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 :)

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.

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..

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..

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..

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.

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 (??)