped to it today :). Bright core..
Omega Centauri GC: Little low on horizon. Ladder requirement. almost resolves every star. fills up ~40% of 31T2.
Centaurus A Gal (New): Easy catch. Perfect starhop (??). Was lil skeptical to observe something new on this huge scope without finder, but starhop was easy to catch this one. Bright, the middle dark lane is huge.. its like 3 or 4 times the size of 4965 galxy dust lane. Its perfect "hamburger" shape. both sides (buns) are bright. but consdering the size of dust lane, whole galaxy is not that huge. Need to read more abt this one (??)
Leo 2903 Gal: Perfect Edge-on easy catch. Don't remember much.
Leo Gama Gal doublets: Gamma was hard to split in 129x. surprising. bad seeing? Galaxies visible nicely. Again too small as comapred to any other galaxies i saw tonight. also i am impressed that my 10" scope shows this one clearly.
Leo 3521 Gal (New): Lil bit difficult star hop. Info says "spiral galaxy", but hard to see clearly.. surely face on.. probably same size as antenna galaxies.
M57 Ring Nebula: Apperture helps. huge ring. blue color discernible. middle star not visible..surprised..
M53: Failed: Picked up wrong Alpha coma star, also somehow encoders pointed it somewhere else..
Coma/Virgo Galactic cluster: spent more than 30mins in Coma and upper Virgo galactic cluster.
M98-M99
Markarains Chain with M88-M91
4371
M87--4478
M89
Overall, though started lil slow and with nervousness, finished with complete enthusiasm. till 2am I was going on-and-on without any food :)..
Marvelous experience because of:
- Able to handle such a Huge scope first time
- Handling new type EQ fork mount compared to my dob mount.
- Every object looks beautiful in this aperture. Was completely overwhelmed.
- Survived smoothly at the end, though started under huge peer pressure :)
Labels:
Cen Gal A,
Cen Omega Centauri,
Com Gal 4565,
Crv Antennae G 4038,
Crv PN,
CVn Gal M51 Whirlpool,
Gem Eskimo PN 2392,
Her Gal 6207,
Her GC M13,
Her PN 6210,
Hya Gal M83 S-Pinwheel,
Leo Gal 3226-3227,
Leo Gal 3521,
Oph GC M92,
Ori 73 OC,
Ori OC 2169,
Saturn,
UMa Gal M81-M82,
Vir Gal M104 Sombrero
Friday KC Dark Night - I
Date: April 17th 2009, Friday
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 1:30pm (6:30 hrs)
Location: KC, CA
Weather: Weather is okay.. Transparency is good, but seeing is not good.. lil bit wind and it increased every now and then.. wind was pretty bad at 10pm as well as 1:30am.
Instruments: Orion XTi 10, Jon's 16.5' and Jon's 15mm, 24mm TV widefield EPs and WO 28mm UWAN EP.
Buddies: Jon
New Objects: 12 + Markarins chain
Rigel (New): Nice Double. wasn't aware that its double.. don't remember details..
Gamma Leonis: Yellowish pair.. easy split.
Saturn: Seeing is okay.. not great image.. surpringly for whole night, never visited it again.. seeing was also bad..
M36: Comet Cardinal (New): M36 Y cluster. Tried to locate Cardinal just next to it.. but i guess it wasn't dark enough so didn't find it.
Lambda Orionis: Mriga Shirsha: Multiple stars, but one of them is double..
M79 in Lupus: Again not dark enough, so took a while to find this GC. Preety low on horizon. Faint fuzziness visible, hard to resolve any stars at high mag also.
Beta Monoceris (New): Impressive Triplet. all white. With 38x, only a pair, wide enough.. but at higher mag 76x, you can see one of the star itself is a double and preety tight.
Castor: Bright castor with really faint red companion. Really wide double, easy to split in 38x also.
Gemini Planetary Double: Jon showed it to me last time and locating this one failed from MTRP. Found it with help of Jon again and confirmed the location.. barely visible in 38x..
Comet Lulin: Visible in Jon's 16.5" scope... really faint, but still visible.. mag 11.. Tried comet Cardinal again.. failed..
M35: Impressive Cluster. You can see the bright curved line inside the cluster. NGC was on the SW of the cluster. Wanted to confirm the NGC w.r.t the curve line.. Its in the same line as the curved line inside M35.. but located way outside M35. should be able to find NGC from MTRP.. but its indeed faint. At the other end of the curved line, there seems ot be a double star.
Also tried Jon's TV 15mm Wide Field eyepiece (80x). It definitely has higher FOV than my 32mm x 2x barlow.. It fits whole M35 as well as part of NGC.. but mine doesn't fit both at all. the eyepiece is defintely better than mine, but eye relief seemed to be lil bit low. Need to read more abt this eyepiece specs (??)
Tau CMa: Along with Jon's 15mm TV, tried 24mm TV wide field. Again 24mm, has better FOV than my 25mm Elux, but as far as performance concerned, my 25mm gives good image too.. wasn't able to differentiate them..
but overall, 15mm TV eyepiece was better than 24mm TV.
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 1:30pm (6:30 hrs)
Location: KC, CA
Weather: Weather is okay.. Transparency is good, but seeing is not good.. lil bit wind and it increased every now and then.. wind was pretty bad at 10pm as well as 1:30am.
Instruments: Orion XTi 10, Jon's 16.5' and Jon's 15mm, 24mm TV widefield EPs and WO 28mm UWAN EP.
Buddies: Jon
New Objects: 12 + Markarins chain
Rigel (New): Nice Double. wasn't aware that its double.. don't remember details..
Gamma Leonis: Yellowish pair.. easy split.
Saturn: Seeing is okay.. not great image.. surpringly for whole night, never visited it again.. seeing was also bad..
M36: Comet Cardinal (New): M36 Y cluster. Tried to locate Cardinal just next to it.. but i guess it wasn't dark enough so didn't find it.
Lambda Orionis: Mriga Shirsha: Multiple stars, but one of them is double..
M79 in Lupus: Again not dark enough, so took a while to find this GC. Preety low on horizon. Faint fuzziness visible, hard to resolve any stars at high mag also.
Beta Monoceris (New): Impressive Triplet. all white. With 38x, only a pair, wide enough.. but at higher mag 76x, you can see one of the star itself is a double and preety tight.
Castor: Bright castor with really faint red companion. Really wide double, easy to split in 38x also.
Gemini Planetary Double: Jon showed it to me last time and locating this one failed from MTRP. Found it with help of Jon again and confirmed the location.. barely visible in 38x..
Comet Lulin: Visible in Jon's 16.5" scope... really faint, but still visible.. mag 11.. Tried comet Cardinal again.. failed..
M35: Impressive Cluster. You can see the bright curved line inside the cluster. NGC was on the SW of the cluster. Wanted to confirm the NGC w.r.t the curve line.. Its in the same line as the curved line inside M35.. but located way outside M35. should be able to find NGC from MTRP.. but its indeed faint. At the other end of the curved line, there seems ot be a double star.
Also tried Jon's TV 15mm Wide Field eyepiece (80x). It definitely has higher FOV than my 32mm x 2x barlow.. It fits whole M35 as well as part of NGC.. but mine doesn't fit both at all. the eyepiece is defintely better than mine, but eye relief seemed to be lil bit low. Need to read more abt this eyepiece specs (??)
Tau CMa: Along with Jon's 15mm TV, tried 24mm TV wide field. Again 24mm, has better FOV than my 25mm Elux, but as far as performance concerned, my 25mm gives good image too.. wasn't able to differentiate them..
but overall, 15mm TV eyepiece was better than 24mm TV.
Friday KC Dark Night - II
continued..
Double next to Tau CMa (New): while looking for Tau CMa, saw this double yellow-blue pair. Don't know the name yet.. Tau CMa is on southern side of Delta CMa, while this double is on northen side of it.. really wide double..
M46-M47: To compare 15mm, 24mm and 25mm eyepieces, moved to M46. At 15mm 80x and 24mm 48x PN was visible nicely.. but jon asked me to try his WO 28mm UWAN, and it was marvellous image.. 82 deg widefiled with whole star cluster crispy clear in the view.. and PN was also clearly visible.
With Jon's 28mm UWAN on my scope,
Thor's Helmet: Failed..Tried to locate this one, but failed.. too low on horizon.. porbabaly ended up at M50.. need to learn this star hop (??)
From low horizon, moved to overhead constellations..
Leo M65-M66-3628 triplet: Impressive in UWAN, 3628 is clearly visible, perfect edge on, but both ends are sort of blown up..
Leo Gamma Doublet Gal: Again nice pair.. easy to catch.. these are really tiny and faint galaxies.
NGC 2903: Edge on - Easy catch @ head of Leo.
M81-M82: Browsed to M81 and M82. while finding the exact location, ended up with near by NGC3077. M81 and M82 both bright and fits in same uwan view. NGC 2796 nearby.. In Jon's 16.5" M81 looks nice.. the middle vertical dark lane was clearly visible.
M108-M97: Easy catch. Both in same view.. Owl is definitely brighter than the galaxy. din't try to increase magnification so that can use uwan much more.
M109: Its a huge galaxy, don;t remember details..
M51 whirlpool: M51 and nearby NGC are visible clearly.. the conneciton betn them not directly visible.. m51 is bright.. occastionaly, coupel of stars/bright spots on N and NW poping up.. with averted vision had spiral structure feeling.. And all this just in 28mm uwan..42x !!
continued..
Double next to Tau CMa (New): while looking for Tau CMa, saw this double yellow-blue pair. Don't know the name yet.. Tau CMa is on southern side of Delta CMa, while this double is on northen side of it.. really wide double..
M46-M47: To compare 15mm, 24mm and 25mm eyepieces, moved to M46. At 15mm 80x and 24mm 48x PN was visible nicely.. but jon asked me to try his WO 28mm UWAN, and it was marvellous image.. 82 deg widefiled with whole star cluster crispy clear in the view.. and PN was also clearly visible.
With Jon's 28mm UWAN on my scope,
Thor's Helmet: Failed..Tried to locate this one, but failed.. too low on horizon.. porbabaly ended up at M50.. need to learn this star hop (??)
From low horizon, moved to overhead constellations..
Leo M65-M66-3628 triplet: Impressive in UWAN, 3628 is clearly visible, perfect edge on, but both ends are sort of blown up..
Leo Gamma Doublet Gal: Again nice pair.. easy to catch.. these are really tiny and faint galaxies.
NGC 2903: Edge on - Easy catch @ head of Leo.
M81-M82: Browsed to M81 and M82. while finding the exact location, ended up with near by NGC3077. M81 and M82 both bright and fits in same uwan view. NGC 2796 nearby.. In Jon's 16.5" M81 looks nice.. the middle vertical dark lane was clearly visible.
M108-M97: Easy catch. Both in same view.. Owl is definitely brighter than the galaxy. din't try to increase magnification so that can use uwan much more.
M109: Its a huge galaxy, don;t remember details..
M51 whirlpool: M51 and nearby NGC are visible clearly.. the conneciton betn them not directly visible.. m51 is bright.. occastionaly, coupel of stars/bright spots on N and NW poping up.. with averted vision had spiral structure feeling.. And all this just in 28mm uwan..42x !!
continued..
Monday, April 20, 2009
Friday KC Dark Night - III
Continued..
Coma/Virgo browsing: Wanted to browse galaxies in Virgo and Coma. Started with Denebola and moved 6 Coma. Doing it for first time..
M98-M99-M100 chain (New):
M98: W of the 6coma. bright..
M99: SE of the 6coma. bright..
M100: Move way up..
From M98, Move down to 11 Coma star.
M85 (New): bright with faint NGC companions
Markarian's chain:
M84: Aligned with M99-M98 line.
NGC4388: Sort of edge-on + elliptical.
M86: Bright. Elliptical
The eyes - 4438-4435
NGC 4461-4473-4477:
Continue the chain for M88 and M91
In Jon's 16.5" scope, From Epsilon Virginis to Rho virgo. Either saw M60 or NGC4647 not sure.. Too many of them..Lost it.. wasn't sure if i saw siamise twins or not..
Once we removed UWAN from my scope, I din't want to look at virgo again without it :)
Tired of fuzzies so GC time..
Omega Centauri: perfected my location. light pollution. not great in resolving stars.. not crispy clear view.. Observed thru all 3 scopes including 120mm refractor..
M13 GC in Hercules: Few stars at core Resolvable at 76x.
M92 GC:definitely tiny as compared m13. Don't remember when i saw this one last time. with Jon's helps, perfected star hopping (??)
PN 6210 in Hercules (New): Tiny PN.. small scale ghost of jupiter.. bright blue color.. perfect star hopping (??).. nearby star group visible in finder..
M107 in Ophiuchus (New): Faint. similar to M92. Easy to star hop from the bright star of Oph (??)
M4: too close to horizon to see any details.. M80 near M4, Tried but didn't spend much time..
M53 Coma GC: Aplha star (??) and GC in almost same view. Visible in finder. Fought for nearby 5053 GC.. Hard to see in my scope. In Jon's scope.. its like really really faint.. instead of GC, seemed like an open cluster.. difference in M53-and this NGC is sort of similar to the difference between M46-47 fomr LP sky... bright star cluster vs almost invisible sparse star cluster.. Have to be really careful when we starhop.. there are indeed lot of faint objects from the dark location. Also, before hunting or objects, I should get a judgment on size and magnitude..
M104 Sombrero: Marvellous view.. Dark lane visible clearly.. Finder shows it too. In Jon's 16.5", looks much better.. bright and dark lane clearly visible.. the sombrero head structure with bright sphere is clearly visible..
M68 GC (New): Just next to the corvus star (?). Tried to find it from home, but was too difficult.. From dark place, hard to see in finder.. Both star and the GC are in the same 32mm view (38x).
Ghost of Jupiter: Bright blue disk.. higher mags didn't help on this to see any details.. Jon's 16.5" didn't help either.. I had better view of this from my home. Infact from Jon's home, have seen the middle bright star.. Here, seeing was probably getting worst.
M83 seashell Gal (New): Fun star hopping. showed the star hopping sequence to Jon :). Galaxy is really bright and huge.. clearly visible in refractor also just at 30x..
continued..
Coma/Virgo browsing: Wanted to browse galaxies in Virgo and Coma. Started with Denebola and moved 6 Coma. Doing it for first time..
M98-M99-M100 chain (New):
M98: W of the 6coma. bright..
M99: SE of the 6coma. bright..
M100: Move way up..
From M98, Move down to 11 Coma star.
M85 (New): bright with faint NGC companions
Markarian's chain:
M84: Aligned with M99-M98 line.
NGC4388: Sort of edge-on + elliptical.
M86: Bright. Elliptical
The eyes - 4438-4435
NGC 4461-4473-4477:
Continue the chain for M88 and M91
In Jon's 16.5" scope, From Epsilon Virginis to Rho virgo. Either saw M60 or NGC4647 not sure.. Too many of them..Lost it.. wasn't sure if i saw siamise twins or not..
Once we removed UWAN from my scope, I din't want to look at virgo again without it :)
Tired of fuzzies so GC time..
Omega Centauri: perfected my location. light pollution. not great in resolving stars.. not crispy clear view.. Observed thru all 3 scopes including 120mm refractor..
M13 GC in Hercules: Few stars at core Resolvable at 76x.
M92 GC:definitely tiny as compared m13. Don't remember when i saw this one last time. with Jon's helps, perfected star hopping (??)
PN 6210 in Hercules (New): Tiny PN.. small scale ghost of jupiter.. bright blue color.. perfect star hopping (??).. nearby star group visible in finder..
M107 in Ophiuchus (New): Faint. similar to M92. Easy to star hop from the bright star of Oph (??)
M4: too close to horizon to see any details.. M80 near M4, Tried but didn't spend much time..
M53 Coma GC: Aplha star (??) and GC in almost same view. Visible in finder. Fought for nearby 5053 GC.. Hard to see in my scope. In Jon's scope.. its like really really faint.. instead of GC, seemed like an open cluster.. difference in M53-and this NGC is sort of similar to the difference between M46-47 fomr LP sky... bright star cluster vs almost invisible sparse star cluster.. Have to be really careful when we starhop.. there are indeed lot of faint objects from the dark location. Also, before hunting or objects, I should get a judgment on size and magnitude..
M104 Sombrero: Marvellous view.. Dark lane visible clearly.. Finder shows it too. In Jon's 16.5", looks much better.. bright and dark lane clearly visible.. the sombrero head structure with bright sphere is clearly visible..
M68 GC (New): Just next to the corvus star (?). Tried to find it from home, but was too difficult.. From dark place, hard to see in finder.. Both star and the GC are in the same 32mm view (38x).
Ghost of Jupiter: Bright blue disk.. higher mags didn't help on this to see any details.. Jon's 16.5" didn't help either.. I had better view of this from my home. Infact from Jon's home, have seen the middle bright star.. Here, seeing was probably getting worst.
M83 seashell Gal (New): Fun star hopping. showed the star hopping sequence to Jon :). Galaxy is really bright and huge.. clearly visible in refractor also just at 30x..
continued..
Labels:
Cen Omega Centauri,
Com Gal M85,
Com Gal M88-M91,
Com Gal M98-M99-M100,
Com GC M53,
Her GC M13,
Her PN 6210,
Hya Gal M83 S-Pinwheel,
Hya GC M68,
Hya Ghost of Jupiter 3242,
Location KC,
Oph GC M107,
Oph GC M92,
Sco GC M4,
Vir Gal M104 Sombrero,
Vir Gal M84-M86,
Vir MarkarainsChain
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Friday KC Dark Night - IV
Continued..
NGC 3115 spindle Gal (New): Star hop sequence.. star hopping lil difficult than m83 sequence.. In 32mm,24mm Edge-on. dust lane visible..core is not that bright.. smaller than m104.
M57 Ring nebula: In Jon's 16.5" just too big as compared all those tiny PNs.. master piece.. in my scope, 32mm, its looks ghost of jupiter @ 10mm... 7.5mm mag supported.. 2'o'clk star.. 4mm wasn't that great.
M56 GC: Actully its easy to find.. but took me a while.. again ..seems like m92 in Hercules..
Alberio: Color contrast is marvelous. Yellow, blue pair. Masterpiece.. still low on horizon..
Double Double in refractor: Hard to resolve.. too windy..
Saggi was almost up..
M8-M20 in 16.5: No filter.. Lagoon is bigger as compared to Triffid.. Lagoon star cluster shows up really well. In lagoon, dark lane is clearly visible.. lane is also too wide as compared to Triffid. In Trifid, one lane is directly visible.. for another lane eye has to get comfortable..then will see more.. third was in-out.
M6-M7 in refractor - i think i saw only M7. wasn't able to find another one.
Moved the refractor across all Sagittarius objects. Lagoon-Triffid-Swan-Eagle.
M17 Swan in refractor: 2 shape is visible upside down. view was not that great..
M16 Eagle visible: V shaped star cluster easily visible.. nebulosity sort of visible..
Veil in 16.5" with filter... too close on horizon.. loop visible.. not that impressive though.. had better views than this..
NGC 3115 spindle Gal (New): Star hop sequence.. star hopping lil difficult than m83 sequence.. In 32mm,24mm Edge-on. dust lane visible..core is not that bright.. smaller than m104.
M57 Ring nebula: In Jon's 16.5" just too big as compared all those tiny PNs.. master piece.. in my scope, 32mm, its looks ghost of jupiter @ 10mm... 7.5mm mag supported.. 2'o'clk star.. 4mm wasn't that great.
M56 GC: Actully its easy to find.. but took me a while.. again ..seems like m92 in Hercules..
Alberio: Color contrast is marvelous. Yellow, blue pair. Masterpiece.. still low on horizon..
Double Double in refractor: Hard to resolve.. too windy..
Saggi was almost up..
M8-M20 in 16.5: No filter.. Lagoon is bigger as compared to Triffid.. Lagoon star cluster shows up really well. In lagoon, dark lane is clearly visible.. lane is also too wide as compared to Triffid. In Trifid, one lane is directly visible.. for another lane eye has to get comfortable..then will see more.. third was in-out.
M6-M7 in refractor - i think i saw only M7. wasn't able to find another one.
Moved the refractor across all Sagittarius objects. Lagoon-Triffid-Swan-Eagle.
M17 Swan in refractor: 2 shape is visible upside down. view was not that great..
M16 Eagle visible: V shaped star cluster easily visible.. nebulosity sort of visible..
Veil in 16.5" with filter... too close on horizon.. loop visible.. not that impressive though.. had better views than this..
Sunday, April 12, 2009
MTRP - Calle De Vida
Date: Apr 12th 2009, Sunday
Observation Time: 8pm to 9:45pm (1:45 hrs)
Location: MTRP, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing 4 of 5. Transparency 3 of 5.
Instruments: XTi 10.
MTRP Clairemont Mesa entrance is closed now. So entered thru another entrance Calle De Vida, 2 blocks from original entrance.
Alcor-Mizar: Started with double. At 38x itself, clean split of all MizarA-B. All three white in color. Had hard time determining position angle.
Gamma Leonois: At 38x hard to split, 76x was hinting of a split, but 120x was better... really close.. Yellowish pair.
Regulus: document says its double, but is it? there is a faint star in the vicinty, seems to be optical double.
Orion M42: Okay.. Disk visible. M43 was sort of fuzzy. Trapezium E-F not resolvable at all.
Flame nebula: Failed. Just no nebulosity at all..
M78: Location was perfect, as mentioned from last observation. barely visible though.. faint.
Castor (New): Really close double. 120x is the first one to split.. really close.. higher mags help.. again white pair..
Gem Double Planetary: Jon has shown me thos one multiple times, but i didn't know precise location neither how it looks in finder. Atleast at 38x really hard to see anything. Its one of those objects that need higher mags and precise location. FAILED.
M35 OC: Impressive... The curved line inside the cluster.. didn;t find the NGC OC just otside it. Need to remember the relative position of it wrt the curved line.
Pollux (New): Not a double, but nice yellow-orangish star. Nice contrast betn Castor and Pollux.
M65-66 Triplet: Really too faint. Found it easily. but M65 and M66 were visible. NGC was sort of averted vision, giving a hint of it.. but wasn't sure.. Overall the M65-66 pair was so faint that wasn't worth increasing the magnification.
M81-82: thought that had it in the view, but didn't.. just too faint to see anything.. Last time, caught it without any trouble, but this time had hell lot of trouble in star hopping. nedd to learn abt background stars. Dark night makes thing simpler :)
Saturn: Spent lot of time on this one. Tested Jon's planetary eyepieces TMB 4mm and 6mm on this one. Went all the way to 2mm using barlow. Somehow seeing/scope was stable. Saturn was marvelous, in-and-out focus, in 3mm (400x) itself and I had breathtaking view. Surprisingly with 600x, it wasn't sharp at all, but still disk was huge and gap between disk & rings was clearly visible.
M3 GC: Naked eye Star hopping session required. hopefully next time i will remember it. Finder shows it clearly. At 38x its fuzzy, At 76x Outskirts is resolvable. At110x few star in front of the core are resolvable. 200x didn't make much difference.
M53 GC: Easy. Next to Aplha-Com. Finder barely sees it. 38x, 76x shows it as fuzzy, but 110x resolves couple of bright stars at outskirts.
Observation Time: 8pm to 9:45pm (1:45 hrs)
Location: MTRP, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing 4 of 5. Transparency 3 of 5.
Instruments: XTi 10.
MTRP Clairemont Mesa entrance is closed now. So entered thru another entrance Calle De Vida, 2 blocks from original entrance.
Alcor-Mizar: Started with double. At 38x itself, clean split of all MizarA-B. All three white in color. Had hard time determining position angle.
Gamma Leonois: At 38x hard to split, 76x was hinting of a split, but 120x was better... really close.. Yellowish pair.
Regulus: document says its double, but is it? there is a faint star in the vicinty, seems to be optical double.
Orion M42: Okay.. Disk visible. M43 was sort of fuzzy. Trapezium E-F not resolvable at all.
Flame nebula: Failed. Just no nebulosity at all..
M78: Location was perfect, as mentioned from last observation. barely visible though.. faint.
Castor (New): Really close double. 120x is the first one to split.. really close.. higher mags help.. again white pair..
Gem Double Planetary: Jon has shown me thos one multiple times, but i didn't know precise location neither how it looks in finder. Atleast at 38x really hard to see anything. Its one of those objects that need higher mags and precise location. FAILED.
M35 OC: Impressive... The curved line inside the cluster.. didn;t find the NGC OC just otside it. Need to remember the relative position of it wrt the curved line.
Pollux (New): Not a double, but nice yellow-orangish star. Nice contrast betn Castor and Pollux.
M65-66 Triplet: Really too faint. Found it easily. but M65 and M66 were visible. NGC was sort of averted vision, giving a hint of it.. but wasn't sure.. Overall the M65-66 pair was so faint that wasn't worth increasing the magnification.
M81-82: thought that had it in the view, but didn't.. just too faint to see anything.. Last time, caught it without any trouble, but this time had hell lot of trouble in star hopping. nedd to learn abt background stars. Dark night makes thing simpler :)
Saturn: Spent lot of time on this one. Tested Jon's planetary eyepieces TMB 4mm and 6mm on this one. Went all the way to 2mm using barlow. Somehow seeing/scope was stable. Saturn was marvelous, in-and-out focus, in 3mm (400x) itself and I had breathtaking view. Surprisingly with 600x, it wasn't sharp at all, but still disk was huge and gap between disk & rings was clearly visible.
M3 GC: Naked eye Star hopping session required. hopefully next time i will remember it. Finder shows it clearly. At 38x its fuzzy, At 76x Outskirts is resolvable. At110x few star in front of the core are resolvable. 200x didn't make much difference.
M53 GC: Easy. Next to Aplha-Com. Finder barely sees it. 38x, 76x shows it as fuzzy, but 110x resolves couple of bright stars at outskirts.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
CMa & Hydra browsing..
Date: Apr 1st 2009, Wednesday
Observation Time: 8:30pm to 10pm (1.5 hrs)
Location: SD home, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Seeing 4 of 5.
Instruments: New Orion XTi 10.
M41 OC: Wasn't impressive at all.. Red hue in background from light pollution..
Tau CMA OC NGC-2362: Easy catch. Not as impressive as seen from dark location KC, but still easily identifiable at 30x (42mm). Higher the mag, more stars are resolvable. with 110x-10mm, can get around 35 stars. Sort of traingle shape of the cluster.
NGC-2354 (New): 3 stars in triangle. really tiny.. TBD (??).. FAILED. Wrong observation.
NGC-2359 Thors Helmet (Failed): Can not watch this one from home at all. Jon had told me that, but still attempted. Star-hopping was fun. I think the locaiton i was pointing was correct, but no nebulosity visible. To look for Thor's, Browsing thru M46-47 line wasn't that useful, but Browsing from Sirius-Iota-Gamma then to NGC-2360 & NGC-2374 OC is better hop. 30x-42mm really helps in star-hop.
NGC-2467 & M93 (Failed): 30x-42mm helps again in star hopping. M93 is easy. NGC-2467 Failed. the starhop seems straightforward from Xi to Omi pupis, but no nebulosity..
Saturn : Best ever view from 10". At 220x, marvelous view. Crispy clear image. It ws one of those views, where you feel like having more magnification. 3 moons on west side, while one on east side. rings were fabulous. The slanted-top view of rings visible. Gap between rings and saturn was poping in the eye. Shadow of rings on disk, below the rings.. like a dark band. Northern and Southern equatorial band clearly visible.. above that towards polar side everything was sort of white. The image indeed was sharply focused and gave perfect 3D feeling.
Wasn;t sure what to observe. so picked up Hydra for first time. Bno browsing was indeed helpful to identify what is visible from patio.
NGC-3242 PN Ghost of Jupiter (New): Star-hopping from east side Nu-Phi Hydra is easier than going thru Alpha-Hydra. Really easy star-hopping. Lil hard to see the ghost in 30x, 42mm.. can be missed..but 32mm, 38x indeed shows the fuzziness..atleast can see the difference betn star and fuzziness..higher mag helps. At 110x, feels blue color. At 220x, the PN size is half saturn disk. 220x indeed shows a ring rather than blue disk. So central part is light in color, the middle part is bright blue colored ring, while outskirts is again light colored.. Averted look, helps to feel the brightness of the blue ring. this will be fun to watch from dark place. TBD (??)
Observation Time: 8:30pm to 10pm (1.5 hrs)
Location: SD home, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Seeing 4 of 5.
Instruments: New Orion XTi 10.
M41 OC: Wasn't impressive at all.. Red hue in background from light pollution..
Tau CMA OC NGC-2362: Easy catch. Not as impressive as seen from dark location KC, but still easily identifiable at 30x (42mm). Higher the mag, more stars are resolvable. with 110x-10mm, can get around 35 stars. Sort of traingle shape of the cluster.
NGC-2354 (New): 3 stars in triangle. really tiny.. TBD (??).. FAILED. Wrong observation.
NGC-2359 Thors Helmet (Failed): Can not watch this one from home at all. Jon had told me that, but still attempted. Star-hopping was fun. I think the locaiton i was pointing was correct, but no nebulosity visible. To look for Thor's, Browsing thru M46-47 line wasn't that useful, but Browsing from Sirius-Iota-Gamma then to NGC-2360 & NGC-2374 OC is better hop. 30x-42mm really helps in star-hop.
NGC-2467 & M93 (Failed): 30x-42mm helps again in star hopping. M93 is easy. NGC-2467 Failed. the starhop seems straightforward from Xi to Omi pupis, but no nebulosity..
Saturn : Best ever view from 10". At 220x, marvelous view. Crispy clear image. It ws one of those views, where you feel like having more magnification. 3 moons on west side, while one on east side. rings were fabulous. The slanted-top view of rings visible. Gap between rings and saturn was poping in the eye. Shadow of rings on disk, below the rings.. like a dark band. Northern and Southern equatorial band clearly visible.. above that towards polar side everything was sort of white. The image indeed was sharply focused and gave perfect 3D feeling.
Wasn;t sure what to observe. so picked up Hydra for first time. Bno browsing was indeed helpful to identify what is visible from patio.
NGC-3242 PN Ghost of Jupiter (New): Star-hopping from east side Nu-Phi Hydra is easier than going thru Alpha-Hydra. Really easy star-hopping. Lil hard to see the ghost in 30x, 42mm.. can be missed..but 32mm, 38x indeed shows the fuzziness..atleast can see the difference betn star and fuzziness..higher mag helps. At 110x, feels blue color. At 220x, the PN size is half saturn disk. 220x indeed shows a ring rather than blue disk. So central part is light in color, the middle part is bright blue colored ring, while outskirts is again light colored.. Averted look, helps to feel the brightness of the blue ring. this will be fun to watch from dark place. TBD (??)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Messier Marathon - Part I
Date: Mar 28th 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 12:30pm (5:30 hrs)
Location: KC, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Seeing 4 of 5. nominal winds. Clouds in slow motion from west since 7pm and rolled all over at 12:30pm. Nominal winds.
Instruments: New Orion XTi 10, Jon's 16.5' and bunch of naglers, panoptics and uwans :) yey !!
Buddies: Jon
Total Objects : 69 = 57 + Markarains Chain 8 + Virgo Zoo 5
New Objects : 18
Messier Objects : 46 = 42 + Markarains Chain 2 + Virgo Zoo 2
Attempted Messier Marathon.. Objective was to capture as many M objects possible before cloud rolls over around midnight. Spend time with Jon while browsing.
Because of Messier marathon, overall didn't spend much time in oserving objects or puting higher mags. but tries to locate objects and remember their locations. Jon showed few interesting objects along the line.
Print out of messier marathon sequence indeed helped as a observation schedule.
Because of KC valley mountains, lost all objects till M33 i.e around 30deg of W view is blocked, so started with: M45 in binocs and perseus double cluster in 10'.
Double Cluster: Lower one bigger then the upper one. One is loosely connected and contins lot of bright stars while another one is concentrated and full of faint stars.
M103 OC (New): Seems closer to the star Delta, but browsed on wrong side. At low mags, M103 seems to be 3 stars in triangle fashion, but middle one is a pair. At lil higher mag, you can see that left star is full with other faint stars. only left star is the brighter one in the herd. (Need to confirm this observation. (TBD ??)
M52 OC (New): Though away from any nearby star, easy to find. Its indeed a tight faint cluster, but a lone bright star in the cluster.
M76 PN Little Dumbbell (New): Easy catch. Impressive.
M34 OC (New): Next to Algol. Y shape in center. All stars are bright.
M45 Pleiades (New): In 42mm eyepiece, all sisters fit well, there seems to be lot of tight doubles inside this one. No nebulosity. surprisingly this my first entry documented for M45. I have seen it hundred times from binocs.
M42-M43: Impressive view M42. Watched it multiple times during whole night. Just after sunset, trapezoid visible, no nebulosity. After dark, view in 16.5' 35mm panoptic view was the best i have ever seen of M42-M43. All 70deg full of nebulocity. Never realized that M42 nebulocity is so huge and impressive. Trapezoid: Tried for E-F. Seeing was just too bad. never saw them.In the process i realized that, though whole sky seems so impressive from dark place, in reality the seeing can indeed be bad. Thats the difference betn transparency and seeing. Trapeziod or planets are good tests for seeing.
Running Man nebula: Visited near by Nebulosity with 3 bright stars visible. Dark running man didn't show up..obviously.. probably need a filter.
M78 Neb: I told Jon abt my failed M78 attempt couple of days back form home.. Sigma and Alnilam line points to m78, but the object is not nearby any prominent shapes, probably there is UMa shape on right side of this object.
Flame Nebula (New): Also tried flame and horsehead nebula.. both of them seem to be on opposite sides of sigma (TBD ??). Glare from the nearby star kills the nebulosity, so actually you have to keep the nebula and star at the edge and hide the star, so nebulosity is prominently visible.
Horsehead Nebula (Failed): According to Jon, he pointed the scope at precise location, but didn;t see anything at all. We already had H-beta filter on, but still didn;t see anything. this one is really hard.
M79 GC (New): Easy catch. Follow the dagger from Orion to alpha-bet in lupus. Contimue the line and thats where M79 is. Its impressive. At 38x, yo ucan see the bluish globular. high mags help. At 76x outer edge stars are resolvable. 110x didn;t help, not able to focus.. bad seeing.
Tau CMa (New): Jon mentioned abt this Masterpiece. Small concentrated cluster around Tau CMa. Tau is only bright star in this cluster. Infact not sure if its part of the cluster or not. (TBD ??). Should be visible from home.
M41 OC: Impressive. E shape visible clearly. All bright stars.
M47 OC: M47 k shape didn;t impress much. Actually all stars are sort of bright so k shape or oph shape not very impressive. From light pollution at home, this object is better.
M46 OC and PN: Marvellous. Light pollution kills all stars making them too faint. but from dark place, all stars show up smoothly. Planeotry is easy catch.. My averted vision location, seen from home, is indeed correct. From dark place it pops up. higher Mags helps. Size of PN is almost same as lil concentrated stars above it. Thru 16.5' it was beautiful, Also jon's 28mm UWAN 82deg makes it much more impressive. Colors of PN in 28mm UWAN were much better than My 32mm x2 combo.. Good example to see eyepiece differences.
Thor's helmet (New): huge. nebulosity is enormous. Shape not discernible. Jon mentioned won;t be visible from home. Its nearby M46-M47, but i don't know the location. (TBD ??)
Continued..
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 12:30pm (5:30 hrs)
Location: KC, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Seeing 4 of 5. nominal winds. Clouds in slow motion from west since 7pm and rolled all over at 12:30pm. Nominal winds.
Instruments: New Orion XTi 10, Jon's 16.5' and bunch of naglers, panoptics and uwans :) yey !!
Buddies: Jon
Total Objects : 69 = 57 + Markarains Chain 8 + Virgo Zoo 5
New Objects : 18
Messier Objects : 46 = 42 + Markarains Chain 2 + Virgo Zoo 2
Attempted Messier Marathon.. Objective was to capture as many M objects possible before cloud rolls over around midnight. Spend time with Jon while browsing.
Because of Messier marathon, overall didn't spend much time in oserving objects or puting higher mags. but tries to locate objects and remember their locations. Jon showed few interesting objects along the line.
Print out of messier marathon sequence indeed helped as a observation schedule.
Because of KC valley mountains, lost all objects till M33 i.e around 30deg of W view is blocked, so started with: M45 in binocs and perseus double cluster in 10'.
Double Cluster: Lower one bigger then the upper one. One is loosely connected and contins lot of bright stars while another one is concentrated and full of faint stars.
M103 OC (New): Seems closer to the star Delta, but browsed on wrong side. At low mags, M103 seems to be 3 stars in triangle fashion, but middle one is a pair. At lil higher mag, you can see that left star is full with other faint stars. only left star is the brighter one in the herd. (Need to confirm this observation. (TBD ??)
M52 OC (New): Though away from any nearby star, easy to find. Its indeed a tight faint cluster, but a lone bright star in the cluster.
M76 PN Little Dumbbell (New): Easy catch. Impressive.
M34 OC (New): Next to Algol. Y shape in center. All stars are bright.
M45 Pleiades (New): In 42mm eyepiece, all sisters fit well, there seems to be lot of tight doubles inside this one. No nebulosity. surprisingly this my first entry documented for M45. I have seen it hundred times from binocs.
M42-M43: Impressive view M42. Watched it multiple times during whole night. Just after sunset, trapezoid visible, no nebulosity. After dark, view in 16.5' 35mm panoptic view was the best i have ever seen of M42-M43. All 70deg full of nebulocity. Never realized that M42 nebulocity is so huge and impressive. Trapezoid: Tried for E-F. Seeing was just too bad. never saw them.In the process i realized that, though whole sky seems so impressive from dark place, in reality the seeing can indeed be bad. Thats the difference betn transparency and seeing. Trapeziod or planets are good tests for seeing.
Running Man nebula: Visited near by Nebulosity with 3 bright stars visible. Dark running man didn't show up..obviously.. probably need a filter.
M78 Neb: I told Jon abt my failed M78 attempt couple of days back form home.. Sigma and Alnilam line points to m78, but the object is not nearby any prominent shapes, probably there is UMa shape on right side of this object.
Flame Nebula (New): Also tried flame and horsehead nebula.. both of them seem to be on opposite sides of sigma (TBD ??). Glare from the nearby star kills the nebulosity, so actually you have to keep the nebula and star at the edge and hide the star, so nebulosity is prominently visible.
Horsehead Nebula (Failed): According to Jon, he pointed the scope at precise location, but didn;t see anything at all. We already had H-beta filter on, but still didn;t see anything. this one is really hard.
M79 GC (New): Easy catch. Follow the dagger from Orion to alpha-bet in lupus. Contimue the line and thats where M79 is. Its impressive. At 38x, yo ucan see the bluish globular. high mags help. At 76x outer edge stars are resolvable. 110x didn;t help, not able to focus.. bad seeing.
Tau CMa (New): Jon mentioned abt this Masterpiece. Small concentrated cluster around Tau CMa. Tau is only bright star in this cluster. Infact not sure if its part of the cluster or not. (TBD ??). Should be visible from home.
M41 OC: Impressive. E shape visible clearly. All bright stars.
M47 OC: M47 k shape didn;t impress much. Actually all stars are sort of bright so k shape or oph shape not very impressive. From light pollution at home, this object is better.
M46 OC and PN: Marvellous. Light pollution kills all stars making them too faint. but from dark place, all stars show up smoothly. Planeotry is easy catch.. My averted vision location, seen from home, is indeed correct. From dark place it pops up. higher Mags helps. Size of PN is almost same as lil concentrated stars above it. Thru 16.5' it was beautiful, Also jon's 28mm UWAN 82deg makes it much more impressive. Colors of PN in 28mm UWAN were much better than My 32mm x2 combo.. Good example to see eyepiece differences.
Thor's helmet (New): huge. nebulosity is enormous. Shape not discernible. Jon mentioned won;t be visible from home. Its nearby M46-M47, but i don't know the location. (TBD ??)
Continued..
Labels:
Cas OC M103,
Cas OC M52,
CMa OC M41,
CMa OC Tau,
CMa Thors Helmet Neb 2359,
Lep GC M79,
Location KC,
Ori Flame Neb 2024,
Ori Neb M42-M43,
Ori Neb M78,
Ori Running Man Neb 1973-5-7,
Per Double Cluster 869-84,
Per OC M34,
Per PN M76 Little Dumbell,
Pup OC M46-M47,
Tau OC M45 Pleiades
Messier Marathon - Part II
Continued..
NGC 2467 nebula (New): while looking for M93, ended up at this one. M93 is on one side of Xi pup, while this is exactly opposite side, same distance. good looking.
M93, M50 and M48 OC: From Light polluted skies, these guys are prominent, but from dark skies, not impressive. :)..
Overall, during whole night star hopping, while looking for intended objects, I saw so many fuzzies on the way that its hard to keep track. I tried my best to look into star atlas, before moving on.
Also M93/M103 examples show that my sense of direction within inverted image of reflector still messes up sometimes. Have to get a better judgement.
Comet Lulin: In Gemini. In 16.5'. Around mag 9. Fuzziness is still visible easily, but small.
Gemini Double Planetory (New): In 16.5', Marvellous pair of planetory. sort of 8 shape visible. Magnification helps. Don't know the location (TBD ??)
M1 Crab: Watched after long time. Easy catch.. Again directional sense in eyepiece messed up. Mag helps.
M36-M38-M37 OC: M36 and 38 are inside, while M37 is outside pentagon. 36 is smaller than its brothers. It has inverted Y shape or stick figure tree shape. M38 is impressive with Pi shape, while M37 is probabaly same size as M38 and it has like ice-cream cone shape, with ice-cream on top :)..
M35 OC: This is another impressive object. At lower mags it fills the eyepiece. All bright stars. The best part is that it is acommpanied by a fuzzy object next to it. It seems to be a nebulous object, but somehow star atlas says its a open cluster. If thats the case, it must be really tight, concentrated and star rich cluster. higher mags seem to be resolving more stars in this one. Need to read more (TBD ??)
M44 OC: Beehive was naked eye.
M67 OC: Star atlas helps to point it betn M44 and Hidra head. It is arched H shape. Left arc of H shape is full of stars. Impressive view.
I am glad i noted my observations on paper during the session. Otherwise i would have got confused between so many OCs.
It marked end of first leg in my marathon. Almost all objects from West side are done. Bit tired by now.. Almost 10:30pm !!
Saturn: Okay seeing/ At 220x, image was fine not that stable. shadow of rings visible clearly on the disk.
M95-M96-M105 plus nearby NGcs: Easy catch. All of them visible. Quick glimpse.
M65-M66-NGC3628: Forgot the location.Took few mins. All them visible. 3628 wasn't clearly visible. Quick glimpse.
NGC2903 Galaxy: Read abt this, but never seen it. Easy catch. Well positioned. Almost edge-on.. bright.. Need to spend more time on this..
NGC 3226-3227 Galaxy pair (New): Jon pointed to this one instead of 2903. Its close to Gamma-Leonois. Pair is bright.. (TBD ??)
Planetory Nebula in Corvus (New): Fought for it so much from home, and from dark sight its easy catch. Too faint for home observation, if don't know where it is. Yet another fuzzy, but didn;t look like PN. Pattern visible thru jon's 16.5'
Antenna galaxies (New): Asked Jon to show me this one. Fought for it from home. Too faint in 16.5' also. Hard to see any pattern. Hopeless pair..
Continued..
NGC 2467 nebula (New): while looking for M93, ended up at this one. M93 is on one side of Xi pup, while this is exactly opposite side, same distance. good looking.
M93, M50 and M48 OC: From Light polluted skies, these guys are prominent, but from dark skies, not impressive. :)..
Overall, during whole night star hopping, while looking for intended objects, I saw so many fuzzies on the way that its hard to keep track. I tried my best to look into star atlas, before moving on.
Also M93/M103 examples show that my sense of direction within inverted image of reflector still messes up sometimes. Have to get a better judgement.
Comet Lulin: In Gemini. In 16.5'. Around mag 9. Fuzziness is still visible easily, but small.
Gemini Double Planetory (New): In 16.5', Marvellous pair of planetory. sort of 8 shape visible. Magnification helps. Don't know the location (TBD ??)
M1 Crab: Watched after long time. Easy catch.. Again directional sense in eyepiece messed up. Mag helps.
M36-M38-M37 OC: M36 and 38 are inside, while M37 is outside pentagon. 36 is smaller than its brothers. It has inverted Y shape or stick figure tree shape. M38 is impressive with Pi shape, while M37 is probabaly same size as M38 and it has like ice-cream cone shape, with ice-cream on top :)..
M35 OC: This is another impressive object. At lower mags it fills the eyepiece. All bright stars. The best part is that it is acommpanied by a fuzzy object next to it. It seems to be a nebulous object, but somehow star atlas says its a open cluster. If thats the case, it must be really tight, concentrated and star rich cluster. higher mags seem to be resolving more stars in this one. Need to read more (TBD ??)
M44 OC: Beehive was naked eye.
M67 OC: Star atlas helps to point it betn M44 and Hidra head. It is arched H shape. Left arc of H shape is full of stars. Impressive view.
I am glad i noted my observations on paper during the session. Otherwise i would have got confused between so many OCs.
It marked end of first leg in my marathon. Almost all objects from West side are done. Bit tired by now.. Almost 10:30pm !!
Saturn: Okay seeing/ At 220x, image was fine not that stable. shadow of rings visible clearly on the disk.
M95-M96-M105 plus nearby NGcs: Easy catch. All of them visible. Quick glimpse.
M65-M66-NGC3628: Forgot the location.Took few mins. All them visible. 3628 wasn't clearly visible. Quick glimpse.
NGC2903 Galaxy: Read abt this, but never seen it. Easy catch. Well positioned. Almost edge-on.. bright.. Need to spend more time on this..
NGC 3226-3227 Galaxy pair (New): Jon pointed to this one instead of 2903. Its close to Gamma-Leonois. Pair is bright.. (TBD ??)
Planetory Nebula in Corvus (New): Fought for it so much from home, and from dark sight its easy catch. Too faint for home observation, if don't know where it is. Yet another fuzzy, but didn;t look like PN. Pattern visible thru jon's 16.5'
Antenna galaxies (New): Asked Jon to show me this one. Fought for it from home. Too faint in 16.5' also. Hard to see any pattern. Hopeless pair..
Continued..
Labels:
CMa Neb 2467,
Cnc OC M44 Beehive,
Cnc OC M67,
Comet Lulin,
Crv Antennae G 4038,
Crv PN,
Gem Double-Lobed PN 2371-2,
Gem OC M35,
Hya OC M48,
Leo Gal 2903,
Leo Gal 3226-3227,
Leo Gal M65-M66-3628,
Leo Gal M95-M96-M105,
Location KC,
Mon OC M50,
Pup OC M93,
Saturn
Messier Marathon - Part III
Continued..
Virgo-Coma Galactic Cluster: Jon showed me in 16.5' with 35mm Panoptic. Marvellous.. 9 galaxies in same view. 5 of them were pretty sharp. This is a galactic heaven. Don't know which objects I saw, but seemed like Markarain's chain. Wasn;t sure abt the location.
As per star atlas, started with epsilon virginis and must have gone towards M60-M59.. not sure.. tried to browse nearby.. but its easy to loose yourself easily in this galactic zoo. Star hopping in this area is real skill. Need to read more on this one. (TBD ??) .. but its unbelievable view. Can spend hours on this one.. and soon I will :)
In my 10', 42mm 30x view, looks good, but Jon let me borrow his 28mm UWAN with parracor. WOW !! no words !! The field of view 82deg rules ..keeps lot of galaxies in same view. with paracor, view was awesome.. but with parracor, every star is tack sharp. Also tried 22m Nagler.. Hssh !!
For rest of the night, i used Jon's 22m Nagler :) (50x) !!
- Ursa Major:
M81-M82 Bode's Nebulae: Easy catch, extending Alpha-Gamma line, towards pole. Bright pair, barely in 22mm. M81 vertical dust lane visible (??). In 16.5 impressive-bright view. Wish jon would have increased the mag.
- CVn:
M63 Sunflower: Bright and big, unexpectedly.
M51 whirlpool: Galaxy pair merge clearly visible. I guess because of nagler, they look so bright. Smaller than M63.
- Bootes:
M3 GC: Jon showed the location. Still tricky to find it. MArevellous globular.. bright-bluish. Probably can resolve some outer skirt stars with 22m.. high mag required.
- Coma:
M53 GC (New): Identifying Coma constellation was headache. but once found alpha, M53 is an easy catch. Beautiful GC. Smaller than M3.
M64 Black Eye (New): Yet another.. but easy to find.
Seems like i was too tired... just too many fuzzies for one night :) !!
- Ursa Major:
M108 - M97: Both M97 Owl nebula and M108 fits in same view. Nebula is brighter than galaxy. galaxy seems elliptical.
M109: Yet another fuzzy, don't remember much.
M40 (New): Its double rather than any fuzzy. Messier mistake.
M101: Lil tricky, may get confused because of NGCs nearby. but big & bright.. feels up whole eyepiece.. this seemed to be of unusual shape.
- CVn:
M94: Easy to catch with star atlas. Yet another galaxy.
M106 (New): Failed.. too tired.. thought that saw it thru binos, but that can not be..its too faint for binos.
- Hercules:
M13 GC: Sort of in clouds. Still got it. Way bigger than M3 also.. too bright..but wasn;t clear..seeing was just too bad..
TBDs:
- Are we/milkyway part of Virgo galactic cluster?
- Field stop of an eyepiece
- Barlowed laser collimator
- T CMa
- Nagler-Panoptic eyepieces on 10"
- Trapezoid E-F stars: Seeing is better in TDS than KC
Lot of fuzzies while browsing thru the sky. Impressive to see how many "things" are there in the sky.
Virgo-Coma Galactic Cluster: Jon showed me in 16.5' with 35mm Panoptic. Marvellous.. 9 galaxies in same view. 5 of them were pretty sharp. This is a galactic heaven. Don't know which objects I saw, but seemed like Markarain's chain. Wasn;t sure abt the location.
As per star atlas, started with epsilon virginis and must have gone towards M60-M59.. not sure.. tried to browse nearby.. but its easy to loose yourself easily in this galactic zoo. Star hopping in this area is real skill. Need to read more on this one. (TBD ??) .. but its unbelievable view. Can spend hours on this one.. and soon I will :)
In my 10', 42mm 30x view, looks good, but Jon let me borrow his 28mm UWAN with parracor. WOW !! no words !! The field of view 82deg rules ..keeps lot of galaxies in same view. with paracor, view was awesome.. but with parracor, every star is tack sharp. Also tried 22m Nagler.. Hssh !!
For rest of the night, i used Jon's 22m Nagler :) (50x) !!
- Ursa Major:
M81-M82 Bode's Nebulae: Easy catch, extending Alpha-Gamma line, towards pole. Bright pair, barely in 22mm. M81 vertical dust lane visible (??). In 16.5 impressive-bright view. Wish jon would have increased the mag.
- CVn:
M63 Sunflower: Bright and big, unexpectedly.
M51 whirlpool: Galaxy pair merge clearly visible. I guess because of nagler, they look so bright. Smaller than M63.
- Bootes:
M3 GC: Jon showed the location. Still tricky to find it. MArevellous globular.. bright-bluish. Probably can resolve some outer skirt stars with 22m.. high mag required.
- Coma:
M53 GC (New): Identifying Coma constellation was headache. but once found alpha, M53 is an easy catch. Beautiful GC. Smaller than M3.
M64 Black Eye (New): Yet another.. but easy to find.
Seems like i was too tired... just too many fuzzies for one night :) !!
- Ursa Major:
M108 - M97: Both M97 Owl nebula and M108 fits in same view. Nebula is brighter than galaxy. galaxy seems elliptical.
M109: Yet another fuzzy, don't remember much.
M40 (New): Its double rather than any fuzzy. Messier mistake.
M101: Lil tricky, may get confused because of NGCs nearby. but big & bright.. feels up whole eyepiece.. this seemed to be of unusual shape.
- CVn:
M94: Easy to catch with star atlas. Yet another galaxy.
M106 (New): Failed.. too tired.. thought that saw it thru binos, but that can not be..its too faint for binos.
- Hercules:
M13 GC: Sort of in clouds. Still got it. Way bigger than M3 also.. too bright..but wasn;t clear..seeing was just too bad..
TBDs:
- Are we/milkyway part of Virgo galactic cluster?
- Field stop of an eyepiece
- Barlowed laser collimator
- T CMa
- Nagler-Panoptic eyepieces on 10"
- Trapezoid E-F stars: Seeing is better in TDS than KC
Lot of fuzzies while browsing thru the sky. Impressive to see how many "things" are there in the sky.
Labels:
Com Gal M64 BlackEye,
Com GC M53,
CVn Gal M106,
CVn Gal M51 Whirlpool,
CVn Gal M63 Sunflower,
CVn Gal M94,
CVn GC M3,
Her GC M13,
Location KC,
UMa Gal M101 Pinwheel,
UMa Gal M108,
UMa Gal M109,
UMa Gal M81-M82,
UMa OC M40 Winnecke4,
UMa PN M97 Owl,
Vir MarkarainsChain
Monday, March 23, 2009
Late Night Outreach...
Date: 22nd March 2009, Sunday
Observation Time: 11pm to 12pm (1 hr)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing was fine. probably 3.5 of 5
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Buddies: Ashwin and Alankar
Total Objects: 3
New Objects: 2
Had nice observing session late night, after Imax-Watchmen. Considering the cloudless night, wanted to show "Crispy" Saturn to Ashwin and Alankar.
- Leo
Saturn: Image wasn't sharp, but better than previous observation. Saturn's rings were perfect-edge-on yesterday 21st March. Felt the same. Wasn't able to see the gap betn rings and the planet, so must be edge-on. 3 moons on western side, while 2 moons on eastern side.
- Corvus
Delta Corvi (New): In order to show some variety of objects in the sky, pointed to this double star in "Hasta"-corvus constellation. Didn't try for any mag-separation calculation. Primary is blue-white, while secondary is orange-red in color. Primary seems far brighter than secondary. In 38x secondary was visible, but not clear enough. Heigher mags resolved it better. Secondary position angle is probably 225deg.
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~jkaler/sow/algorab.html
- Virgo
To show how galaxy looks like in a scope, I was looking for any nearby bright galaxies. Initial plan was to show Messier galactic zoo in Virgo, but becasue of limited viewing from my patio, skipped Virgo-cluster as well as Leo-cluster.
M104 Sombrero (New): M104 was promising one in the map, but I have never star-hopped to it before, so wasn't much confident.. but BAM...in first shot i got it. Around 110deg angle & ~1.5 times the distance of Delta-Gamma corvi line. In 38x you can see the fuzziness, but barely. Easy to miss this object, but there are 3 bright stars aligned straight to its "SW". Increasing the mags indeed helped in revealing more details. I am surprised with how-much higher mags this object supports in city light pollution also.. At 76x, the edge-on shape was clearly visible. Had a feeling of buldge in the middle, but not clearly. the galaxy itseef is aligned with two other bright stars on west. the edge-on shape probabaly makes 25deg angle with the star-alignment on SW. At 110x, bulge was improved.
Observation Time: 11pm to 12pm (1 hr)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing was fine. probably 3.5 of 5
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Buddies: Ashwin and Alankar
Total Objects: 3
New Objects: 2
Had nice observing session late night, after Imax-Watchmen. Considering the cloudless night, wanted to show "Crispy" Saturn to Ashwin and Alankar.
- Leo
Saturn: Image wasn't sharp, but better than previous observation. Saturn's rings were perfect-edge-on yesterday 21st March. Felt the same. Wasn't able to see the gap betn rings and the planet, so must be edge-on. 3 moons on western side, while 2 moons on eastern side.
- Corvus
Delta Corvi (New): In order to show some variety of objects in the sky, pointed to this double star in "Hasta"-corvus constellation. Didn't try for any mag-separation calculation. Primary is blue-white, while secondary is orange-red in color. Primary seems far brighter than secondary. In 38x secondary was visible, but not clear enough. Heigher mags resolved it better. Secondary position angle is probably 225deg.
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~jkaler/sow/algorab.html
- Virgo
To show how galaxy looks like in a scope, I was looking for any nearby bright galaxies. Initial plan was to show Messier galactic zoo in Virgo, but becasue of limited viewing from my patio, skipped Virgo-cluster as well as Leo-cluster.
M104 Sombrero (New): M104 was promising one in the map, but I have never star-hopped to it before, so wasn't much confident.. but BAM...in first shot i got it. Around 110deg angle & ~1.5 times the distance of Delta-Gamma corvi line. In 38x you can see the fuzziness, but barely. Easy to miss this object, but there are 3 bright stars aligned straight to its "SW". Increasing the mags indeed helped in revealing more details. I am surprised with how-much higher mags this object supports in city light pollution also.. At 76x, the edge-on shape was clearly visible. Had a feeling of buldge in the middle, but not clearly. the galaxy itseef is aligned with two other bright stars on west. the edge-on shape probabaly makes 25deg angle with the star-alignment on SW. At 110x, bulge was improved.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Orion CMa Pup "M" browsing
Date: 18th March 2009, Wednesday
Observation Time: 8pm to 10pm (2 hrs)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing was okay in the beginning 2.5/5. After an hour it improved. 3.5/5
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Total Objects: 11
New Objects: 3
I am surprised how many things I can see from my patio itself. It was good a experience.
- Orion
M42 Orion Nebula: Wanted to investigate Trapezium inside orion nebula. With 40mm (30x), stars C, A, D were visible. B was probably there, but wasn't sure. With 32mm (38x) B popped easily. Additional magnifications 76x, 10mm (120x) didn't help. In-fact 240x was really hard to focus. Probably a bad night.. What is the minimum magnification and seeing required for E & F to show up?
M43: Not a great view. Nebulosity was visible at 32mm-38x, but then lost it at 76x.
Running Man Nebula NGC 1977 (New-Failed): Got the location, north of M43. Saw stars of the nebula. But actual nebulosity was missing at 30x or 38x also. All higher mags were hopeless.
- Canis Major
Started usual browsing of sky and M objects.
M41 OC: Preety sight. With 30x. The E shaped fork was visible. 38x and 76x shows the shape, but doesn't give overall perspective as 30x.
Eta CMa (New): Visual double star. Visible in 38x. Still can not judge the star magnitude and distances properly. Companion is probably 3 times fainter. Also with 10mm-120x, its like 1/8th of the eyepiece view. The distance is probably 3' minutes. ((52 deg/120x)*60)/8)
Info here: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Aludra.html
v1 v3 v2 CMa: More double/variable stars in Canis Major. v3 and v2 are only double, as per the map. Saw only v2 to be double. Indeed tight. but still visible in 38x.
- Monoceros
M50 OC: Fainter than I was expecting, still can not miss it at 30x. Twisted and abstract butterfly shape.
- Puppis
M46-M47 OC: Nice pair. At 30x can not keep both in same view.
M47 is made with all bright stars. Closeup look with 38x shows Ophiuchus constellation shape, with small 'k' shape inside.. k or chair shape. All star seems white.
M46 is not as impressive as M47. Lil fainter and sprinkled like M50. No definite shape visible. I missed the PN inside.
This OC pair is marked by two bright star pairs on each side. Indeed impressive.
M93 OC: Really small. initially i missed it at 38x, but found it again at 30x. High mags show twisted A shape. Impressive.
- Hydra
M48 OC (New): Easy catch. Next to hydra C stars. It shows shape of 7, rotated 180deg inside a rectangular boundary.
- Leo
Saturn: Saturn was the only Leo object I was able to view thru my patio. Saturn was impressive. 32mm-38x shows tiny saturn and existence of rings. 2 moons on left clearly visible. The one inside, had uncollimated bright hue aspect to it. Didn't understand what it was, but 76x clarified it. clearly see 3 additional moons, instead of bright hue. First time ever I captured 5 moons of Saturn. 10mm-120x was again impressive. Saturn rings were nice and were giving a feeling of lil bit of tilt, still not sure. N and S gas bands were going in-out of focus. With barlow, 240x was awesome.. Crispy clear view. Seeing must have been improved by now. Gaseous bands on N-S were clear. Lost 5th moon.. wasn't bright enough. rings were indeed showing the tilt without any doubt. Gaps between the Saturn and rings was clearly visible. Cassinni division wasn't visible, i guess because of the low tilt of rings. Still best ever view of Saturn in my 10" scope.
Showed Saturn to Ashwin and Alankar, but by that time, seeing went bad and in few mins fog rolled over.
Observation Time: 8pm to 10pm (2 hrs)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing was okay in the beginning 2.5/5. After an hour it improved. 3.5/5
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Total Objects: 11
New Objects: 3
I am surprised how many things I can see from my patio itself. It was good a experience.
- Orion
M42 Orion Nebula: Wanted to investigate Trapezium inside orion nebula. With 40mm (30x), stars C, A, D were visible. B was probably there, but wasn't sure. With 32mm (38x) B popped easily. Additional magnifications 76x, 10mm (120x) didn't help. In-fact 240x was really hard to focus. Probably a bad night.. What is the minimum magnification and seeing required for E & F to show up?
M43: Not a great view. Nebulosity was visible at 32mm-38x, but then lost it at 76x.
Running Man Nebula NGC 1977 (New-Failed): Got the location, north of M43. Saw stars of the nebula. But actual nebulosity was missing at 30x or 38x also. All higher mags were hopeless.
- Canis Major
Started usual browsing of sky and M objects.
M41 OC: Preety sight. With 30x. The E shaped fork was visible. 38x and 76x shows the shape, but doesn't give overall perspective as 30x.
Eta CMa (New): Visual double star. Visible in 38x. Still can not judge the star magnitude and distances properly. Companion is probably 3 times fainter. Also with 10mm-120x, its like 1/8th of the eyepiece view. The distance is probably 3' minutes. ((52 deg/120x)*60)/8)
Info here: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Aludra.html
v1 v3 v2 CMa: More double/variable stars in Canis Major. v3 and v2 are only double, as per the map. Saw only v2 to be double. Indeed tight. but still visible in 38x.
- Monoceros
M50 OC: Fainter than I was expecting, still can not miss it at 30x. Twisted and abstract butterfly shape.
- Puppis
M46-M47 OC: Nice pair. At 30x can not keep both in same view.
M47 is made with all bright stars. Closeup look with 38x shows Ophiuchus constellation shape, with small 'k' shape inside.. k or chair shape. All star seems white.
M46 is not as impressive as M47. Lil fainter and sprinkled like M50. No definite shape visible. I missed the PN inside.
This OC pair is marked by two bright star pairs on each side. Indeed impressive.
M93 OC: Really small. initially i missed it at 38x, but found it again at 30x. High mags show twisted A shape. Impressive.
- Hydra
M48 OC (New): Easy catch. Next to hydra C stars. It shows shape of 7, rotated 180deg inside a rectangular boundary.
- Leo
Saturn: Saturn was the only Leo object I was able to view thru my patio. Saturn was impressive. 32mm-38x shows tiny saturn and existence of rings. 2 moons on left clearly visible. The one inside, had uncollimated bright hue aspect to it. Didn't understand what it was, but 76x clarified it. clearly see 3 additional moons, instead of bright hue. First time ever I captured 5 moons of Saturn. 10mm-120x was again impressive. Saturn rings were nice and were giving a feeling of lil bit of tilt, still not sure. N and S gas bands were going in-out of focus. With barlow, 240x was awesome.. Crispy clear view. Seeing must have been improved by now. Gaseous bands on N-S were clear. Lost 5th moon.. wasn't bright enough. rings were indeed showing the tilt without any doubt. Gaps between the Saturn and rings was clearly visible. Cassinni division wasn't visible, i guess because of the low tilt of rings. Still best ever view of Saturn in my 10" scope.
Showed Saturn to Ashwin and Alankar, but by that time, seeing went bad and in few mins fog rolled over.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Bust..
Date: 17th March 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 8pm (30 mins)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Worst weather ever..
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Buddies: Ashwin, Alankar and Renga
Venus: The crescent venus shape was marvelous. it was like first phase from the new moon. Because of atmospheric movements, the bright part of Venus was glittering. We watched it from club's 22" scope and then thru my 10" scope. The view from my scope was comparable to club's scope.
Venus was the highlight and only object of the night. Fog rolled over and killed whole night.. it was complete waste driving to TDS. Bad night. !! Accuweather showed that sky is clear, no clouds from 7pm to 11pm, but mentioned abt high humidity. Clear sky clock showed cloud cover, transparency to be excellent, but seeing to be bad... Being deprived of astronomy sessions for more than 2 months, I took a risk of driving to TDS, but complete failure.
Discussion abt "Qualia" with Renga was interesting though.
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 8pm (30 mins)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Worst weather ever..
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Buddies: Ashwin, Alankar and Renga
Venus: The crescent venus shape was marvelous. it was like first phase from the new moon. Because of atmospheric movements, the bright part of Venus was glittering. We watched it from club's 22" scope and then thru my 10" scope. The view from my scope was comparable to club's scope.
Venus was the highlight and only object of the night. Fog rolled over and killed whole night.. it was complete waste driving to TDS. Bad night. !! Accuweather showed that sky is clear, no clouds from 7pm to 11pm, but mentioned abt high humidity. Clear sky clock showed cloud cover, transparency to be excellent, but seeing to be bad... Being deprived of astronomy sessions for more than 2 months, I took a risk of driving to TDS, but complete failure.
Discussion abt "Qualia" with Renga was interesting though.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Comet Lulin
Wed 25th Feb 09, 11:50pm
San Diego Home.
Scope: Orion 10" xti
with Ashwin.
Weather was fine. No clouds. Jut too many lights near house stairs.
Lulin was around 2-3 deg SE from Regulus.
The fuzziness barely visible thru naked eye. Easy catch thru binocs..faint fuzzy.. No green color indication thru binos. In 40mm, Lulin green color visible. No Tail. Its like green globular. not really spherical shape.. but lil elliptical.. bright at the core and fainter & fainter @surrounding.. In 25mm, not a impressive view.. lil blurry. In 9mm, internal coma visible. really bright at the core. Overall, didn't see comet's tail, probabaly being nearby house lights..
Spent some time on Saturn. all eyepiece views were nice.. 9mm was the best. sharp-crispy clear image. rings visible as fine line. Didn't see any gas bands. 4 moons visible. 2 each side.
San Diego Home.
Scope: Orion 10" xti
with Ashwin.
Weather was fine. No clouds. Jut too many lights near house stairs.
Lulin was around 2-3 deg SE from Regulus.
The fuzziness barely visible thru naked eye. Easy catch thru binocs..faint fuzzy.. No green color indication thru binos. In 40mm, Lulin green color visible. No Tail. Its like green globular. not really spherical shape.. but lil elliptical.. bright at the core and fainter & fainter @surrounding.. In 25mm, not a impressive view.. lil blurry. In 9mm, internal coma visible. really bright at the core. Overall, didn't see comet's tail, probabaly being nearby house lights..
Spent some time on Saturn. all eyepiece views were nice.. 9mm was the best. sharp-crispy clear image. rings visible as fine line. Didn't see any gas bands. 4 moons visible. 2 each side.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Recap Year '08 and Plan for '09
Astronomy kicked in Phase II finally. Started serious deep sky observations with 6" and then to 10" personal scopes. With Deep Sky Objects, new sky has opened up.
- Bought Orion XTi 10 Intelliscope.
- Met Jon Isaacs. His help and advice has been proved priceless.
- Total Observations: 16 = 14 documented + ~2 un-documented.
In year '09 :
- Number of observations should double.. atleast 26 !!
- Messier Marathon
- RASC Finest NGC object list
- SAC Best of NGC object list
- Bought Orion XTi 10 Intelliscope.
- Met Jon Isaacs. His help and advice has been proved priceless.
- Total Observations: 16 = 14 documented + ~2 un-documented.
In year '09 :
- Number of observations should double.. atleast 26 !!
- Messier Marathon
- RASC Finest NGC object list
- SAC Best of NGC object list
First Dark Night with Orion XTi 10 - I
Date: 17th Jan 2008, Saturday
Observation Time: 6:00pm to 11:30pm (5:30 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Seeing and Transparency 8/10.. winds picked up around 11pm.
Instruments: New Orion XTi 10, Rick's 12.5" dob, Tony's 8" dob and Bret's 24" dob. Bunch of new eyepieces.
Buddies: Rick, Tony and Bret
Total objects: 40 DSOs + 2 planets
New : 11
Best of the Night: M46 Planetary Nebula and All tiny galaxies in Leo.
First night of the new year.. looks like astronomy for this year started way too early :).. hopefully continues like this..
Objective of the night is to:
- test the new scope
- compare all eyepieces
- check intelliscope performance and functions
- some sky browsing.
Vertical Alignment. Hard.. TDS public pad is indeed slanted a lot.. this is gonna be tricky.. Is vertical stop connection to the scope really required for intelliscope ??
Connected Telerad. Placement is not ideal, but not bad either.. didn't have much choice because of finder location.
Rick from next pad helped to do the collimation with laser collimator.. secondary was lil bit hard to align.. somehow its really tight.. don't know why.. do i need to loose the central screw lil bit ?? ..any way will buy Howe gladder laser collimator this week.. Rick showed me a way to collimate without barlow.. sort of.. he mentioned that barlow is really not required.. only trouble is moving up-down to see and move screws.. that should be okay..
Worst mistake of the night.. Intelliscope battery down.. when i checked the status form home.. it was up.. but i didn't realize that its not good enough to see at night.. i have used this thing in Nov, and it was good.. i must have left it on since then :(..needs new battery now.. the problem was i wasn't able to use it for whole night.. that was one of my objectives at TDS today..zero outcome.. next time !!
Venus: Impressive. 45% phase. Too much waving. Probably scope also wasn't cooled down. MAx magnification with 9mm expanse.. 4.5mm failed.. higher mags didn't help much to see any details.. in the view.. i noticed that when Venus at the edge of eyepiece, it had violet tint on west i.e. bright side. but as the Venus moved to center of the field of view, the violet tinge reduced. Again increased as the movement towards the edge of the eyepiece.. is it indeed eyepiece ?
M42 Orion Nebula: Spent really long time tasting eyepieces.
Tony's celestron axiom 25mm on 8' dob: 82deg field of view.. impressive view.. star crowded sky.. Orion in the middle.. dark tower visible.. trapezoid visible.. second dark tower perpendicular to main one clearly visible..
40mm GSO: View wasn't bad.. 60 deg FOV. but stars at the edge were stretched and looked like streaks.. bad eyepiece at the edges.. Again barrel length was trouble so have to take out the glasses.. second tower wasn't visible..still good view.
32mm E-Lux: Impressive view.. stars were fine. trapezoid barely visible.. i think 3 stars of it visible. second tower was visible, but not yet clear..
25mm 1.25' and 25mm 2': Second tower visible, but not as clearly as tony's. ..hmm eyepiece quality :) .. $150 ?? trapezoid visible.. compared both my 25mm eyepieces. FOV is larger in 2' vs 1.25'.. definitely.. but i felt that 1.25' is lil bit better in contrast as compared to 2'. i was able to focus better on stars with 1.25'.. also m43 nebulous area was better in 1.25'
10mm X-cel: marvelous view.. all nebulous details in second tower visible. Trapezoid 5th star was in. wasn't aware that there is 6th one two..
9mm expanse: surely better field of view.. no other difference than 10mm x-cel.
35mm Teleview Panoptic on ricks 12.5' dob: 07deg FOV. MArvellous view.. second tower was there..lil bit in-out of focus. still picture was marvelous. 3 out of 4 trapezoid visible. Still with high mags didn't see 6th star. rick tried to explain me the location, but didn't find it.
M43: In 25mm dark region within M43 visible.. western part (left) definitely larger than eastern (right)
Perseus double cluster: Rick TV 35mm view impressive.. pinpoint stars.. mine 32mm was fine too.. stars were perfect pint point.. that shows precise collimation..
M31 Andromeda: Rick TV 35mm: Clear view of whole M31..Dust lane was good.. indeed was getting a feeling of it.. M110 and M32 visible.. but too tiny. My 40mm: M32 & M110 wre but too tiny.. but this eyepiece indeed shows the length/glow of m31.. just too large.. dust lane wasn't much impressive. My 32mm showed the dust lane.. but it wasn't as good as rick 35m.. again eyepiece quality..
M33 Triangulum: Forgot the location. Rick got it.. fuzzy object.. no details visible ..m33 thru bret's 24inch and bino-view marvelous.. hydrogen region was visible at right corner.. also watched so many dark lanes in m33.. the whole view was full of it.. also sort of got a 3d perception.. must be because of bino-view. In bino-view mag calculation is different..view was around 150x. thru my 32mm or higher mags, just a fuzzy object, no details visible... aperture helps.
Blue snowball NGC7662: okay.. not that great.. really tiny.. i was expecting more.. compare with Jon's 10' dob.
M81-M82: impressive. M81, on left, seems as big fuzzy.. M82 on right seems edge on.. One tiny galaxy NGC3077 (new) right angled above M81. Used 40mm for finding.. 32mm view good.. 25mm was better and showed the dark edge on M82.. 10 mm possible.. but no other details..impressive view thru Rick's 35mm panoptic 70deg FOV.. Tony's 25mm wasn't that impressive considering 80deg FOV.. too much magnification..
M41 OC in CMa: Visible naked eye - don't remember much.. Thru 40mm: Curved lines
M46-M47 OC pair in Pup: Thru 40mm.. M46-M47 barely fits in same view.. M46 stars are pinpoint and concentrated like double cluster.. while M47 is normal dispersed bright stars. 25inch SDAA scope thru 31mm (2500mm focal) shows a nebula.. impressive view. In the nebula itself there was a concentric circle (i think).. indeed impressive.. Thru my 32mm. barely visible for me.. 25mm impressive.. bluish visible.. cluster and PN in it indeed impressive.. 6mm was still good - 10mm lost it.. M46 farther than M47.. PN is actually not in M46 but much closer to us than OC.
M50 in Mon (new): Yet another OC. Don't remember much.
M93 in Pup (new): Really tiny OC.. salt-paper.. too low on horizon
M36-M38-M37 in Auriga: Quick browse. Was overhead. lil bit hard to catch it.. Visible naked eye m36-m38.. bino view was great for all three.
M44 Beehive OC in Cancer: Thru 40mm eyepiece..impressive.. beehive visible.. but 25mm view better to see beehive triangles.
M67 OC in Cancer: Yet another.. nothing impressive..
M35 OC in Gem (New): SDAA scope impressive.. bright yellowish stars. and tiny OC NGC1258 (new) next to it.. this ngc looked like M93.. fine view in my 32mm also.. seen it before thru binocular
Observation Time: 6:00pm to 11:30pm (5:30 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Seeing and Transparency 8/10.. winds picked up around 11pm.
Instruments: New Orion XTi 10, Rick's 12.5" dob, Tony's 8" dob and Bret's 24" dob. Bunch of new eyepieces.
Buddies: Rick, Tony and Bret
Total objects: 40 DSOs + 2 planets
New : 11
Best of the Night: M46 Planetary Nebula and All tiny galaxies in Leo.
First night of the new year.. looks like astronomy for this year started way too early :).. hopefully continues like this..
Objective of the night is to:
- test the new scope
- compare all eyepieces
- check intelliscope performance and functions
- some sky browsing.
Vertical Alignment. Hard.. TDS public pad is indeed slanted a lot.. this is gonna be tricky.. Is vertical stop connection to the scope really required for intelliscope ??
Connected Telerad. Placement is not ideal, but not bad either.. didn't have much choice because of finder location.
Rick from next pad helped to do the collimation with laser collimator.. secondary was lil bit hard to align.. somehow its really tight.. don't know why.. do i need to loose the central screw lil bit ?? ..any way will buy Howe gladder laser collimator this week.. Rick showed me a way to collimate without barlow.. sort of.. he mentioned that barlow is really not required.. only trouble is moving up-down to see and move screws.. that should be okay..
Worst mistake of the night.. Intelliscope battery down.. when i checked the status form home.. it was up.. but i didn't realize that its not good enough to see at night.. i have used this thing in Nov, and it was good.. i must have left it on since then :(..needs new battery now.. the problem was i wasn't able to use it for whole night.. that was one of my objectives at TDS today..zero outcome.. next time !!
Venus: Impressive. 45% phase. Too much waving. Probably scope also wasn't cooled down. MAx magnification with 9mm expanse.. 4.5mm failed.. higher mags didn't help much to see any details.. in the view.. i noticed that when Venus at the edge of eyepiece, it had violet tint on west i.e. bright side. but as the Venus moved to center of the field of view, the violet tinge reduced. Again increased as the movement towards the edge of the eyepiece.. is it indeed eyepiece ?
M42 Orion Nebula: Spent really long time tasting eyepieces.
Tony's celestron axiom 25mm on 8' dob: 82deg field of view.. impressive view.. star crowded sky.. Orion in the middle.. dark tower visible.. trapezoid visible.. second dark tower perpendicular to main one clearly visible..
40mm GSO: View wasn't bad.. 60 deg FOV. but stars at the edge were stretched and looked like streaks.. bad eyepiece at the edges.. Again barrel length was trouble so have to take out the glasses.. second tower wasn't visible..still good view.
32mm E-Lux: Impressive view.. stars were fine. trapezoid barely visible.. i think 3 stars of it visible. second tower was visible, but not yet clear..
25mm 1.25' and 25mm 2': Second tower visible, but not as clearly as tony's. ..hmm eyepiece quality :) .. $150 ?? trapezoid visible.. compared both my 25mm eyepieces. FOV is larger in 2' vs 1.25'.. definitely.. but i felt that 1.25' is lil bit better in contrast as compared to 2'. i was able to focus better on stars with 1.25'.. also m43 nebulous area was better in 1.25'
10mm X-cel: marvelous view.. all nebulous details in second tower visible. Trapezoid 5th star was in. wasn't aware that there is 6th one two..
9mm expanse: surely better field of view.. no other difference than 10mm x-cel.
35mm Teleview Panoptic on ricks 12.5' dob: 07deg FOV. MArvellous view.. second tower was there..lil bit in-out of focus. still picture was marvelous. 3 out of 4 trapezoid visible. Still with high mags didn't see 6th star. rick tried to explain me the location, but didn't find it.
M43: In 25mm dark region within M43 visible.. western part (left) definitely larger than eastern (right)
Perseus double cluster: Rick TV 35mm view impressive.. pinpoint stars.. mine 32mm was fine too.. stars were perfect pint point.. that shows precise collimation..
M31 Andromeda: Rick TV 35mm: Clear view of whole M31..Dust lane was good.. indeed was getting a feeling of it.. M110 and M32 visible.. but too tiny. My 40mm: M32 & M110 wre but too tiny.. but this eyepiece indeed shows the length/glow of m31.. just too large.. dust lane wasn't much impressive. My 32mm showed the dust lane.. but it wasn't as good as rick 35m.. again eyepiece quality..
M33 Triangulum: Forgot the location. Rick got it.. fuzzy object.. no details visible ..m33 thru bret's 24inch and bino-view marvelous.. hydrogen region was visible at right corner.. also watched so many dark lanes in m33.. the whole view was full of it.. also sort of got a 3d perception.. must be because of bino-view. In bino-view mag calculation is different..view was around 150x. thru my 32mm or higher mags, just a fuzzy object, no details visible... aperture helps.
Blue snowball NGC7662: okay.. not that great.. really tiny.. i was expecting more.. compare with Jon's 10' dob.
M81-M82: impressive. M81, on left, seems as big fuzzy.. M82 on right seems edge on.. One tiny galaxy NGC3077 (new) right angled above M81. Used 40mm for finding.. 32mm view good.. 25mm was better and showed the dark edge on M82.. 10 mm possible.. but no other details..impressive view thru Rick's 35mm panoptic 70deg FOV.. Tony's 25mm wasn't that impressive considering 80deg FOV.. too much magnification..
M41 OC in CMa: Visible naked eye - don't remember much.. Thru 40mm: Curved lines
M46-M47 OC pair in Pup: Thru 40mm.. M46-M47 barely fits in same view.. M46 stars are pinpoint and concentrated like double cluster.. while M47 is normal dispersed bright stars. 25inch SDAA scope thru 31mm (2500mm focal) shows a nebula.. impressive view. In the nebula itself there was a concentric circle (i think).. indeed impressive.. Thru my 32mm. barely visible for me.. 25mm impressive.. bluish visible.. cluster and PN in it indeed impressive.. 6mm was still good - 10mm lost it.. M46 farther than M47.. PN is actually not in M46 but much closer to us than OC.
M50 in Mon (new): Yet another OC. Don't remember much.
M93 in Pup (new): Really tiny OC.. salt-paper.. too low on horizon
M36-M38-M37 in Auriga: Quick browse. Was overhead. lil bit hard to catch it.. Visible naked eye m36-m38.. bino view was great for all three.
M44 Beehive OC in Cancer: Thru 40mm eyepiece..impressive.. beehive visible.. but 25mm view better to see beehive triangles.
M67 OC in Cancer: Yet another.. nothing impressive..
M35 OC in Gem (New): SDAA scope impressive.. bright yellowish stars. and tiny OC NGC1258 (new) next to it.. this ngc looked like M93.. fine view in my 32mm also.. seen it before thru binocular
Labels:
And Blue Snowball PN 7662,
And Gal M31-M32-M110,
Aur OC M37-M36-M38,
CMa OC M41,
Cnc OC M44 Beehive,
Cnc OC M67,
Gem OC M35,
Location TDS,
Mon OC M50,
Ori Neb M42-M43,
Per Double Cluster 869-84,
Pup OC M46-M47,
Pup OC M93,
Tri Gal M33 Triangulum,
UMa Gal M81-M82,
Venus
First Dark Night with Orion XTi 10 - II
Continued..
Horsehead Nebula IC 434: Fought for it.. dark nebula.. star was too bright.. with filter 18mm and without filter on 14mm.. without filter view was better.. but still didn't see Horsehead.. need to identify the precise location.. It seems like we were looking at NGC2024 flame nebula.. we were looking at north.. we should be looking 2-3 deg south..
M1 Crab: In 40mm visible.. 32mm was good.. Know precise location. Supported all higher magnifications.. 25mm - 16mm still good.. lost location in 10mm.. No internal detail visible in higher mags.
Leo Stars: Near Regulus UGC5470 not visible.. i thought i had seen it thru Jon's 10" dob.. verify. caught all stars. Gamma is yellow and has blue companion, but separated by large margin.. Yellow color was impressive.. Watched all stars.. Denebola was too low.
Saturn: looking for Saturn in Leo.. but nothing bright.. got too confused.. but found it next to iota leonoid.. 40mm no rings.. 32mm rings as a line.. but not able to focus.. too low on horizon. verify satellite locations.. two on top (west)..one was really far.. and two below (east).. higher mags didn't help much either.. wavy view.
Leo M95-M96-M105 Triplet galaxies: Star 53 visible averted.. easy catch of galaxies. Saw lot of NGCs nearby in 40mm itself.. M95-M96, M105-NGC3384, NGC3412 (new), NGC3377 (new) next to star 52.. also by using map, located NGC3367 circular galaxy (new), NGC3338 (new). Also, 32mm/25mm mag was best view. It also showed M105-NGC3384-NGC3389. familiar 3 star alignment also.. Brightness M105 > NGC3384 > NGC3389. Large: NGC3389 > NGC3384..
Leo M65-M66-NGC3628 Triplet: Star 73 visible thru averted vision. triplet easy catch.. this triplet much better than m95-m96-m105 triplet. NGC3628 is perfect edge on. Looking at map, found all tiny guys.. NGC3593(new) and NGC3596 (new) next to theta leonoid..
TBD:
- Intelliscope battery
- Observe each object more carefully. M46 is an example of ignorance.
- Observation Plan is necessary
- Too cold out there
Horsehead Nebula IC 434: Fought for it.. dark nebula.. star was too bright.. with filter 18mm and without filter on 14mm.. without filter view was better.. but still didn't see Horsehead.. need to identify the precise location.. It seems like we were looking at NGC2024 flame nebula.. we were looking at north.. we should be looking 2-3 deg south..
M1 Crab: In 40mm visible.. 32mm was good.. Know precise location. Supported all higher magnifications.. 25mm - 16mm still good.. lost location in 10mm.. No internal detail visible in higher mags.
Leo Stars: Near Regulus UGC5470 not visible.. i thought i had seen it thru Jon's 10" dob.. verify. caught all stars. Gamma is yellow and has blue companion, but separated by large margin.. Yellow color was impressive.. Watched all stars.. Denebola was too low.
Saturn: looking for Saturn in Leo.. but nothing bright.. got too confused.. but found it next to iota leonoid.. 40mm no rings.. 32mm rings as a line.. but not able to focus.. too low on horizon. verify satellite locations.. two on top (west)..one was really far.. and two below (east).. higher mags didn't help much either.. wavy view.
Leo M95-M96-M105 Triplet galaxies: Star 53 visible averted.. easy catch of galaxies. Saw lot of NGCs nearby in 40mm itself.. M95-M96, M105-NGC3384, NGC3412 (new), NGC3377 (new) next to star 52.. also by using map, located NGC3367 circular galaxy (new), NGC3338 (new). Also, 32mm/25mm mag was best view. It also showed M105-NGC3384-NGC3389. familiar 3 star alignment also.. Brightness M105 > NGC3384 > NGC3389. Large: NGC3389 > NGC3384..
Leo M65-M66-NGC3628 Triplet: Star 73 visible thru averted vision. triplet easy catch.. this triplet much better than m95-m96-m105 triplet. NGC3628 is perfect edge on. Looking at map, found all tiny guys.. NGC3593(new) and NGC3596 (new) next to theta leonoid..
TBD:
- Intelliscope battery
- Observe each object more carefully. M46 is an example of ignorance.
- Observation Plan is necessary
- Too cold out there
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