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.