Book Du Ciel

Aparna's @ School and that means... :-)

2011-03-10T20:55:00.000-08:00

Date: 10th March 2011, Thu
Observation Time: 7pm - 8pm (1hr)
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: No clouds, lil windy. Moon 6th day.
Instruments: AT102ED f/7, 7x20 Finder.

Pan 35 - 20x
Nagler 17 - 42x
Xcel 10 - 71x
Nagler 7 - 102x
Nag 7 x2 - 204x

Rigel -
35mm Pan : Can not split it.
17mm Nagler : when switched from 35 to 17mm, can not see the split, but when switched from 10mm to 17mm, then can sort of see the companion star, but its lil hard.
10mm Xcel : Not very clean split, but can see the companion star just below rigel.
7mm Nagler : Clear split. The magnitude difference is clearly visible. Rigel is not that bright and doesn't emit rays like Sirius, hence can observe the brightness of the companion. After previous dark night observation from Jon's place, can get the feeling of 10" seconds separation. Its very close at this magnification as well.
7mm x2 : Not a sharp image. 7mm was the best image.

M41 - Can locate it from the finder. Pan 35 and Nag 17 shows the best view. C shape and 2 V shapes of bright stars should be the distinctive mark for this one. (TBD: older observations)

Tau CMa -
Can not see the cluster in the finder. Hence Possible to get confused with the wrong star.
Pan 35 : barely shows the cluster, you can see very faint stars around the brighter Tau CMa, but nothing distinctive.
Nag 17 : Shows better view of the cluster. Can see around 10-12 faints stars in the vicinity. no distinctive shape. but all stars are well surrounding the brighter Tau.
Xcel 10 : More fainter stars visible. Total star count is 20-25.
Nag 7 : More fainter stars. ~35. Probably this is the best view.

M93 :
Don't remember much about this one. (Write the observation immediately. I am writing this one 4 days later.)

M46-M47 : From dark sight like Jon's place, M46 is very impressive and better than M47. But from polluted place like our mission valley home, M46 is totally washed out. M47 shows more brightness.

In M47, k shape visible, with arcs instead of straight lines. As magnification is increased, more fainter stars are visible. M47 clearly visible in finder as well.

M46 is totally washed out. Finder doesn't show it at all. Very hard to see in Pan 35 as well. It needs to be located based on M47 and nearby two brighter stars, as mentioned in the star map. Nag 17 shows some fainter stars.

NGC 2423 Near M47 : Quickly tried NGC above M47.. but nothing impressive at all. In Nag 17 barely 5 stars visible. Proabaly better from darker sight.

M48 : is out of reach. APO is almost going vertical form the patio.

M42 - M43 with UHC : M42 visible from finder.
Pan 35 shows M42, lil bit of saucer and then dark pillar is visible. two stars in trapezoid are resolvable. M43 not visible. Pan 35 fits in other two stars of the orion belt as well. Apparently each star is a small open cluster in itself.

Nag 17 magnifies the image well. Trapezoid 4 stars visible. Saucer and dark pillar visible nciely, 3 stars in parallel to the pillar are visible nicely. When added UHC filter, stars turned blue. Can only resolve 3 stars in the trapezoid. but the nebulosity increased noticeably. Saucer shows more nebulosity than Pan 35 view itself. M43 is now visible as well. The dark piller and surrounding area stars showing more depth. the nebulosity around the trapezoid seems more brighter. Second pillar shows up from the saucer, pointing towards trapezoid, but at right-angled position from the main pillar. I have see nthis pillar before, but i had totally forgoten it. but tonights view brought it back. Surprisingly, I missed this second pillar shape in Jon's 25".. I wonder how..

Nag 7 wasn't able to resolve the trapezoid. Also image wasn't stable. Nag 17 + UHC view was the best for the night.

Sigma Orionis - Read my past observations about this one in the morning. So visited it. Easy catch.
Pan 35 : shows 2-2-1 star alignment. (i.e. pair-pair-single stars). First pair is STF 761, second pair, in the middle, Sigma Orionis. Can resolve only two stars (A & E). 'A' is definitely brighter than 'E'.

Nag 17 : shows one more star in A-E.. D shows up. Fainter than E. Very close to A.

Nag 7 : C pops up in this one. Lil Further from A than D.

Overall A-B was never split. I dont know how much mags it requires (??). I should tried the barlow. (Description below says that i can not")

From internet: "Sigma Orionis consists of 5 components, the main components A and B at present only 0.3 "apart, and thus for amateur telescopes hardly separable. The components C, D and E each have a distance of 11.5", 12.7 " and 41.4 "of AB"

Mintaka : Nice binary. Easily split in Pan 35. Primary is brighter my huge margin than secondary.

Moon : Observed moon for ~10 mins In Pan 35, Nag 17 and Nag 7. Details TBD.

Recap 2010

2011-03-07T16:52:00.000-08:00

Total Observations : 17
Mountain/Dark night observations : 9

Seems like number of observations are same as previous year of 2009.. no improvement.. Wonder why :)?

2010 Events:

- In Jan, Observed Mars for first time. Northern Polar ice cap was fabulous.
- In March, first observation with Aparna in mountains..it was damn cold.
- In April, Jon gifted his APO 102ED as a wedding present. That was mind blowing. He gave me a sweet surprise, by announcing it on Cloudy Nights.
- In April, observation from Grand Canyon. Marvelous.
- In May, Systematic observation of Virgo fuzzies. It was rewarding.
- In Aug, Moved to house in mission valley.. From orange zone to red zone... Damn.
- In Oct, Comet Hartley observations. the impressive part is in one night, over 3-4 hrs, comet movement in the sky can be noticed very easily.
- In Oct, Observed Uranus again. Not that difficult, once you know where to look at i.e. which pin-point star is indeed Uranus.
- In Oct, almost finished all messier objects except M102. M102 is almost set in western skies, so need to wait for 2011. Damn.
- In Dec, Gogol/Ulka :) surprised us, still made our life heavenly.

2011 Events:

- Jon got a new scope.. Obsession 25" F/5. Its massive.
- In Mar, Observed through the big canon. Marvelous views.
- In Mar, Finished all Messier objects. Took almost three years to bag all of them.
- From July onwards, going to miss astronomy for a while :). So I better collect some photons in next three months.

Mar 2011 : Messier status

M1 Crab (6)
M10 (2)
M101 Pinwheel (5)
M102 Spindle (2)
M103 (3)
M104 Sombrero (6)
M106 (2)
M106-4217 (1)
M107 (2)
M108 (3)
M109 (4)

M11 WildDucks (6)
M12 (2)
M13 (11)
M13 GC-6207 Gal (1)
M14 (2)
M15 (1)
M16 Eagle (4)
M17 Swan (9)
M18 (1)
M19 (1)

M2 (2)
M20 Triffid (10)
M21 (2)
M22 (6)
M22-M28 (5)
M23 (1)
M23- M24- M25 (5)
M26-NGC6712 (1)
M27 Dumbbell (8)
M28 (3)
M29 (4)

M3 GC (7)
M30 (8)
M31 Andromeda- M32- M110 (11)
M33 Triangulum (8)
M34 (3)
M35 (7)
M37-M36-M38 OC Triplet (6)
M39 (1)

M4 (6)
M4-GC6144 (4)
M40 (1)
M41 (8)
M42 Orion-M43 (11)
M44 Beehive (4)
M45 Pleiades (6)
M46-M47 OC Pair (8)
M48 (2)
M49 (2)

M5 (1)
M50 (3)
M51 Whirlpool (11)
M52 (4)
M53 GC (4)
M54 (3)
M55 (4)
M56 (2)
M57 Ring (15)
M58 (2)
M58-M59-M60 (1)
M59 (1)

M60 (1)
M61 (1)
M62 (2)
M63 (5)
M64 Black Eye (2)
M65-M66-3628 Gal (10)
M67 (3)
M68 GC (2)
M69 (2)

M7-M6 (9)
M70 (1)
M71 (2)
M72-M73 (7)
M74 (2)
M75 (2)
M76 Little Dumbbell (4)
M77 (1)
M77-1055-1087 (1)
M78 (5)
M79 (2)

M8 Lagoon (12)
M8 Lagoon - 6530 OC (1)
M80 (4)
M81-M82 Gal Bodes Neb (10)
M81-M82-3077-2976 (1)
M83 Seashell (3)
M84-M86 (3)
M85 (1)
M87 (1)
M87-M89-M90 (1)
M88-M91 (3)
M89 (1)

M9 (1)
M90 (1)
M92 (4)
M93 (7)
M94 (4)
M95-M96-M105 (6)
M97 Owl (3)
M97 Owl - M108 (1)
M98-M99-M100 (3)

Being Obsessive.. Part I

2011-03-06T12:20:00.002-08:00

Date: Mar 5th 2011 Saturday
Observation Time: 7pm to 11:30pm (observing time ~3:30 hrs),
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: not great.. partly cloudy so looking thru patches. No wind. Seeing wasn't great 5/10.
Instruments: Jon's new 25" f/5 Obsession telescope
Buddies: Jon & Ashwin

Lot of new things to begin with for this observing session.
- Jon's new 25" obsession scope. Its massive. Need to climb 8 foot ladder to observe at zenith.
- First session of 2011
- Welcome Gogol session.
- Finished all 110 messier objects.. not in one night, but in 3 years period :). All messier objects are observed atleast once now. It was sort of 3-year messier marathon.

Ashwin joined for this session, first time at Jon's place.

Recently Jon purchased 25" obsession telescope. It is a used telescope and has a chip on the back side of the mirror. Jon got an excellent deal for the scope without much compromise. Its obsession scope #511.

Irrespective of the massive size, the scope movement is very smooth from the top of the ladder. It shows really nice views.
Mirror: 25"
Focal Length : f/5 3110mm. With parracor : ~3658mm
So now a 31mm Nagler low mag eyepiece from 16" scope, suddenly gives 100x view in 25" scope. Its not low mag eyepiece anymore.

Can clearly show 500x zooming with sharp images. Can easily go to 800x with decent views.

The Collimation took longer than expected. Jon is still getting familiar with the movement of secondary mirror screws. Primary alignment was quick. Also, the collimation stayed fine whole observing session. Considering the amount of scope movement, its indeed stable.

For such a big scope, generally it makses sense to observe all the objects in the vicinity and then to move on to the next location in the sky. But becasue of clouds, we ended up jumping from one location to opposite one and moved the scope and ladder a lot. We ended up doing ~10-15 circles/360deg rotations with the scope, during the night. Still, I am listing the objects per constellation and with the flow of the observing sessions.

Perseus
========
M76 - little dumbbell nebula: Started the night with M76. not a object that will impress immediately, but details on M76 was nice. Can clearly see two lobes, sort of in hourglass shape. The brightness was enough. Considering mirror cool-down time and cloudy weather, it indeed showed more than enough details on the object.

Orion
=======
M42 - M43 orion nebula : Switched to Orion M42 masterpiece. In 31 Nagler @ 118x, the eyepiece was fully covered under the nebula. the saucer, the pillar and the trapezoid was fabulous. Very bright. More you look at it, can feel the depth.. Had3D effect. Trapezoid clearly shows 6 stars. Double speed focuser indeed gives pinpoint stars of #5 and #6 in trapezoid. With 20mm Nagler @ 182x, magnifies it to the dark pillar. In contrast, the trapezoid and the illumination of the gas around it was very bright. Because of bright nebulousity all around and the central pillar being so dark, sort of looses the typical shape. M43 itself shows lot of bright nebulosity. Talked about running man nebula nearby, but wasn't sure about the location. Next time TBD.

M78 - The nebulosity pops up because of bigger aperture. A Bright star in the view. Hard to remember, because of lack of discernible shape, but definitely filled ~10% of the eyepiece.

Rigel - Visited Rigel multiple times in the night. At 118x can clearly see the companion. Rigel was sharp, but the companion wasn't.. tried to focus, but it still seemed like blurry disk. companion ~9.8" separation. Very close to Rigel. Later visted it again with ~400x. This is to compare with Sirius. Just wanted to get a judgment on how 10" separation looks like at ~400x.

Canis Major
============
M46-47 : with 20 Nagler, at 182x, the hwole view was filled with bright stars of M46. In reality, M46 has fainter stars than M47, but with large aperture of 25" makes M46 such a bright object. the planetory nebula is in the view on the right-bottom side. A faint star at the center of it is visible. not sure if its part of the cluster or the planetory star itself. At 182x, M47 is infact dull object, though it has bright stars its really sparse object. Hence nothing impressive in their. With 31 Nagler, 118x, both objects never fit in the same view and hence the beauty of observing both in wide-view is sort of lost. but 31 nagler still shows M46 as an impressive object.

M93 - This was yet another OC.

NGC 2467 - object opposite to M93. - The nebulosity in the object is very distinct in the big aperture. Sort of big C shaped nebulosity. Next to it is the Open cluster in V shape, similar to Taurus.

Sirius - Tried splitting Sirius. Difficult part here is Sirius is too bright compared to the companion and hence very difficult to observe the companion. Also its only 10" seconds apart. Only thing I knew tabout it is that its following sirius. Hence i kept Sirius barely out of the view and tried to look for the companion, but it was hard. Sirius light rays were causing trouble. Secondly wasn't sure how much 10" distance seems at 400x. So thought that another faint star is its companion. To get the judgment on 10" separation in 400x, tried Rigel. that proved that the faint star i was looking at was wrong. 10" is still too close in 400x. FAILED to observe the companion. Need better seeing/stability for this one.

Beta Monoceros - Observed the triplet, during the last session of observing. Triplet system with a tight bright pair. No colors, all three were yellow.

Ursa Major
===========
M81-M82 : M81 seemed like a big elliptical fuzzy object. Very bright. But M82 was more impressive, with distinct edge-on and some motteling on it at the center in Y axis.

M51 : Visited M51 probably 3 times during the night. The object moved from horizon - 5deg to -30-45 deg in 3 hrs. In the last session, the details on the object were clear, Can easily trace the spiral structure fomr the center to the connecting NGC galaxy. Actual Connector betn both of them was not visible. Some Nebulas or brighter regions in the spiral of M51 were visible. Don't remember the exact location of these regions. More eyepiece time + dark adaptation, gives more details on this object. Definitely saw more details on M51 visually for first time.

M101 : The brighter part at the core is visible. Jon mentioned that this is a big object and can not fit in the view itself.. I didn't see much in this one except the fuzziness at the core.

Canes Venatici
===============
Galaxy Quintet near M51 - Hickson 68 - NGC 5354 + 4 more : This is actualy in CVn and not in UMa. Jon pointed to this one.. Seemed like typical Jon object :). Very faint galaxy group, made up of 5 galaxies. Two of them were (relatively) bright, while remaining were barely visible. Very faint. The brighter NGC 5354 is of mag +11.38, while the lowest one on the left NGC-5358 is of 14.57. this is just to know that Jon's scope goes till +15 mag, without much trouble. Have I seen this one before? (YES, I have. check older observations)

Continued..

Being Obsessive.. Part II

2011-03-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

Continued..

Draco
========
M102 spindle and galaxy 5907 next to it : M102 was my missing messier and we found it this time. While looking for it, we ended up 5907. Just based on Telerad location, it didn't seem like the right one. 5907 is still very impressive. long, edge-on. not that faint. Took us a while to get to M102. M102 is definitely smaller than ngc, but brighter. Its very close to a star, which is barely visible through naked eye.

So if we have been looking through smaller scope, then i believe m102 will pop up first and ngc would be hard to catch. Now thats a big gotchaa in this big scope, everything seems to be relatively brighter and so will get confused often.

Finally.. I have bagged all messiers now. Still need to observe these more than once.

Gemini
=======
Eskimo Nebula: When I asked Jon, what was the most interesting object for him in his new big aperture scope, he had mentioned to me about Eskimo nebula. so visited it tonight again. Jon located this one. At 400x, very bright circular disk. Core is brighter. Inside the circular disk and outside the core, you will see some inner ring. With more magnification of 522x in 7mm Nagler, the inner ring was clearly visible. Seeing wasn't so great, so had lil hard time to get the sharp view. Jon observed it at 760x as well with 4.8 Nagler.

Taurus
=======
M1 : Crab nebula : Very big, bright elliptical fuzzy. no internal details visible. but definitely one of the bigger objects in messier list.

Leo
====
M65-M66-3628 triplet : Indeed beautiful and bight triplet. Fainter 3628 was edge-on. probably brightness is same as Draco 5807 gal and similar in size.

Bootes
======
M3 GC : Looks nice in the big scope. Stars can be resolved at the core. Stars really weren't pinpoint because of seeing (i guess).

Virgo
======
Markarains Chain : Browsed through Markarains chain and near by fuzzies. Probabaly observed in following order: 1 (4429) + 1 (4440) + Markarains chain {{ 4 (M86+M84)-+ 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 2 }} + 1 (M88) + 1 (M91)

Also, while relocating, observed few more : M58 + 4564 + antenna galaxy type pair (4567-68) + some more fuzzies that i don't remember now :). The fainter galaxies also seem brighter in the big scope, So really need to watch out.

Browsing through this region gives idea about all types of galaxies : brightness, size and shape.

Saturn
=======
Visited twice during the session. Seeing was always bad. Rings were bright. Saw a darker band on the Saturn's surface. According to Jon, it should be the shadow of the rings on front side. this dark band-shadow was aligned with back side of the ring. Ashwin got confused, wondering how we can see the rear part of rings like this. Instead it was the shadow of front part of the rings. Wish the view would have been more sharp. It was the last object of the night.

Finishing Messier list.. M102 missing

2010-10-12T17:17:00.000-07:00

I am almost done with messier list. Only M102 observation is missing.

M102 is an ambiguous entry in the messier list. People count M101 or ngc 5866 in draco as the candidate. Draco being so low in the sky these days, i don't know when i will get a chance to observe 5866.. damn..

Need to do something..

Hartley, Neptune, Blue Flash and NGCs.. I

2010-10-10T23:40:00.001-07:00

Date: Oct 9th, 2010 Saturday
Observation Time: 8pm to 1pm (5hrs),
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Excellent.. No clouds.. Seeing was okay, not the best. 6/10.
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob, my 10" dob, NP101 APO.
Buddies: Jon

Highlight of the night: Detecting movement of Comet 103P/Hartley2 in Perseus, Locating Neptune, NGCs in southern sky, and locating very tiny Blue Flash Nebula.

Comet 103P/Hartley2 - It was fun observing Hartley2 during 5 hrs period.
~8pm: It was above Eta Persei (Miram).. probably 0.4 deg NW it.
~11pm: It was just SW of Eta. Infact becasue of the star brightness, had hard time locating it in binocs also.. It means it traveled that much within 3 hrs.
~11:30pm: It has moved lil more.
~:1145: you can see the location has changed relative to the start.

Apart from earth bound satellites, I have never seen any object moving that fast during one observation. Its indeed impressive

Overall, it was bright and you can clearly see the fuzziness. Again, its not as bright either. People are saying it will become naked eye object, but currently, its even harder to see it in binocs from San Diego as well. Lets see how it goes.

Helix Nebula: Jon showed the precise location of Helix again. Fomalhaut => North => Aqr C1-89-C2 => North => Delta Aqr pair => Jump West 3:30'clk => g Aqr pair => West => Upsilon Aqr. Near by this star is Helix located. Quick hunting in binocs, compared the brightness with comet and helix seemed similar or lil brighter. In 17T4, big, bright probabaly filled up 25% of the eyepiece at the center. Can see 5 stars within helix. 3 on one side in triangle format, one at the center and one on the opposite end. After looking at hubble picture, this view seemed miserable because you can not really see any details in it.

Jupiter: Visited multiple times during the night. Seeing never improved.
~ 7:30pm: 10" dob shows one of the moons, Calisto, close to NE corner (bottom-left) of the Jupiter disk. Not much details on the disk.
~ 9:30pm: Later Jon's 16" scope showed lot of details on the disk. NEB, NP, SEB, SSTB and SP visible. The Great red spot was visible in SEB on Western side (upper-right corner of the disk). GRS wasn't really poping out, but still visible.
~ 11pm: Jupiter moon Calisto moved towards East and just below the N pole of jupiter disk. Disk and Calisto separated by very slight margin. GRS seemed to be at opposite location i.e. upper-left corner. So is GRS and moon moving in opposite directions ?? Implies that Calisto was in the orbit behind Jupiter ... nice :-)

Uranus: Close to Jupiter, sort of blue-green color visible. Seeing was too bad to see the satellite moon of Uranus.

Neptune: Being in Capricorn, very close to a bright star Mu Capri, very easy to locate. Compared to other stars, you can see the disk (white color). Can see it from binocs as well, but seemed like yet another star in binocs.

Had nice binocs browsing session with Jon. Jon wanted to compare my 10x50 with his 10x50 and 10x42 binocs. My 10x50 binocs definitely has bigger field of view. For brightness, wasn;t able to compare much. Jon didn't say anything either. Somehow i feel this binocs is indeed good to have.. (from olympic NP experience as well, when compared with Shardul's and Adwait's binocs)

M8 and M20: M8 visible in binocs and probably a open cluster around it.. M20 doesnt seem to be a reasonable object in binocs. Jon also wasn't sure..

M24: Star cluster above M8 also visible.

M17 Swan: can see the fuzziness in binocs.

M7-M6: butter fly and Potlemy shows bright views in binocs.

M22-28: Bigger brighter, while M28 is compact, still bright.. both can fit in the same view. Observed M22 in 16" scope and compared it with M55 and M13 GCs as well. Mentioned below.

M25: Open cluster, at the end of inverted comma, above M22, visible nicely in binocs.

M55: Sigma-Tau Saggi, upper two stars of the Tea-Pot handle points to M55. Seemed similar to M22, may be fainter.

M22-M55-M13 Comparison: Observed all three in Jon's 16" scope ~100x and my 10 dob ~71x with 17T4.

In 10" scope, M13 core seem fabulous, the longer you look at it, more stars will be resolved at the core. M55 in my 10" shows the core iwth few stars resolved.. it also shows a bright star just outside the GC, probabaly not even a part of GC.. Interesting thing is, if we focus on the bright star and see the core at an angle of an eye, then M55 core gets resolved with more stars..more stars pop at the core.. impressive.. didnt see M22 from 10"...

Jon's 16" scope @ ~170x/200x shows massive and awesome view of M13.. core is well resolved with yellow bright stars.. M55 seemed lil dull after viewing M13. Can resolve those bright stars at the core and they didnt seem that impressive. M22 was resolved fully and showed more brighter stars than M55, but lesser than M13. It also seemed more brighter than M55.

Deer Lick with 7331: In Jon's 16" scope 7331 ~100x looks bright, edge on, can see angled top surface. 7331 shows three companions on top. All three in right-angle format. I can see two of them clearly. The top one 7340 and base one 7335, just above the center of the big 7331 disk. third one 7337 just above the corner of the 7331 disk, its aligned with three bright stars and in betn bottom stars, but closer to the middle star. third one seems to be way fainter and lil hard to even see it. Probably because of not-so-excellent seeing, we were having hard time.

In my 10" dob, 7331 was again easy to locate. In 17T4 @ 71x, it shows up like tiny bright needle. Didn't even bother for high magnification to catch satellite galaxies.

Stephan's Quintet: Jon pointed to this one as well. It was like you are looking into some dark view with stars. When i get adapted with the view, then i can sort of see two faint fuzzies in the middle. These two fuzzies seemed fainter than deer look satellites. (Mag shows that stephans are brighter) Indeed hard to see them. Never saw others. Quintet was a doublet to me. Observing, infact locating, these in 10" must be super hard.

Continued...

Hartley, Neptune, Blue Flash and NGCs.. II

2010-10-10T23:39:00.004-07:00

Continued..

Switched to Capri objects.

M30 : Easy catch.. can see it binocular as well. In 16" @ 100x, the H shape is very small, but the GC shows up fine. This object is better with higher magnification. Need to browse thru scientific articles, if they ever talk abt shape.

Saturn Nebula : Easy catch. In 10" dob, the blue disk @ 71x shows up well. You cna clearly differentiate it thank the field stars. Sor of shows the elongated shape.. In 16" @ 100x, defintely shows more in the elongated shape, hard to qualify them as "wings", but you can feel their existence. Blue and bright..

M73 : Moving in correct direction Saturn nebula catches M73 Asterism easily. 4 stars in sort of
triangle shape pops up immediately.

M72 : Moving further down, shows M72 nearby.. brighter, but very compact and smaller.

M2 : Not sure when i visited this fella last time. Very easy catch from: Capricoruns Top line left corner pair => North => bright star of Beta Aqurii => North => M2.

M15 : Again, not sure when i saw this before (NEVER.. hmmm). I remember in 2008, i have tried it once to find it in 6" scope, but didn't get it. M2 => North => Bright star of Epsilon Peg i.e Enif => little North-West => M15. Sort of near Delphenus diamond.

Both M15 and M2 seemed to be of same brightness. When observed thru binoculars, M2 doesn't have any nearby stars, but M15 is within bright star pairs. So M15 seems fainter than M2.. or M2 is easier to see than M15.

Veil : In 10" scope, without the filter, Vel is very depressing. All fuzziness is gone. You can see somewhat fuziness near star 52, but that doesn't show its broomstick shape. Other two components just don't even show up.

North American and Pelican Nebula: I have tried this nebula multiple times before and always failed. This object seems more visible photographically than visually. Jon and I tried it with NP101 and the binoculars. NP101 with the filter with 31 Nagler (~22x), shows very wide field view. Jon ponted to some sort of triangle shape, this must be the narrow part in turn joining south american peninsula. OR Not sure if it was pelican.. All other parts are just invisible..

Tried to browse thru binocs, Tried to locate the dark lanes that made the border of north american nebula, but very hard to feel the shape.

Oph 6633 and one more: Jon pointed to two clusters in Oph. Nothing impressive abt it. very dispersed open star cluster with probably 15-20 stars in it.

Browsed thru Cetus.

M77 : Not so bright galaxy. sometimes its even hard to understand how M found these objects. Seemed elliptical. there are bunch of satellite galaxies and Jon's 16" scope showed them nicely. 1055 is just aligned next to it with bright pair of stars. 1087 on southern side is fainter, but still visible. It seemed to have another companion 1090. So with larger aperture 1087-1090 pair shows up. On the opposite side of M77-1055 can find fainter 1032 again aligned with sort-of-bright stars nearby. Tried to locate 1073, but didn't see it.

Continued..

Hartley, Neptune, Blue Flash and NGCs.. III

2010-10-10T23:39:00.002-07:00

Continued..

Hunted bunch of NGC below Sculptor.

NGC 253 Sculptor Gal and 288 GC: The NGC 288 GC is not a typical GC. Its disperesed. Its very faint as well. From Jon's 16" scope also it seemed fainter, but the fuzziness can be felt in the finder as well. Indeed conflicting observation. Need to read more abt this one TBD. Once 288 is found, 253 is easy to locate. Again, can "feel" it in finder. Very large, Very elongated. At one point, felt like it has filled up the eyepiece. Messier wound't have missed it if it would have been on northern side. the galaxy defitnely shows some motelling-spots on it.

NGC 55: Jon showed me this one in NP 101. Very faint. I tried it in 16". Very easy to locate from Alpha Phx (southern constellation Phonix, just below sculptor). Huge, may be lil fainter than 253. Both 55 and 253 seem similar to me, except the mottelling part in 253.

NGC 300: Jon found this one in NP 101, but I wasn't able to locate it in 16". In NP 101 view, 300 seemed again similar to 55, may be lil smaller and fainter.

NGC 247: Don't remember much, except the location. Was an easy catch thru 16" scope as well.

M11 : Wild duck cluster seem fainter and very disperesed in 16" scope at 100x. When the sky rotates overnight, i have observed that its hard for me to locate the familiar object like M11 :).

Blue Flash nebula: Near del and saggita, was the highlight of the night in star hopping and locating this guy. the difficult part is its so small that you have to use lil higher magnification and that makes life lil difficult in low-mag star hopping. Its not like i haven't seen this guy before, but very hard to locate. Jon pointed to this one in NP 101, 16" and then i tried it with 10". In 10" with 17T4 @ 71x. You have imagine flipping the whole saggita constellation from Western to easter side. So its betn 29 Vul and Gamma Sge, with Del on left-southern side. In 71x, with 82deg nagler, you can fit 4 bright stars in a trapezoid shape, in one view. This nebula is at the center of one of the edges on left. It seems like a very-very small cluster of three stars and nebula is at the center. It looks like very-very small fuzzy ring, but still can be differentiated from the star...very hard.. You have to get familiar with the view, and then only you can really see it there. Once found, then high mags shows the details. disk doesn't show any blue color.. not sure why they call it blue flash, it confuses people ( me :-) ), when we look into the eyepiece. disk shows up like a big thick ring. central part shows lil dark hole (??).

M45 : when tired did lil bino viewing, and M45 again impressed me. 10 sisters shows up nicely. very bright blue stars. Fills up the whole view in binocs.

Double cluster : With low mags on Jon's 16" scope (~100x) shows the double cluster nicely. Can clearly see one is smaller than other. smaller is more compact than the bigger being being disperesed (isnt that obvious). Saw this one while looking at the comet.

Some double in orion head: Jon showed some double in the head of the orion, but seeing was way too bad to split the double..

M1 : Crab shows up nicely. In 16" as well cant see much details on the crab.. Its just one big, elongated fuzzy bright disk. absolutely no details inside.

In the end did some bino browsing for the comet..

Late night Jupiter

2010-09-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

Date: Sept 25th, 2010 Sat
Observation Time: Late night 1:15-2:00am (45 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: Lil clouds. Full Moon.
Instruments: AT102ED

Jupiter - All 4 moons visible. Best View with 7T1 @ 107x. Tried higher mags with Xcel-10-x2 (@ 140x), TMB 4mm @ 177x, 7T1-x2 @ 202x , but they weren't great. So just stayed with 7T1 @ 107x

Didn't remember the nomenclature, while observing, but now it seems like observed: EZ, NEB NTB NPR, SEB, SPR. A black spot on NTB.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Jupiter_Belt_System.JPG

http://www.astrosurf.com/cidadao/jupiter_obs.htm

Uranus - In Pan35 @ 20x and 17T4 @ 40x, it didn't show distinctive blue color again, but in 7T1 @ 100x, it showed the color, as well you can feel the disk spae, compared to background pin-pointed stars.

Tried NGC 253 Gal and NGC 288 GC located in the nearby regions. the location was spot on, but i didn't see both of them. Considering ~8.0 magnitude, i thought that it will be visible, but again FAILED.

Observing Uranus

2010-09-23T01:37:00.000-07:00

Date: Sept 22nd, 2010 Wed
Observation Time: Late night 1:00-1:15am (15 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: Lil clouds. Full Moon.
Instruments: Binocs 10x50 Nikon Action Ex.

Uranus: Full Harvest Moon, Jupiter and Uranus are very close to each other tonight. Uranus is always hard to catch, but just being so close to Jupiter its easier to locate. Its only a degree apart from the Jupiter towards NW towards moon. The Uranus magnitude is almost same as 24 Psc which is SW of jupiter on opposite side. mag 5.4. So its indeed Uranus. Uranus-Jupiter-24 Psc were in the same field of view of my binocular.

Can't see the bluish disk. it seemed yellow.. it wasn't really a clean sight. probably because of moon light.. so didn't try it in the APO... but will watch it again after few days and should be able to see the bluish color.

Saw this fella probably after two years.. nice !!

Jupiter: Dazzling bright in the binocs. Ganymede and Europa at two opposite ends. Hard to get IO-Callisto pair near Europa. Too much shaking.

Moon - First Quarter

2010-09-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

Date: Sept 14th, 2010 Monday
Observation Time: 8pm to 8:45pm (45 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: White zone observation. No clouds. Moon (first quarter).
Instruments: Astrotech 102ED APO. Pan35 (20x), 17T4 (41x), 7T1 (101x), 7T1x2 (202x)

Observed Moon:

Crater Aristoteles and Crater Eudoxus : Just next to terminator, these crater shadows look fabulous. Shows massive depth.

Montes Haemus : Western border to Mare Serenitatis, across N-S. Shows good details on these mountains peaks. These peaks are just on the terminators today. Tomorrow might be better day to observe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montes_Haemus

Crater Posidonious and the wrinkles : On the North-Eastern edge of Mare Serenitatis. Its like small scale Crater Plato. Also has a crater inside its plain surface. the plan surface also shows a big wrinkel across N-E-S border.

Crater TheoPhilius, Crater Cyrillus, Crater Catharina : These three craters in SE region (bottom corner). Cyr-Cath are joined together. Yesterday they were closer to terminator, so they showed this connection very well, because of the shadows. Its like shape of 8 but middle section sort of merged. Today being away from terminator, they were washed out. They didn't show this connection very well today.

Crater Maurolycus: Being closer to terminator the central peak shows good details. It seemed to be made up of 3 mountain pieces in itself. Third one is actually complex in formation.

--

Kaus Australis i.e. Epsilon Saggi: Brightest star of the Saggi constellation. Map shows it as double, but seems like the binary component is too faint to be seen. FAILED.

--

Moon Observation projects to follow:
http://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/lunar/lunar2.html
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/moon/3308811.html

Archstone First Light..

2010-09-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

Date: Sept 13th, 2010 Monday
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 8:15pm (45 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: White zone observation. Very light polluted.. .No clouds.. Moon (a day before first quarter).
Instruments: Astrotech 102ED APO. Pan35 (20x), 17T4 (41x), 7T1 (101x), 7T1x2 (202x)
Buddies: Aparna

Observed first time from new Home. Somehow never got a chance to observe, in last 5 weeks, since we moved here.

Apprently, this is highly light polluted area. This is all white zone area. Summerset atleast was in Red zone. The Naked Eye visibility has gone down drastically. NELM ~3. In Saggitarius, Phi Saggi was barely visible.

http://www.brighthub.com/science/space/articles/50420.aspx
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Sagittarius_constellation_map.svg/2000px-Sagittarius_constellation_map.svg.png

Because of this, it indeed gives new respect for dark skies.. Also, just identifying the constellation boundaries is also tough. Good way to test what you know, based on judgment. e.g. Ophiuchus was visible, but i wasn't able to locate the constellation boundary.

Target List:

CON  OBJECT    OTHER   TYPE    RA       DEC       MAG   SUBR   SIZE_MAX SIZE_MIN NGC DESCR                     NOTES

1  SGR  NGC 6523  M 8     CL+NB   18 03.7  -24 23    5     13      45 m     30 m    !!!;vB;eL;eiF;w L Cl          Lagoon Nebula;Cl NGC 6530 invl;dark lane crosses neb

2  SGR  NGC 6618  M 17    CL+NB   18 20.8  -16 11    6     13      11 m             !!!;B;eL;eiF;2 hooked         Omega nebula;Swan Nebula;many F outer loops;use filter

3  SGR  NGC 6514  M 20    CL+NB   18 02.7  -22 58    6.3   13      28 m             vB;vL;Trifid;D* inv           Trifid nebula;sev dark lanes;H IV 41 & V 10;D* HN 40 invl

4  SGR  NGC 6656  M 22    GLOCL   18 36.4  -23 54    5.2   11      24 m             vB;vL;R;vRi;vmC               Stars mags 11...;one of finest globs

5  SGR  NGC 6626  M 28    GLOCL   18 24.5  -24 52    6.9   11      15 m             vB;L;R;geCM;rrr               45' NW from Lambda Sgr;* mags 14...

6  SGR  NGC 6530  OCL 19  OPNCL   18 04.5  -24 21    4.6   99.9    15 m             Cl;B;L;pRi;f M8               In Lagoon nebula M8;25* mags 7...


7  SCO  NGC 6121  M 4     GLOCL   16 23.6  -26 32    5.4   12      26.3 m           Cl;8 or 10 B* in line;rrr     Look for central bar structure

8  SCO  NGC 6405  M 6     OPNCL   17 40.3  -32 15    4.2   10      20 m             Cl;L;iR;lC;st7;10...          Butterfly cluster;51 members to 10.5 mag incl var* BM Sco

9  SCO  NGC 6475  M 7     OPNCL   17 53.9  -34 48    3.3   12      80 m             Cl;vB;pRi;lC;*7...12          80 members to 10th mag;Fine naked eye cluster

Moon: Moon is just a day before first quarter. Just above the neighborhood roof. Probably because of that high mag views (202x) weren't sharp.

Scorpion - Antares was red OR deep orange-brown. Moon is closer to Antares. M4 (mag 7.12) not visible. Must have washed out because of moonlight.

M7 Ptolemy - M6 butterfly: was easy catch from Sco tail duo stars. Apparently not many background stars in the view were visible. Still M7 shows bunch of bright stars.. sort of like multiple K shapes joined at various angles. Just above towards sco tail, M6 butterfly visible. The red-orange-brown star in butterfly pops up. cluster is not at all impressive. Also the FoV doesn't have any other stars..

While hunting M6-M7, got a feel of refractor orientations again. L-R swapped. U-D are fine. Need to get a judgment on the True FoV so that hunting will logical. Didn't know the APO+EP combination TrueFoV.

M8 Lagoon - Very depressing. Very little nebulosity visible at the central (probably near hourglass). increasing the mags 35Pan-> 17T4 definitely made the view better. UHC in 35mm pan showed similar..but nothing impressive. Still the open cluster 6530 next to M8 stands out. Compact as compared to M6 butterfly. Circular in shape.

M20 Triffid not visible. considering the magnitudes, indeed surprising. Not sure why i din't see it. Moonlight?

M17 Swan visible: Felt like its brighter than M8. OR surface brightness of swan is evenly spread as compared to M8, so feels like it.

M16 Eagle not visible again. somehow i missed the V shape cluster as well.

M22 and M28 - M22 bigger and brighter. Was an easy catch in washed out light. M28 is tight, small and lil fainter. Can fit the Lambda Saggi and M22 in the same view. Not all three in same view.

Towards Messier Finishing.. I

2010-09-14T11:27:00.001-07:00

....

Mercury - Naked Eye

Venus

Jupiter

Alberio

M57 - ring
Swan
Lagoon
Triffid

Nebulas using filter

M4

M75
M55
M80

Towards Messier Finishing.. II

2010-09-14T11:26:00.003-07:00

..

Ophiuchus GCs.. Various NGCs nearby Messiers

M10 - M12
M107
M14
M9-M19-M62

6355-6293

M13-NGC 6207 galaxy

Double cluster

M92

M92-NGC6229
PN nearby 6210

Towards Messier Finishing III

2010-09-14T11:26:00.001-07:00

..

M33
M31

Blue snowball - lil hard to find again

Showed some objects to Aparna before leaving: M31, M57, Jupiter, M13

So only 3 messier are missing now.. Here M40 and M102 are indeed misleading numbers in the list. People observe nearby NGC objects to complete the list.

Const M# Type R.A. Dec Mag Size Notes
h m deg m min
Peg 15 Gb 21 30 12 10 7 12 rich, compact
UMa 40 DS 12 22.4 58 5 9 1 DS Winnecke 4, sep 50"
Dra 102 Gb 15 6.5 55 46 12 2x 1 M102=M101, NGC 5866 used

Summer Kickoff - I

2010-07-07T22:03:00.003-07:00

Date: July 4th, 2010 Sunday
Observation Time: 8pm to 1pm (5hrs),
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Excellent.. no clouds.. lil wind in the beginning, but later calm.. so seeing improved..
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob, my 10" dob, NP101 APO.
Buddies: Jon

Venus - Observed thru APO. Image seemed blurrier.. also lot of green/violet color, considering APO :-). Thru 10" dob, good image. looked like a small scale moon. Venus phase of ~60% lit clearly visible. Thru 16" better image of the same. no surface details visible.. its all white..

Saturn: Rings clearly visible thru 16". Thru 10" dob @ 35x (Pan35mm) the rings are visible.. image is too tiny @ 35x, but can distinguish the rings clearly.. when looked thru eyepiece, can see the light distortion i.e. "seagull".. collimation may be lil off. but by changing the viewing angle, the distortion was going away. Two moons on one side. 171x

M57 Ring Nebula: Visited multiple times. In the twilight and APO, seemed really fainter in APO. no star visible at 2". seemed all gray color. Later in the night thru 10" dob nag17 @ 71x image seems sharp and quite bright.. the star at 2" is visible. bluish color visible. Compared with uhc and then oiii filter. image seems definitely brighter thru filters. Need to try high mag filtered image.

Browsed the whole sky naked eye to get a feel of it.

Omega centauri: Lower on horizon, visible. In twilight, not that sharp. Visible thru bino.

M80: In Scorpio. Jon reminded the location. Above the Antares and twice the distance from Antares-lower star. In 10" dob 17nag 71x seems fuzzier, not clear.. ~171x still non-clear watery image. Visited it later at 11pm and the image seemed clear and sharp. In Jon's scope outer stars well resolved.

Ophiuchus PN NGC 6572: Blue Racquetball: Bright, sharp. In 71x Nag17 it seems like brighter blue star. Hard to differentiate it as the PN. Note the triangle pattern of the PN with other two bright stars. Increasing the mags @ 171x makes it brighter.. but still no details visible on the PN. Addition of OIII filter clearly makes it brighter. Visited multiple times.

Oph OC NGC 6633 and IC 4756: Looked at the OC NGC and IC.. NGC seems to be yet another OC, but IC cluster seems to be impressive.. IC bigger than ngc. In 71x it fills up whole eyepiece.. ~30 stars.. all yellow.. evenly distributed.. Switched to lower mag to get the feel of it. In Pan 35, 35x it seems more beautiful.. can clearly see the cluster at the center. seemed like wide salt-pepper cluster.

Blue Flash nebula NGC 6905: In Delphinus. At 71x itself, lil hard to differentiate than background stars. visited it before 1.5 years back, but forgot the location. 85deg (~90) angle on Delph diamond + bright star and this Neb. Note the 3 stars in straight line alignment. also a bright pair nearby. At 71x, seemed faint circular shape.. seems bigger than previous PN, racquetball, but fainter.. no color visible. At 171x, the circular shape clearly visible. Can not see much pattern on the disk. no color visible. OIII filter helps... but i felt that, for searching this neb, UHC filter really helps, as the neb is definitely visible with background stars. More mag helps.

M71 GC: In Sagitta. In Pan 35, 35x looks impressive.. lil bigger than M80, but defintely smaller than M4. clear, sharp.. and outskirt stars lil resolvable. Didn't try high mags.

M27 Dumbbell: Closer to M71. Compared all above tiny PNs, way bigger and so much nebulous. Tried 71x and 171x.. don't see any colors in it. With OIII filter, brighter.. Can see lil dark spot within the nebula.

Veil nebula - 10" @ 35x No filter. Cyg 52 star, West veil part, witch nebula visible. But can't see the visiblity clearly. Tried to look for eastern veil, but didn't find it. Later visited it again. Tried it with UHC filter. Can see all 3 parts of Veil. West+East+Pickering triangle. Nebulosity visible with background stars. with OIII filter, it just looks marvelous. all background stars are gone. And nebulosty pops up in the OIII filter. Tried the same with APO. Compared UHC/OIII/No-filter in APO on Veil.

Browsed thru Sagittarius Nebulae with UHC/OIII/No-Filter in 10" dob with 17T4 Nag @ 71x.

M8 Lagoon: Without filter it shows the lagoon dark arc clearly. With OIII/UHC filters on, it shows lot of nebulosity filess the 25-30% of EP center. shows the bright part at the center of the nebula. this must be the hour-glass nebula.. need to magnify and have to try it from Jon's 16" scope. M21 cluster nearby.

M20 Triffid: Barely shows the upper Y dark lanes without filter.. shows the cluster on the right. With filter on, it shows more nebulosity near the cluster also. The dark lanes seemed darker.

M23 open cluster above lagoon-triffid line: Visible in the 8x20 finder. Seemed to be yet another OC.

Continued..

Summer Kickoff - II

2010-07-07T22:03:00.001-07:00

Continued..

M4 - Visited M80 for a sharper view. For a comparison, checked M4. The M4 seems so bigger, brighter and loose as compared to M80. Also a NGC 6144 next to M4 and Antares seems bigger than M80.. but looser and fainter.. M80 definitely packs more stars in less space than this NGC. Overall M4-M80-6144 is a very good comparison for different types of GCs.

Sagittarius browsing for GC: Browsed the bottom of the Sagittarius. Epsilon-Zeta line
M69: tiny GC.. similar to M80, but it has a bright star next to it.
NGC6652: is on the below the Eps-Zeta line of the constellation. Definitely smaller than Ms.
M70 (New): continued along the same line as 6652, M70 shows up. Next to triple-star-straight-line alignment.
M54: Inside the bottom line. Just no guidepost.. browsing thru gets it there.. All these Ms seems similar.

NGC6723: This GC seems to be bigger than those other messier GCs. Wonder how messier missed this one. Just below Sagittarius.. easy to find.

NGC6624: Next to star Delta. Yet another GC.

NGC pair 6528-6522 near Alnasi/Gamma. These are really tiny-loose as compared to tiny messiers. One of them is denser than other. Infact second one is smaller and looser so hard to qualify.

ngc 6558-6569: Browsing on the opposite side leading to these GCs. not in a par.. lil bit apart.. they seem to be lil bigger than the above pair.

NGC 6563 PN: Seems like blue flash PN. Can be located easily thru star Eps Saggi. two star hops and pn should be in the view.

More GCs near Gamma-Delta M8 line. 6544 6553 6520 6540.. seemed like the 6528-22 pair near gamma.

Continued..

Summer Kickoff - III

2010-07-07T22:02:00.005-07:00

Continued..

M28-M22-NGC6638: This triplet reminds me of M4-M80-ngc triplet near antares.

M11 wild duck cluster: Can indeed feel the wild duck flock in V shape flying in the sky.

M30 - quick browsing of m30. Tried it only thru 71x.. seems tinier at that magnification. can feel the H shape star alignment. didn't try high mags.

Andromeda triplet - Andromeda rising on NE. ~15-20deg above horizon. m31 big and bright @70x.. fills the eyepiece. M32 tiny still bright. m110 is very faint, bigger than m32.

Jupiter - Rising in the easter sky. <10deg from horizon.. fluctuating image. 4 moons on one side clearly visible.

Double cluster thru APO: Tried Jon's SWA 24mm in the APO. double cluster rising up. very low in magnification. can see difference in double cluster.

Returned back ~2:45pm..

Missing Messiers

2010-05-20T21:54:00.000-07:00

M102
M107

M10 (1)
M12 (1)
M14 (1)
M15
M18 (1)
M19

M2 (1)

M21 (1)
M26-NGC6712 (1)

M39 (1)

M40 (1)

M5 (1)

M61 (1)
M62 (1)

M69 (1)

M70

M71 (1)
M75 (1)
M77 (1)

M80 (1)
M85 (1)

M9

Fuzzies Everywhere - I

2010-05-16T14:06:00.005-07:00

Date: May 15th 2010 Saturday
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 12:30pm (4.5hrs),
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Excellent.. no clouds.. no winds.. probably best night till now in 2010. seeing was lil bad 8/10.. transparency 9/10
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob, my 10" dob, np101 APO.
Buddies: Jon

Venus - telescope not cooled down yet.. pretty bad view from my 10" or jon's 16" scope.. blurry..

Moon - few degrees west from venus.. second day phase of moon.. really slick.. excellent view of venus-moon pair as the darkness evolved.

Saturn - excellent view from 16".. jon's scope more stable than mine.. ring, shadow of the ring.. lil gaseous pattern on the disk, 3 moons on right.. in my 10" scope, 7mm image was good.. but barlowed 7mm really blurry..

Castor - easy split with my scope. 4.7 arcmins is indeed easy to split.

Izar - Indeed interesting. companion is in a diffraction ring of primary star. from APO NP101, its a marvelous view. with my 10" scope, can see it, but not as sharp and clean as the apo.

Gamma Leo - Easy split. Companion seems smaller than Primary.

Porrima - Indeed hard.. higher magnification thru Join's 16".. don't remember how much. Its not an easy split. I am able to manage it with my scope. with 7mm ep i.e. 171x (i guess)

M44 - Beehive thru my 10" 35mm pan @ 35x.. looks marvelous. Are there any doubles in here???

M3 - Lost a track to locate this one. Not sure why it happens. Excellent view. Darker the sky better view..

-- Hot chocolate break --

Virgo All messiers: After last week's vrgo browsing, I have gained some confidence in how to browse through fuzzies in this area. In fact last time i missed few nearby messiers.. with smaller 10" scope + 35 Pan @ 35x, shows whole area clearly. should observe this when it real dark and calm, to see more fuzzies at such a low magnification. I was expecting lil better view in my scope, probably lower mag didn't show much. Still can clearly see lot of messiers and ngc objects too in markarains chain.

6 Com star-M98-M99-M100-Markarains chain with M84-M86-4388-4387-4402-Eyes4438-4435-4461-4473. Also M88 and M91 were clearly visible because of low mags. I missed these two las time. Again, M87-M89-M90 visible. On eastern side, M58-M59-M60 were also visible. Lil down M49 was an easy catch. I also mentioned to Jon abt missing M61 (New).. both of us located it and looked at it together. Easier to locate.. Jon noticed few NGCs nearby too..

Did I miss M85, which lil above M100 ??? Hmmm...

Continued..

Fuzzies Everywhere - II

2010-05-16T14:06:00.003-07:00

Continued..

Nearby M99 and M100 lies NGC pair 4302-4928 (New).. not sure if they are related? SkyVoyeger doesn't show distances..

M104 Sombrero: Thru my scope 17T4 70x definitely looks nice. dark lane and halo seems impressive. Can't see it clearly in the finder.

Antenna Galaxies: Can clearly see the fuzzy pair @ 70x in my scope. Can not see any antennas.

M68 GC: Haven't seen this in a while.. Easier to locate below corvus. Left side of the bright star. While switching betn Jon's and my Scope, realized the confusion betn right-angled finder and straight finder.

M83 Gal: Easier to catch. Need to observe it carefully. show lot of details in spiral structure with higher aperture.. i missed all.. I was just elated that i was able to locate it :).. seems like it is referred as seashell or southern pinwheel.

Omega Cen GC - Clear view thru 10" scope. Really need to observe this one without light pollution. Jon's place has lil light pollution near Southern horizon.

Hamburger Cen A Gal: Clearly see the huge dust lane in 17T4 @ 70x.

After this, I switched to Leo galaxies, while Jon continued with NGC objects near M83 hydra. He spent probably 30 mins in this region looking for really faint fuzzies.

He showed me hydra fuzzies 5292 (New), IC 4329-4329A pair (New), 5298 (New) and 5302 (New). It was indeed hard to locate this and see them clearly, just because of 16" aperture, you can feel their existence.

Continued..

Fuzzies Everywhere - III

2010-05-16T14:06:00.001-07:00

Continued..

During this time, I started with Leo fuzzies. With low mag 35 pan @ 35x can clearly see 2903. Its indeed small but still bright.

Leo Triplet 3193 ben Gamma and ?? star.

Leo Gamma doublet, Again i looked at wrong location (inside the sickle) on this one. Its outside the sickle towards the body. Its on eastern side of Gamma Leo. Can easily see it thru my 10" scope 17T4 combo.

While looking for M95-M96-M105 triplet, i accidentally ended up at k-leo galaxies. They seem lil different than what i have seen thru Jon's scope.. two of them were really bright (i.e. 3367 and 3377), didn't see any other.. Again after relocating I got 95-96-105 triplet.. triplet within 105 was also visible. and thru that was able to move to k-leo gals also.

When moved to M65-M66-3628 combo, M95 triplet is definitely separated more than m65 triplet.. my expectations from m65 were really high being brighter, but din't get any impressive view thru my scope 17T4 70x. Mentioned it to Jon, if seeing/transparency is okay.

Checked for 3607. In 17T4 @ 70x can clearly see 3607-3608 pair. 3605 was also not clearly visible.. required lil higher mags. I believe I also looked at 3599 (New) nearby, thru jon's and my scope.

Jon was tired of fuzzies, so he moved to Saggi and Scorpio, while i continued my fuzzy hunt with Ursa Major.

Started hunting fuzzies in UMa systematically star-by-star.

From Alpha UMa - 1st star - Dubhe:
M81-M82 - indeed marvelous with low mags and high mags. With 17T4 @ 35x can also clearly see two nearby ngc objects. M81 being at center, M82, ngc3077 (new) and ngc 2976 (new) forms perfect Y shape prongs. 3077 is way smaller than 2976. Infact data sheet shows that, though smaller, 3077 is a magnitude brighter than 2976.

Near Beta UMa - second star - Merak:
M97-M108 - Fits in same view (17T4 ??) M97 brighter and more bluish than m108.. m108 seemed to be edge-on type. Nearby NGC 3631 (New) is also an easy catch. Moving from 108-97 in direct straight line or from finder to a nearby bright star HR 4363 helps.

Near Gamma UMa - third star :
M109: don't remember much..seems like it has bright core (??).. missed the nearby ngc object.

M106 - Opposite to alignment of M81-82-Alpha-Gamma stars, lies 106 towards CVn. Observed ngc 4490 near Alpha Cvn. Dont remember much. switched to M106, which is at exact center of Alpha Cvn and Gamma UMa. seems visible thru finder.. M106 seems to have brighter core.. nearby satellite ngc object clearly visible thru jon's scope.. must be 4217 (New) (or 4248 ??)... hardly visible in my 10" scope 17T4 @ 70x..requires more magnification.

Had a quick glance at M63 and M94. just saw so many galaxies that don't even remember much in t details.. need to spend some time on these objects with higher mags.

M51 whirlpool: marvelous view of the pair. Can clearly see the spiral lanes. More time i spend on this one, more details pop up in the eye. In M51 seemes like brighter star-like spot on the spiral arm. NGC-M51-Brighter star like spot. Need to read more abt this one. ???

M101 : closer to 7th UMa star. M51 is on southern-easter side of this tar, while this one is on northen easter side. almost at the same distance. don't remember much.. just too many fuzzies for one night. It needs to be observed with high mag ???

Continued..

Fuzzies Everywhere - IV

2010-05-16T14:05:00.001-07:00

Continued..

Continuing the galaxy hunt, switched to Coma.

Coma 4565 Triplet: Easy catch. this one is comparable to 2903 in leo.. but 4565 seems bigger than it. The elliptical 4494 and irregular gal 4559 companions are in the vicinity.. saw both. The elliptical is lil difficult to locate.

M53 GC: I wanted to look at M64 Black eye galaxy, so to confirm switched to Alpha Com and saw M53.. bright-bluish very rich GC.

M64 Black Eye Galaxy: (New): Dont even remember when i watched this one last time. with 17T4 @70x looks definitely nice in my scope. the dark pattern just below the bright core is somewhat visible. with Jon's scope, its clearly visible. Need to try higher mags on this one.

M13: Naked eye.. Thru the scope, can resolve lot of stars outside the core. looks nice.

M80 (New) GC: Never looked at it before.. tiny, compact but seems densely packed. Can somewhat make it in the finder. Looks impressive from both 10 and 16" scopes.

M4 : Big brother of M80.. but after watching M80, this one seems little loose in star packing. Not sure if its the distance-magnification or really physical. Need to read more ??

M57 Ring: bluish disk.. very impressive in Jon's scope. 2" star visible.. din't try higher mags.

Saggi browsing thru M7, M6, M8 Lagoon, M20 Triffid. Lagoon dark lane and ngc cluster clearly visible. Triffid way smaller than lagoon, dark lanes sort of visible to make distinct shape. 17T4 @ 70x.

Open cluster M23: In direct line of M8 and M20. Indeed rich.

M16 Eagle nebula and then M17 Swan Nebula. Swan and background stars look beautiful through nagler 17T4. For eagle nebula, still can't see the nebula clearly. Stars are clearly visible. probably can feel it lil bit, but not as expected..

M54 GC: Bluish.. tiny and very compact.. really close to horizon so didn't go into details. Also tried for M70..but way too low..

Alberio: At the end, quick look at Alberio.. again orange-bluish pair looks marvelous with all other stars in 17T4.

Hunting Virgo Fuzzies I

2010-05-11T23:17:00.003-07:00

Date: May 7th 2010 Friday
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 11:30pm (3.5hrs),
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Lil clouds on western horizon. Transperancy okay.. no wind..
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob, NP101 APO, AT102ED
Buddies: Jon

Friday evening drive after work.. was definitely worth because of virgo fuzzies..

- Venus: Checked the APO ED lateral colors in AT102ED and NP101. with focused image, no colrrs in any APO. With out of focus venus, the AT shows the lateral color, while NP just doesn't show anything.. does it bother? nope :).. I iwsh Celestron refractor would haven been.. it would have showed heavy color with focused image itself.

Porrima: Split very very hard hard for me. 396x in Jon's scope..
Castor: Split failed.

- Izar - don't remember..

- Eskimo Nebula.. bluish nebula.. need to get familiar with the location, before it goes away..

- Double planetory - way too faint and tiny in Jon's scope itself.

Browsing thru finder without using red-dot or telerad was lil hard.. is using telerad consdered to be cheating :)? Finder is not focused either. Need to get comfortable with the view in the finder.. right angled finder helps..

- M35 - faint and tiny image in my M35. Need to watch out for the size of the object in low magnifications.

- Saturn - ???

M95-96-k-leo: Quic browsing thru K-leo gals..

Coma 4565 and the irregular one.. moteling ??

M3: GC
M53: GC
NGC GC next to M53: Really faint and dispersed. Hard to tell if its a faint open cluster or the GC itself. How do they identify it ?

- M63 Sunflower galaxy: Elliptical. Easy to catch. CVn visible cluster. M63-M51 and Alkaid Seventh UMa forms a line.

- M51 whirlpool: Spiral feel. Spiral arms. NGC object on the right arm of M51

- M94 in CVn: Easy to spot..

- Black eye galaxy missed..

Hunting Virgo Fuzzies II

2010-05-11T23:17:00.001-07:00

Continued..

- Omega Centauri: Easy capture..i really need to see this one from some dark place.. or from india :)

- Centaurus A - Hamburger galaxy - From the refractor NP101, it seemed like a faint loose cluster.. i don't know why.. when i saw omega centauri cluster nearby, i told jon i dont remmeber nay cluster nearby, but there is hamburger galaxy nearby.. and precisely that was it, when we looked thru the 16" scope.. I think Jon was forgotten abt this one.. that was interesting :).. any way the hamburger shape looks perfect.. again lil faint than what i expteted.. It looked awesome thru SDAA scope.. i guess its bad transparency..

- Virgo Fuzzies: I have browsed thru these before, but just never get a confidence of which one is where or how to browse.. So this time, planned it before coming to the observation. got all the prints to locate the objects correctly..

Starting with Epsilon Vir or Vir 33 or Vir 34 always gets me to wrong location. Found M49 (New) easily with this.

Because of Jon's heavier scope and virgo being overhead, also loose the sense of direction. so wasn;t able to locate Markarain's chain correctly.

If you start through Com 6, then its lil easier, because there are not too many fuzzies on the way, to be lost. Also 6 com is easy to locate from Leo Denebola.

M98 on west side while M99 on SE. M100 is also not far from 6 coma.

If you extend the line of M98-6Com-M99 then it goes all the way to Markarain's chain. No other fuzzies in the middle.

Markarain's chain (New in details): M86 bigger than M84. 4388 also seems impressive being edge-on. 4387 clearly visible. also, Jon's 16" aperture shows 4413 and 4425 clearly. 4402 below M86 is visible. Next, Pair of 4438-4435, Eyes Galaxies, visible. 4438 definitely seems to have bright off-core material. Next set of galaxy pair 4461-4458 visible, though smaller.. and then brighter 4473-4477 is visible.. Also, 4479 which is next to 4477 is also visible.. so complete Markarains chain visible.. In the process, I missed M88 and M91.. tried it in Jon's scope, but somehow lost the direction.. I should be able to see all these 16 galaxies from my 10" scope as well..

Once back to M86-M84, can move to east of M84-4388 line to go to M87 (New). 4478-4476 clearly visible next to m87.. really tiny..

If we follow the same line M84-M87, it leads to M58 (New)... otherwise in triangle fashion lies M89 (new) next to a bright star. M90 (New) is close by. 4531 next to M90 is also visible. Also, betn M89 and M58 likes the galaxy pair 4450-4551.

Same line of M84-M87-M58 goes to M59 (New) and M60 (New). 4667-4638 are also visible.

I reversed the whole sequence again back to markarains chain-> M98..

Overall i ended up browsing 31 gals + missed two (M88-M91).. wow.. indeed a galactic zoo..

M81-M82: Just before packing up, thought will take a look.. but failed :) not sure why i wasn't able to find them.. too tired..

La Posta Dinner with Late night Moonset - I

2010-05-11T22:12:00.005-07:00

Date: Sept 26th 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:30pm to 11pm (2.5hrs), 00:30am to 4:30am (4 hrs): Total 6.5 hrs.
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: first session: moon 60% illuminated. Cloudy on SWS. Second session: moon set. No winds. No clouds. Excellent seeing and transparency. Best weather seen after a while.
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob (FL 1800mm with parracor), Jon's Celestron 100mm f/5 achromat. Didn't carry my 10" dob.
Buddies: Jon

While helping Jon in moving furniture, decided to also have a late night stargazing session once moon sets. didnt carry my 10" dob. Jon decided to keep 16" scope at blvd house only.

At 8:30pm, first quarter moon was pretty bright with 60% disk illuminated.

Jupiter: In refractor, clear view. The disk bands were visible. Achro color abberation was killing the image. Two moons on left while other two on right side. In 16" dob @ 9mm 200x awesome view. One of the best views. Two bands + the shade on remaining part of south was clearly visible. Also there was dark black spot exactly at the center on south. Not sure what it is.. but i have seen it before in last dark night observation. Jon also didn't know what it was.

M30: Way too faint in refractor. I realized that without the red-dot founder or telerad, hunting the objects are lil tricky. It does have 6x20 finder, but still I get confused with where its pointing. Just trying to understand the refractor. In the dob, with lil magnification, M30 it its specific shape visible. Not really a crispy clear image. Moonlite washed out the view.. Just no point watching any objects on S or W side.

M13: With dob, clearly resolved and shows how huge it is. Not the usual crispy image. shows clearly in refractor finder. Refractor low mag shows as nice GC similar to M22.

M27 Dumbbell: Jon pointed to this guy.. indeed crispy clear in 28mm UWAN @ 65x. shows the typical shape.

M52: To avoid moon, decided to stay on NE side, exactly opposite of moon. Jon pointed to this one, but "discovered" it. He wasn't sure what this faint lil OC is. cosndering the lcoation and the bright star next to cluster, it was indeed M52. With thig mag 120x on dob, it kills the cluster beauty. Better in low mags.

Mu Cephi (New): Wanted to browse all Cephus objects on this night, so started with Mu Cephi. Jon has never seen this before. Perfect Garnet-Red star. More the mags, more red color i can see. Means in refractor with 40x shows it as red-orangish star, while dob @ 120x shows it as big dark-red orangish star. Indeed an impressive object considering its history.

Iota Cassiopeia (New): don't remember too many details. Jon pointed to it. I remember watching two bright white stars very close to each other. I even tried the refractor, just don't remember what i saw.

At 9:30pm, Jon decided to take a nap for a while till moon sets. I continued..

NGC6939 OC - NGC 6946 Galaxy (New): OC in Cephus, while galaxy in Cygnus at the border. Indeed seemed like salt paper cluster. Individual stars are not that bright. but cluster seems to be rich, like small scale M46. CN small wonders also mentioned abt the galaxy 6946 near cephus-cygnus boundary but din't see it... again must have washed by moonlite.

Revisited this object again late night ~2am. Excellent cluster. In 28mm UWAN ~65x, can fit both cluser and galaxy in same view.. Galxy is indeed faint.. but definitely bigger in size.

M31-32-110: To test the moon effect on galaxies, pointed the refractor to M31. Not a great image.. Infact M32 and M110 wasn't that obvious either. So decided to give up on all fuzzies as well as tiny little objects till moon sets.

Alberio: Color of the pair seemed okay.. orange and bluish-white.

Double Double: Wasn't able to split individual pairs that clearly with 65x.

M103: Don't remember the shape. Clearly visible in the finder itself.

Continued..

La Posta Dinner with Late night Moonset - II

2010-05-11T22:12:00.003-07:00

Continued..

There are bunch of clusters in nearby area of m103, so started browsing them. considering moonlite, probably OCs are better to observe.

NGC663 OC: While browsing for m103, saw another cluster next to it, which was probably better/bigger than m103.

NGC654 OC: Yet another tiny OC, but still can be identified easily.

NGC637 OC: Seemed to have "gun" shape, bright smaller. but because of tight concentration, feels like a cluster.

NGC559 OC: don't remember anything special in this one..

NGC457 OC: This is definitely bigger and had a curved alignment of stars.

NGC436 OC: Not impressive..also lil bit difficult identify the cluster.

NGC225 OC: Easy catch betn Gamma and Kappa Cas. Bigger..wider.. don't remember the shape again..

M29 OC: Easily visible in 16".typical shape.. seemed tiny.

Perseus double cluster: At high mags, completely looses its charm, At 28mm UWAN, seemed nice.

~11pm, was lil bit tired, also lil cloudy.. so decided to lie down for a while in the car trunk. The space is huge as compared to it seems. Can comfortably fit in two people without any trouble. Still wasn't able to sleep.. Pleiads on east, while Jupiter on west clearly visible thru car windows. Jon got up around ~00:30..everything was clear by then..no clouds and no moon.. excellent seeing.

M42 Orion - m43: At horizon, the trapezium was too wavy. visited it again after an hour when it was lil up in the sky.. It was excellent.. 6 stars in trapezium clearly visible. Awesome seeing. In 28mm UWAN, the nebulousity was fabulous, feeling up the whole 80deg EP. M43 next to it was showing the nebulosity too.. Easily supported high mags.. the internal details of two dark clouds near trapezium was also clearly visible.. indeed gives 3D feeling. The nebulosity near running nebula cluster was also visible.. still ll hard to discern the dark running man. is this just a photo graphic object? probably it is.. Jon has never seen it either.

M78 - bump up mags... nebulosity on next star also. 2071??

M1 Crab

Auriga clusters with 2 ngc objects

M44 cancer

ngc7331

Cephus, cluster + galaxy

stephans quintet

Cephus u cephi IC OC fuziness

sculptor gal 253, gc 288

new scultor gal 247 easy find.. huge ..faint.. with refractor also

M41 - CMa

M46 - planetory

M47

Gemini M35 - ngc next

Eskimo nebula

Double planetory

Asterism 37 OC 2169

Tau CMa

Thors helmet

M74 - next to aries

Doubles:

Rigel

Castor - refractor reflector refractor,

Beta Mono ceris - triplet

lambda orionis - almost like cancer

sigma orionis - 6 star system

milky way alignment - cephus alignment, scultor alignment

Night of Leo Fuzzies - I

2010-05-03T22:24:00.005-07:00

Date: 1st May 2010, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 12:00pm (~4hrs)
Location: Jon's @ Blvd
Weather: Heavy winds till 9, lower windy till 11pm and calm till 11:30
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob, NP101 APO, my/Jon's AT102ED APO.
Buddies: Jon+Francis+Aparna

Heavy winds when we landed at Jon's place. After some house treasure hunts, started with refractors. Dusk light after sunset was still there..

Venus: Way too shaky image.. can't see any phases.. good comparison of lateral color in NP101 and AT102ED. When out of focus, AT shows lot of violet and green color. While NP doesn't show anything at similar magnification. At really high magnification, NP showed lil color.

Castor: Though it was shaky, casto was good split in both scopes. how much is the separation TBD ?? 4.7" arcsec.

Sigma Ori: Tried sigma Ori 5 star system. winds killed it.. can see it, but worst view..

Eskimo Nebula: Okay view of Eskimo through 16" dob. Because of slight dusk light.. wasn't that bright view.. also wasn't too focused either.. cannot see the middle star..just a fuzzy object..

M35: Tried through 102ED-Pan35. Nothing impressive.

M38 - Same like M35. Northern side outside Auriga. Way fainter than M35.

M65-M66-3628 Galaxies: In Jon's 31 Nagler, in single view. excellent and pretty bright. Tried it in on AT102ED. Lil tricky to point the APO for the overhead objects. You can not really get the red pointer directed. Have to get on the ground. Still pointed to it. Excellent view in Pan35.

NGC 4565 Coma Bernices Galaxy - Needle Galaxy: Excellent needle view through Jon's 16" scope. didn't see much details.. Too windy I guess. The location of the gal is easy to catch. Next to Mel 111 cluster.

NGC 4559 (New): Irregular one next to Needle: Can see irregular shape.. larger than Needle, but probably lil fainter (or almost same) than needle.. Also couple of stars on top of the galaxy.. probably there are in field of view. With current view, both are 2-8 o'clk pattern.

NGC 4494 (New): Elliptical one next to Needle: Jon found this one. smaller and fainter than both above gal.

I tried both needle and irregular 4559 gal from my AT102ED scope. Definitely, perfect catch in Pan35. Can't fit both of them in same view.. Both seem really tiny, but still bright.

Tried same from Jon's NP101.

Aparna also joined us to look at 4565-4559-4494.

M104 Sombrero Gal: To show some impressive stuff to Aparna, pointed to Sombrero. Excellent.. really bright view in Nag31 on 16". somehow keep on forgetting the location.

M3: Another master piece of spring night. Easy to track it from Mel-111 from Coma Bernices.

Continued...

Night of Leo Fuzzies - II

2010-05-03T22:24:00.003-07:00

Continued..

M81-M82-ngc3077 - Can't fit these together in Nag31 16" view..probably just at edge-to-edge.. really surprised. infact next to m81, there is ngc3077. indeed nice view.. somehow never seen it before..

Omega Centuari - Jon pointed to the masterpiece.. Lil low on the horizon.. Scope was almost horizontal. Easy to catch.. you can feel like you can see it naked eye. Marvelous view through the Nag31.

M4 - Scorpio on SE horizon, tried M4.. indeed smaller and fainter than expected.

Antares - bright red view..

Markarains chain - browsed through markarains chain.. Again i don't know what are the galaxy numbers.. need to do more research and get comfortable with it.

M95-M96-M105-NGC 3371-3373 - Went back to Leo again.. Location was correct... When looked throu the view, can clearly see the triplet. but felt that the messier triplet is too small for the view. I mentioned to Jon that M105 is the triplet in itself.. we zoomed in with 20T2, but didn't see anything..i mentioned to jon i had definitely better view of whole thing thru my 10" than our current view.. After a while, when Jon browsed thru, we realized the real mistake.. the initial triplet we looked at itself was M105 triplet :).. and M95 and M96 were way too apart from each other..with lowest magnification, the scope 2000mm FL with 31 Nag 66x was still high to fit all messiers in same view.. indeed surprising.. need to read more abt comparision betn 65-66 and 95-96-105.

Fuzzies next to K Leo 3367-3377-3412-3346-3348 - The K leo star is next to m105, but interesting thing is there are 5 more galaxies near it.. though they are fainter than M objects, they may be of similar brightness as triplets in m105. 3 of them are on one side and closer to k leo.. 3367 is betn m105 and k leo.. 3377 is 2' clk of k-leo, while 3412 is aligned with 3377 and k-leo... Easy to catch.. while 4th one 3346 on opposite side and lil farther. The 5th one 3338 wasn't able to find it.. was loosing the direction.. any way just browsing thru these gals was just awesome.. the iphone s/w is infact showing more gals in this area.

Triplet 3193-3190-3187 - While looking for Gal pair next to Gamma Leo, Jon pointed to me to this triplet betn gamma and zeta leo stars.. First one on right next to a star, second one on lil-further and top of the star. third one still further above second one.. third one seemed to be really faint and edge-on style.

Continued...

Night of Leo Fuzzies - III

2010-05-03T22:24:00.001-07:00

Continued...

Double pair next to Gamma Leo/Algeiba 3226-3227 : Initially wasn't able to find it. Was looking on the other side. Very close pair of galaxies.. somewhat bigger version of planetary double PN.

NGC 2903 - Way below 1st star in sickle epsillon leo. Easy to find. Seemed fainter than 4565. (its brighter but lil smaller than 4565, so i guess considering surface brightness 4565 seemed brighter)

Antenna galaxies in moonlite - moonrise glow was on east. Still can clearly see antenna fuzziness.

Rising Moon: Awesome sight when moon was coming up.. being on horizon lil bigger.. because of clouds up ahead, the moon light was stable.. 70% wanning.. excellent view.. one of the best moon risings even seen.

Stargazing at GC South Rim

2010-05-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

Date: 1st April 2010, Thursday
Observation Time: 9:30pm to 10:00pm (~30mins)
Location: Home.
Weather: clear sky.. really dark sky.. few lights from bright-angles lodge
Instruments: 10x50 binocs

Had quick 30min binocular observing session from GC South Rim.

The NELM: can clearly see all stars in Ursa Minor. M44 Beehive cluster was naked eye.

Double Cluster.
M45 Pleides.
Mizar Alcor
M81-M82 barely visible.
M35 Gemini
M42
Mruga shirsha
Cma M41 ??
M46-M47
Alberio Winter
Tau wasn't cleanly visible.
M97
M50 in hydra ? 2 binocular fields apart from m46-47 pair
M44-M67
M3

Tried to look for Virgo galaxies but nothing visible.
M96-97 Leo Gal.. but too overhead and nothing visible.

Mars
Saturn

Deers on the road... while wild cows on the back side of Bright Angels Lodge.

Quick Browsing before dinner at PB.

2010-03-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

Date: 19th March 2010, Wednesday
Observation Time: 7:45pm to 8:30pm (~45mins)
Location: Home.
Weather: clear sky.. but light polluted..as well as Moon waxing on 4th day.
Instruments: AT102ED. Tried new Pan 35 and UHC filter.

Had quick browsing session with Aparna. Moon was waxing 4th day.

M42: Pan35 20x shows whole orion nebula M42 + M43 + running man nebula stars area. BEcasue of light pollution the nebulosity is not as impressive as dark sight..still the middle dark pier pops up in 20x itself. theta Orionis, trapezium, is barely visible. Nag 17T4 41x shows M42 better. Only 4 stars in Theta are resolvable. Nag 17T4 + UHC filter definitely shows more nebulosity, but it made whole image blue.. thats lil bizarre.. first time i used this UHC filter. whats the blue color indicates ?

Hmmm... "UHC (ultra-high contrast) filter has a wider bandpass (22 to 26 nanometers [nm]) than other narrowband filters but a much narrower one than any broadband filter. Through a UHC filter, the background sky appears darker and stars take on a blue color. Emission nebulae benefit most from this filter."

Sigma Orionis: (New): Treated Sigma to be Mintaka. This one is excellent. In 20x Pan35, you can see another trapezium here as Theta Orionis. Right part of the trapez is Sigma, while the left part is STF761. igma shows AB-E pair. With 17T4 41x, star D pops up betn AB-E pair, closer to AB. with 7T1 ~101x, clearly see star C really close to AB, but opposite side of D. Indeed excellent. The 4 stars in 3 different views definitely shows the beauty of magnification and how the magnitude pops up incrementally. Need to observe more carefully.

Description abt Sigma.

M45 Pleiades: In Pan35 20x, looks impressive. 9 stars. Its upside-down and the ? angle switched to Right.

Moon: Naked eye, can see the phase as well as whole dark side sort of lit up.. In Pan35, 20x, its marvelous. The dark side really lits up and can clearly see the difference betn bright and dark side. Picture is so crisp to see the crates on terminator. 17T4, 41x, improved the image with more details on the craters. Aparna went crazy with Pan35 view. Infact best i have ever seen..

Later, went for nice dinner at Cafe Athena at PB with Aparna, Dilip and Ashwin.

Mars - First Time

2010-03-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

Observed Mars twice in Jan-Feb. Just feeling the gaps in the blog..

---
Jan Second week:

From my home: ~11pm: XTi10 with TMB4 i.e. ~300x: Mars was overhead lil on east. Saw the northen polar ice-caps. First time in life.. Clear white.. Can also see a dark line surrounding that ice cap. Not sure what it was.. Seeing was in-out.

---
Jan Last week:

From Jon's place in Clairmont: ~7pm-9:30pm : Meade 12" f/6 research grade reflector: with 4.5mm nagler ~ ~400x: Excellent image of Mars.. had never seen it before like this.. Clear white ice-cap, better than my home viewing (because of scope and mags).. can see dark areas going from North to south on Mars 's face. We were at jon's for ~2.5 hrs.. and checking it every now and then.. and according to jon's friend, Jeff, it seemed like the face has rotated.. lil hard for me to keep track.. i wasnt aware that the face changes so fast..

Also had quick browsing thru 12" on M41, M42, M46, M47.

Binocular Browsing

2010-03-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

Date: 17th March 2010, Wednesday
Observation Time: 9:30pm to 10pm (~30mins)
Location: Home.
Weather: clear sky.. but light polluted
Instruments: Nikon 10x50 binoc

I really never browsed thru skies from new home. though i have mounted the telescope, I really invested time into how much i can see from my patio. Also it was good refresher for some winter/spring constellations.

Heavy light pollution.. Can only see bright stars by naked eye.. NELM may be betn 3-4. Thats based on Ursa Minor. Polaris (alpha), beta clearly visible.. Gamma was in-out.. and i didn't see any other stars.

Double Cluster: It wasn't visible by naked eye.. probably few stars in there, but really hard to tell if its a cluster.. hence bino is required. Cassiopeia Gamma-Delta line directly points to double cluster. Clearly see one of the clusters. With lot of bright stars, but the second cluster is lil hard to detect..

Pleiades: Nice star cluster. 7 stars visible naked eye. 9 stars visible thru binoc. All bright stars in the Perseus upper arm are clearly visible and they point to Pleiads. Interesting thing i notices is the number of stars in the background of pleiades.. they are like bunch of stars, way fainter, but heavy in concentration behind it.. i never noticed them before.

Algol: The lower arm has only 3 bright stars. One at the joint with the upper arm Alpha-Mirfak, Algol, and one more star Rho-Per. Algol was brighter than Rho, but fainter than Alpha. dont know abt Algol's current magnitude.. need to follow it more..

M1: Failed.. Picked up the wrong location. Tried to look for it above zeta Tuari, but it should be below, inside the V shape.

M35: Can clearly see whole Gemini constellation. M35 is on Tau side way above Zeta Tau. V-Mu-Eta-M35 form rotatated parallelogram. M35, fainter..still visible..seems bigger.

M36-M38-M37: M36 is the middle one, while M38 is inside Auriga. Either M36-M38 or M36-M37 fit in the same view. ~4-5 deg apart from each others. M36 seems to be brighter and seems smaller than other two. M38 bigger than other two ??

Quick Orion browsing: M42 nebula visible. Mintaka fainter than belt stars. Mruga-Shirsha Cr69 visible. really widespread..

Quick browsing for Canis Major: M41 seemed lil brighter than M35. Probably bigger than M35?

Tau CMa: Cluster is not visible in binoculars.. it just seemed to be a bright star..

M46-M47: M47 the brighter and widespread one is clearly visible.. again the M46 the fainter one feels like to be there but not sure.. These are like two FoV away from sirius.. i.e. 10-12 deg away from Sirius.

M93: Because of recent browsing, found it easily. Seemed to be like M35.. probably fainter than it.. can clearly see it.

M44: FAILED. I thought this should have been easier to see in binocs.. but as it was overhead, was tricky.. got the location correct, betn lion sickle and proceyon, but still didn't find it.

Dark night kickoff in freezing cold - I

2010-03-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

Date: 12th March 2010, Sat
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 12pm (~3 hr)
Location: Jon's home, Blvd CA
Weather: Initially really windy.. cold: below freezing.. intermittently cloudy.. intermittently foggy.. heavy dew.. Seeing was mediocre till 11pm.. later improved, but dew made life miserable.
Instruments: Jon's 16.5", TV NP101 APO. Didn't open my XTi-10.
Buddies: Aparna + Jon's friend Elli.

After India trip and dual-mode status :), this was first dark night session.

Had nice hot chocolate session ~8pm and shrimp curry ani Jeera rice session ~9pm. Aparna was with me till 9pm and later stayed in the house to keep herself warm.

M42 Orion Nebula: Nice view thru NP101. Aparna immediately noticed the quadrilateral stars. seeing wasn't that good. Tried 16T4 and 35mm pan.

Pleides: thru NP101.. 10 stars. Pan 35mm. Some of the main stars seems to be double.

Double cluster: Excellent view thru NP 101. Clearly shows the differences betn 2 clusters. lower right one is salt-pepper type while upper-left one seems more widespread.

M41 - NP101, Pan35 view of M41 want that great... lil tiny cluster.. thru jon's 16.5" dob, definitely a bright cluster.

M46 - M47: Impressive view of both clusters in NP101-Pan35 combo. Can fit both clusters together in same view. Again clearly see differences in both clusters. In Jon's 16.5", planetary in M46 was definitely big and bright.. filter wasn't required.

Rosette nebula in orion [New]: Saw this one for first time. NP101-Pan35. Its lil hard to grasp this object. Its really widespread and hence too faint.. if jon wouldn't have mentioned abt it, I can't even make out the nebulousity.. I am sure its hard to find.

M1 crab: Easy to locate. Crab was bright, but hard to see any details. I had better view of Crab before. Definitely seeing was poor.

Tau CMa: for got the location, Jon reminded me. Two star pairs above the CMa dog hind-leg. Pick up the uppermost pair, thats Tau. Central bright star with the star cluster around it.. sort of in a triangle shape..

M93 - NGC: Lil N-E of the Tau, lies M93.. Pick up the brigh star.. NW of is M93, while SE of bright star is the NGC ?? Don't remember anything specfic about M93. NGC is another fuzzy.. never read abt this one before. (UPDATE 03/10/2011: NGC seems to be 2467)

M76 Little dumbbell: Couple of stars from Andromeda lined up to point to the double cluster.. just above these stars you have little dumbbell. Too faint.. can see lil dumbbell shape.

Gamma Leonoid: Initially when split it from home, i think i messed up. This is lil hard to split with 60x magnification. you need lil higher mags to split it up.

M35 - Browsed thru binocs. Easy catch..

Continued..

Dark night kickoff in freezing cold - II

2010-03-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

Continued..

Eskimo nebula: The middle star jumps right at you.. if seeing is better, probably can see more details. bluish disk..very bright in the center and fainter outside..

Double planetary - In Jon's 28mm UWAN ~75x, way too tiny to see this one..but definitely you can see it. The clear 8 shape visible.

M81-M82: location. I always miss the location of this one. Pick up first and 3rd star in square of UMa and draw the digonal line that points to 2-3 star cluster, just below SW of it is M81 and M82. You can defintely see the pattern/texture on the edge galaxy. The pair is clearly visible thru binocs, once you know the location.

M51 Whirlpool galaxy: Not the greatest view of whirlpool. bad seeing..

M next to the third UMa star (seems M109): in jon's 28mm UWAN, 3rd UMA star and M?? (M109) is visble in the same FoV.

M36-37-38: binocular browsing.. Jon mentioned about some ngc next to M37??

Leo triplet M65-66-3628: Jon pointed to it. 3628 fainter than other two. All 3 in same view (with uwan 28 75x ??). 3628 elongated and bigger in length than others ??

Jon's galaxy pair in UMA: Two faint galaxies in the view. If you continue the tail of UMa, same distance as 5th & 7th star along the tail. (UPDATE 03/10/2011: From the location, seems to be Hickson 68 in CVn)

M3: Jon pointed the location.. bit tricky.. visible thru binocs.. Outskirt stars are clearly resolvable. higher mag helps..

Sombrero Galaxy: Jon pointed the location.. lil tiny than what i was expecting. elongated.. but no sombrero structure visible.

Dark night kickoff in freezing cold - III

2010-03-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

Continued..

Ant galaxies: Too faint.. can see two fuzzy lil things.. but cannot discern much. Tried it multiple times during the night, but wasn't much clear.

Saturn: Multiple views. Seeing was improving over the period, ring shadow is visible. 3 of the moons on right side visible.

Virgo Markarain's chain: 3 in the middle. Two on the right of it. one more on right of the pair.

Jon mentioned about coma borealis - second star - double - 0.7 arcsecond... can not split it with normal optical scope. needs excellent seeing. the day before jon was able to split 1.3 arcsecond double.. so surely this is not even possible in best seeing.

Recap 2009

2010-01-30T18:41:00.000-08:00

Here is the summary for last years observations.

Total Observations: 16
Mountain/Dark Place Observations: 9

Lost the tempo lil bit after June 09 :) and took a while to get back and then again has to leave during nov-dec !!

In 08 recap blog, I mentioned to finish Messier, SAC and RASC list. I wasn't able to.

- Finished almost 75% objects from messier (Details below) and 50% from SAC and RASC.
- First dark night with Orion XTi in Jan 09
- Watched comet Lulin in March 09.
- Managed ~half messier marathon in March 09
- Co-hosted SDAA 22" scope in April 09.
- First "Friday" night dark site observation in April 09 and Sept 09.
- Purchased first Nagler: 17T4 in May 09.
- Purchased iPhone in July 09. Tried the voyager software on it. Definitely helpful.
- Used Virtual moon atlas.
- Sent Celestron 102 f/5 refractor to India in Dec. Sent 35mm, 25m, TMB 6mm EPs and 2x barlow with it.

For coming year,
- Already borrowed Jon's AT102ED Virtual-APO. Jon has switched to TV NP-101 APO
- Already observed Mars for first time. Northern Polar cap is awesome.
- Need to train Aparna lil bit :)
- Will definitely bag all messiers.

Missing Guys: M9, M10, M19, M49, M58, M59, M60, M61, M70, M80, M87, M89, M90, M102.

One time observed guys: M2+, M5+, M12+, M14+, M18+, M21+, M26+, M39+, M40+, M54+, M62+, M64+, M68+, M69+, M71+, M74+, M75+, M77+, M83+, M84+, M85+, M86+, M88+, M91+, M98+, M99+, M100+, M106+, M107+.

M1 Crab (2)
M2 (1)
M3 GC (3)
M4 (3)
M4-GC6144 (3)
M5 (1)
M7-M6 (7)
M8 Lagoon (8)

M10 (1)
M11 WildDucks (4)
M12 (1)
M13 (8)
M14 (1)
M16 Eagle (3)
M17 Swan (5)
M18 (1)

M20 Triffid (6)
M21 (1)
M22 (6)
M22-M28 (2)
M23- M24- M25 (3)
M26-NGC6712 (1)
M27 Dumbbell (6)
M28 (3)
M29 (3)

M30 (5)
M31 Andromeda- M32- M110 (8)
M33 Triangulum (7)
M34 (3)
M35 (3)
M37-M36-M38 OC Triplet (2)
M39 (1)

M40 (1)
M41 (6)
M42 Orion-M43 (7)
M44 Beehive (3)
M45 Pleiades (2)
M46-M47 OC Pair (5)
M48 (2)

M50 (3)
M51 Whirlpool (6)
M52 (3)
M53 GC (3)
M54 (1)
M55 (2)
M56 (2)
M57 Ring (12)

M62 (1)
M63 (2)
M64 Black Eye (1)
M65-M66-3628 Gal (6)
M67 (3)
M68 GC (1)
M69 (1)

M71 (1)
M72-M73 (6)
M74 (1)
M75 (1)
M76 Little Dumbbell (2)
M77 (1)
M78 (3)
M79 (2)

M81-M82 Gal Bodes Neb (6)
M83 Seashell (1)
M84-M86 (1)
M85 (1)
M88-M91 (1)

M92 (3)
M93 (4)
M94 (2)
M95-M96-M105 (4)
M97 Owl (3)
M98-M99-M100 (1)

M101 (3)
M103 (2)
M104 Sombrero (3)
M106 (1)
M107 (1)
M108 (3)
M109 (3)

Virtual Moon Atlas SW for rescue..

2009-09-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

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

Faint Fuzzies with the refractor & moonlight..

2009-09-24T21:03:00.002-07:00

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.

Nexstar 80mm Refractor EP Comparision

2009-09-24T21:03:00.001-07:00

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 :) !!

Friday Night with Oreo Cookies - I

2009-09-21T21:49:00.001-07:00

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..

Friday Night with Oreo Cookies - II

2009-09-20T18:30:00.000-07:00

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)

Getting Into The Rhythm - I

2009-09-15T19:27:00.003-07:00

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..

Getting Into The Rhythm - II

2009-09-15T19:27:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-15T19:26:00.000-07:00

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.

Independance Night

2009-08-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

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.

Summer 09 Kickoff

2009-07-19T23:03:00.000-07:00

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

Co-hosting 22" SDAA Observatory. II

2009-04-21T15:38:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-21T15:29:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-21T15:28:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

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..

2009-04-01T23:42:00.000-07:00

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 (??)

Messier Marathon - Part I

2009-03-29T21:42:00.001-07:00

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..

Messier Marathon - Part II

2009-03-29T21:41:00.001-07:00

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..

Messier Marathon - Part III

2009-03-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Late Night Outreach...

2009-03-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Orion CMa Pup "M" browsing

2009-03-19T00:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Bust..

2009-03-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

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.

Comet Lulin

2009-02-26T23:27:00.000-08:00

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.

Recap Year '08 and Plan for '09

2009-01-18T22:45:00.000-08:00

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

First Dark Night with Orion XTi 10 - I

2009-01-18T22:26:00.000-08:00

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

First Dark Night with Orion XTi 10 - II

2009-01-18T22:07:00.000-08:00

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

Testing Orion 10" intelliscope setup..

2008-11-01T22:39:00.000-07:00

Date: 1st Nov 2008, Saturday
Observation Time: 6:00pm to 7:30pm (1:00 hrs)
Location: MTRP, CA
Weather: 80% cloudy, Sky was in & out
Instruments: New 10” dob & bunch of new eyepieces.
Buddies: Philip and Jack (MTRP Ranger)

Bought a 10" dob last sunday. Orion XT10 intelliscope. I observed jupiter from home, but this was sort of real first session with the dob to test the whole setup and new eyepieces. GSO40mm supeview, Celestron Xcel 10mm and Celestron E-lux 2" 25mm.

Scope wasn't fully collimated. Still not fully comfortable with optics.. Really need laser collimator.

Weather wasn;t friendly either today. Too much cloudy. I think because of clouds, though transparency was bad, the seeing was excellent. So planetary observation was excellent.

Venus phase (New): Venus was best view ever for me.. This is first time I ever saw phase of Venus. I guess the phase was around 70% waxing. Confirm it. (?? Confirmed from heavens-above). With 10mm xcel eyepiece, 120x showed me the phase clearly and luckily, 2x barlow on it, 240x magnification was still in focus. It was fabulous. Orangish-Red color on top-left (NW) edge of venus, while the bottom-right (SE) edge was lil bit greenish. I remember Jon told me abt colors last time.. but I forgot.. Need to read more (??)

Moon: Moon was fine.. the clarity and shaprness of craters was clearly visible. Didn't spend much time in detailed observation.

Tried Jon's GSO 40mm Superview eyepiece. Though i have cleaned the eyepiece, its inner surface is still really dirty. (??)..

Jupiter: With 25mm eyepiece, 48x, Jupiter bands were visible. With 10mm xcel, 120x, it was pretty sharp image. didn't see any other details.

Compared the eyepiece field of view with the Jon's 9mm expanse eyepiece. With Jupiter's moons I was able to get judgment. Indeed expanse had more field of view..probably 7-10 deg more. but i felt that image contrast in xcel was better than expanse.. Need to confirm (??)

Tested the R&P focuser on Jupiter sharpness. focuser is ill bit tight. After using Crayford, use of R&P is indeed undesirable.. the view shakes lil bit while focusing. Need to loose the focuser lil bit. Still.. focuser did excellent job to get the sharp view. Didn't feel like I am compromising on the view...

Alignment and Object locator testing : Spent some time with the "intelliscope".. Two star alignment.. Pointed to Vega. Wasn't able to get a star 60deg away from Vega.. so pointed to Altair.. warp factor was +1.1.. for first shot not bad.. but still should have done better.. but didn't spend much itme becasue of cloud cover rolling in.

Used the intelliscope, to confirm location of Deneb. It was within +/- 1-2deg error margin.
To locate all other objects, used intelliscope.

Alberio: In 25mm view, though not in center. Image was not that great.. yellow-orangish and white-bluish star pair visible. wasn;t the greatest view.

Double Double: Its a good test for eyes, collimation and eyepiece. Again wasn't the greatest view. I think scope wasn;t fully collimated, so was lil bit hard to see the resolving at 10mm eyepiece, 120x.. It should have been perfect at this magnification. but i got the perfect view, at one particular focus.

Again, R&P focus is lil bit tight to handle.

M57 Ring: Pointed to M57 and then checked intelliscope co-ords. In 9mm eyepiece, 135x not the greatest view. Star at2pm missing.. fuzzy ring was visible, but image wasn't sharp. but in 10mm image was great. Star at 2pm visible. I am not sure if transperency got improved within 2mins or not... but image was bright and ring was indeed better than 9mm. Still need to confirm this contrasting aspect in eyepiece comparison.

M31 Andromeda: found out that intelliscope really helps.. It was hard for me to see any reference stars in the clouds... but intelliscope helped...I am too glad that I have it.. worth the money... M31 not the greatest view... clouds to blame. With GSO 40mm widefield.. M32 was lil bit hard, but somehow M110 was visible. Isn't that lil bit contradicting.. any way becasue clouds, didn't think much.

M11 wild duck cluster: Intelliscope for rescue.. but not right on target.. Really hard to see in the finder. I got it once.. bad view..

In 40mm, tried to focus, but felt than focuser tube length is not enough for such a low magnification (30x)... Need to verify the relationship between maximum focuser length and min magnification supported (??)... again i might be wrong.. Need to go to dark sight for perfect focus.

Overall, to summarize..

Intelliscope is indeed a great addition for me.. surely help me in verifying locations and in bad weather. Need to learn better tactics to get warp factor below 0.5

Xcel 10mm eyepiece is probably great addition, if my perception abt image contrast is correct.. though field of view is smaller than 9mm, still image details matter

Not much happy with GSO 40mm superview...again.. weather might be the factor here.. Need to check Orion nebula or Lagoon-Triffid combo in this.

The 2" type of 25mm eyepiece...not sure if it is great or not.. lil bit of pain while swapping eyepieces, because of 2"-.1.25" adapter. Still will check in next few observations..

Indeed glad with the whole scope.. images were good as expected.. during collimation, realized there are coule of spots/scratches at the center of primary mirror. Need to confirm from Jon, if any drawbacks.. Precise collimation is necessary (double-double is the proof)..

Telerad is must... Finding Vega was difficult as hell :) .. It wasn't clouds..it wasn't location either.. but it was me.. and i call myself starhopper ;-D

Quick Browsing..

2008-10-30T00:30:00.000-07:00

Date: Oct 29th 2008, Wednesday
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 8:00pm (1:00 hrs)
Location: Jon's place, San diego, CA
Weather: Seeing was good.... but city lights.
Instruments: Jon's 10” dob
Buddies: Jon.

Had a quick night sky browsing from Jon's place. I went to his place to return his scope.

Double Double: Excellent sight. and good split...forgot magnification

M57 Ring: Thru Jon's 32mm Televue Panoptic eyepiece, it was marevellous.. Wide file do of view really helps to get the "cosmic" filing. Star at 2pm was clearly visible.

Ophiuchus Double star (New): Don't know which one was this. But one was orange and other was yellowish. Bright contrast colors.

NGC 6633 OC (New): Really widespread .. don't remember much.

IC4756 OC (New): Jon said he likes this one.. but again ..it was really wide spread.. not that impressive.

NGC 6527 Green Nebula: Exceptionally beautiful. The contrast is probably better than ring nebula. I see blue color, but Jon mainly sees green color. Jon located this object this in a minute.. last time i wasn't able to locate it..

M56 GC (New): first time saw it... easy to locate. In 32mm Televue Panoptics, it was faint. With 40mm GSO SuperView, it was really really faint.

M29 OC: Caught it again..and just with experience of one observation last saturday :).. Nice H shape.

NGC 6910 OC (New): Next to Gamma Cyngni. This is an indeed interesting object.. fuzzy V shape..Felt like some dust in it.. some of the stars are close while others are separated.

Blinking PN: Jon tried to find this one, but he needed to refer to the map.. and thru my sat experience, i caught it in a minute... I was impressed that i was able to find it before him :)..In 32mm eyepiece it was hard to see ..but still in the view. Magnification helps... At highest magnification, ring out of focus, but still see some central brightness.. probably thats the star.

Jupiter Satellite transition: Saw Jupiter satellite transition. Becasue of bad seeing, jupiter was going in & out of focus ... while in focus, the black satellite shadow is strikingly dark..more you concentrate, darker it begins.

Last light with Jon's 10" dob - Part I

2008-10-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

Date: Oct 25th 2008, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 12:30pm (5:30 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Seeing was okay..not great. improved after 11pm, probably because of marine layer on SD. Its getting really cold too..
Instruments: My 10” dob & 10x50 binocs.
Buddies: Greg (Advanced amateur astronomer)

Total: 26 objects, 1 Asteroid
New Objects: 10

Returning Jon's 10" dob this week, so went for last observing session from this dob. This dob indeed gave me new perspective in handling big aperture telescope and understanding night sky.

Venus: Too low on horizon, so everything was bit wavy...

M8 Lagoon & M17 Swan: Quick glance to these old objects :).. makes you feel good. Night wasn't that dark enough to see the dark rift in lagoon clearly. swan was impressive. Two stars parallel to neck are clearly visible.

M13: Hercules globular was impressive. it always makes me feel if I would have had more aperture. Showed it to the scout group.

M30: I have seen better views of M30.. with 9mm also it still wasn't crispy and clear.

Saturn Nebula NGC7009: Again not the crisp view.. but the bluish disk stands out well. wasn't that much trouble in tracking either.

M72: Tiny globular... can be vividly seen thru binocs. Quick glance thru the dob.

M73: The asterism triangle is beautiful. One of the object that still can't see thru binocs.

Helix Nebula NGC7293: faint big fuzzy... 135x also doesn't show any details inside..

Asteroid Vesta (New): I think I got it.. it seems like one of the Jupiter's moon in high magnification with lil bit out of focus.. brown yellowish in color. Tried on 22" observatory, but nobody helped or enthu there... more aperture helps here too.. I should ask Jon to catch it some time.

NGC 253: edge on spiral Galaxy in sculptor. Greg told me look at it.. and this is precisely the same galaxy which Jon had shown me before. I got it confused with sculptor dwarf.. indeed beautiful. it fills up almost 80% of my 32mm eyepiece (38x). More magnification indeed shows more in the galaxy. i felt there is some dark lane vertical within the galaxy. Galaxy runs in angular fashion to pair of star alignment.

NGC 258 (New): Really faint globular next to 253 and sort of next to south galactic pole.

Sculptor Dwarf: failed.. need to check mags. compare it with ngc253

M57 Ring Nebula: Not the greatest view again... but nice bluish disk and its 2" star in field of view.

Veil nebula: Thru 22" its fabulous, you can see the whole filament near cygni 52 star so well that it indeed shows that the dust is everywhere, but just a star next to it causes it to glow in nice shape.. the crisp clear image also gave me 3d perspective... i think magic of nagler and filters... thru my dob in 32mm without filter, it was like a faint white streak among background stars... still i saw all 3 components of the veil.

North American Nebula NGC7000, Pelican Nebula IC5067: Failed.. read more..

Last light with Jon's 10" dob - Part II

2008-10-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Crescent Nebula NGC6888: Failed... indeed frustrating... this one is listed as top 10 deep sky object for October sky and it was unbelievably hard to find.. just spent too much time, but still no success.. Greg mentioned to me that without filter its hard...

M29 (New): Curved H - nice tiny open cluster.. in H shape.. but vertical lines curved outside.

Berk86 (New): open cluster in V shape, next to M29

Blinking Planetary NGC6828 (New): This was perfect catch. Star, in one field of view a pair and half field of view, the blue lil tiny disk in 32mm eyepiece. its hard to se it in 32mm.. but lil bit more magnification shows it well.. no blinking effect in 10" aperture.. but looks good... probably less brighter than blue snowball. Need to revisit for details.

IC 1396 cluster and nebulosity: In Cephus, listed as best object for telescopes and binocs... but failed..

M33 Triangulum: From Greg's 10". sort of able to see the spiral structure.. in two arms.

M74 (New): In Pisces, Nominal fuzzy object visible thru binocs also.

M77 galaxy (New): In Cetus. Bizzar shape sort of like m30, but only with a star.. high magnification didn't help to resolve much either. but this is indeed an interesting object. need to revisit. its tiny fuzzy.. I wonder how messier saw this.. wasn't able to see much thru binocs. Tiny galaxies 1055 and 1087 are on opposite sides of M77. Its hard to distinguish if they are galaxies or tiny globulars...probably for tiny globulars they seem bluish..but these tiny fuzzies didn't.

Mira: Didn't know what to look for in the star. Read more.

Caroline cluster in Cassiopeia (New): Don't know the NGC number. open cluster like wild duck, but really spread over large area.. like sprinkled salt.. but really faint. all the stars seem like field stars, but no other stars in vicinity near the cluster, hence all the stars in the view can be treated as part of open cluster

Uranus: Quick glance at bluish disk.. nothing interesting.

Spectrographs of Antares and Vega (New): graph, Vega graph was on left side, showing blue wavelengths. It Greg showed me his spectrograph which he has collected form SBIG instrument. Antares graph was sort of in red wavelength (right), Showed multiple heavy dips representing element titanium. and one h-alpha dip. compared to Antaresdidn't have any titanium dip, but it had all h-alpha, h-beta lines. mainly showing hydrogen and helium. On right side, there was one big dip showing water vapor, because of earth's atmosphere. All the dips indicate absorption lines, while all peaks indicated sort of reflection lines.

M1 Crab Nebula: Easy catch.. Still not able to see any details in crab. elongated fuzzy disk..

M42 Orion Nebula + M43: The best view I have ever seen. Marvellous. First time from TDS. At 38x, viewing thru 32mm eyepiece gave me a feeling that the whole cosmos is indeed full of dust, but we can not see it, until there is a star nearby. The reflection of nearby stars indeed gives the shape to the nebula. I really experienced this textbook definition with orion nebula. At 38x, almost 80% eyepiece filled up. M42 with deep dish shape with two dark columns perpendicular to each other visible. Deep dish dust is so much that on one side nebula is bright, while on opposite side non of the light passes thru. On opposite side, M43 visible as white fuzzy ball. The trapezium in M42 dark column is visible with only 4 stars. 5th star barely visible. More magnification on this gives more. In the dark columns, got the 3D feeling.

M78 (New): Easy catch. Bright star with dark nebula column. 3D feeling. The dust is indeed so much you will see reflected light on one side. This makes the nebula shape.

Horsehead Nebula: Failed. Difficult to catch.

SDAA BBQ Night - Part I

2008-10-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

Date: 29th Sept 08, Saturday.
Observation Time:
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Weather was excellent. Lil bit windy initially. but crisp clear
Instruments: My 10” dob & 10x50 binocs.
Buddies: Pete.

Total Objects: 17 (Incomplete)
New Objects: 13

Another great session at TDS. It was SDAA's annual BBQ party too. Had a hosting training session for the 22inch telescope.

Caught lot of new objects...

Initially, I wanted to cover all the M's near horizon.

M3 (New): Nicely aligned bten arcturus and canes venatici. Arc of arcturus and star above perfectly points to M3. Visible in binocs and finder 9x50. Really bright and widespread. core is tightly packed, but There seems to be branch of stars coming out if it. all stars resolvable in that branch in 9mm.

M5 (New): located Exactly opposite of M3. Easy to catch with serpens Caput last two stars. Binocular object. Tiny, tightly packed and fainter than M3.

M94 (New): Tiny galaxy in canes venatici. easy to catch. Seems to be tiny fuzzy, elliptical. It’s faint. Wonder how messier find this object.

M63 Sunflower Galaxy (New): Again easy catch. Edge on. lil bit brighter and bigger than M94. can not see any sunflower shape.

M101: really Fainter. Seems face on. still bigger than M63 or M94. On opposite side of M101. there is a galaxy triplet (IC #).

M51 Whirlpool galaxy: both galaxies clearly visible.. broken eight shape. no details visible in 32mm x 2x (16mm). I guess aperture is the key here.

M11 Wild duck cluster: Rich OC with thousands stars. It’s a failed globular cluster probably.One bright star at the center while a pair outside the cluster. Three dark regions making a triangle with each other. Can not see any stars in there. Can resolve almost all stars... cluster doesn't fit in 9mm eyepiece 135x.

Opphiuchus Clusters (New):
Browsed thru Opp. clusters. IC 4665 is indeed bright and beautiful in binocs. At 38x, fills whole eyepiece. 4-5 yellow stars. Not sure what is Cr 350. NGC 6426 was an easy catch. really tiny. Barely able to make it with 38x.

M10 & M12 (New): At the center of constellation. M10, a star, a pair and then M12 forming a line. can not fit in same binocular view. M12 seems bigger than M10. On M10, I can see sort of triangular shape because of few bright stars at the vertices.

Box nebula - NGC 6309: Tried to locate it, but failed. Need to read more.

M14 (New): Yet another globular.

Green Nebula - NGC 6572: wasn't able to locate it.

M30: Impressive. H shape with globular hanging on top right corner. In my 32mm, 32mmx2x, 9mm it didn’t look that clear as compared to Jon's 17mm nagler last time. I guess better eyepiece helps. Saw it on Pete's 16' dob at 280x. Fabulous view. I wonder if those H shaped stars are part of this GC.

SDAA BBQ Night - Part II

2008-10-29T14:49:00.000-07:00

Saturn Nebula - NGC 7009: Easy catch. Detailed star map would have helped. tiny, bright fuzzy object.. At 38x or 135x, can not see anzees. Pete's 16' dob showed complete details. anzee was visible with connecting lines. with OII filter nebulous ring was bright, but lost the anzee.

Failed to locate both M72 and M73. It was easy catch last time :).

Helix Nebula - NGC 7293 (New): Easy catch thru binoculars. Really big, fuzzy and faint. At 38x. Disk clearly visible, but lil bit dark in the center. Rings fills up whole eyepiece at 135x. Nothing visible at center. With Pete's 16" dob, nebulous part stands out cleanly. With OII background stars are killed and gives image of a donut. With UHC, nice bright image with background stars.

M15 (New): Yet another GC. Bright. Have a dark region on the upper right corner.

Deer Lick Group - NGC 7331 (New): In Pete's 16' dob, Nice view of bright sharp 7331. Edge on. Dark lane sort of visible. 3 tiny galaxies on top of it in right angled triangle. the one at the right angle seems brighter than other two. Seemed to be oval shaped.

Forgot all other observations. :-(

Jupiter Sketch

2008-09-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

Date : 4th Sept 08, Thursday
Time : 8:15pm to 9:30pm (1:15 hrs)
Location : SD Home
Weather : Seeing was okay (4/10). Moon with 5th phase on west.
Instruments : My 10” dob.

Observed Jupiter tonight for an hour. "starrynights" email threads were indeed helpful in detailed observation.

Seeing was okay around 4. 9mm eyepiece (135x) was crisp image, but 270x was really blurry and no sharp focus. 6.25mm (12.5mm x 2x) (i.e 194x) was still better than 4.5mm, but going in & out focus. so I guess seeing was 194x/10 - 20x magnificaiton per apperutre..so around of 4/10.

Four moons. Two on each side. All of them at different distances.

With 9mm (135x) indeed sharp image. NEB and SEB were bright and brown in color. NEB is darker than SEB. NEB is closer to equator than SEB. The SEB is almost 1.5 times in size than NEB, still smaller than EZ.

At 194x, NEB on right side (East) is darker than NEB on left side (West). NTB and NNTB were initially hard to see, but once eyes were set, they indeed showed up nicely. Both fainter than SEB. The south polar region or prrbably STB were visible, but both merged together, wasn't able to differentiate. Still clearly saw STZ, the zone between SEB and STB.

In NEB, there was a small white fissure across the center of the belt making 45 deg angle. Moderately visible. Saw the Great Red Spot couple of times, when image was crispy and really in perfect focus. It was on SEB on the upper right corner (South East). It was protruding from the SEB on south side. White in color. In a side view. Almost 40% visible.

It was indeed hard to see GRS. From my last TDS & BO session, it was amazingly clear, but this one wasn't really great. Realized the importance of crayford focuser. Also, would have been great to have double focuser or high speed focuser.

I also made a small sketch of Jupiter texture. Considering my first attempt, its not bad. Observing and Drawing the sketch indeed helped me to improve my visibility in the eyepiece w.r.t distances, size and attention to details. Should do it more often. Drawing complete eyepiece view than just the Jupiter disk is much harder. The tracking on Jupiter would have helped while drawing the sketch.

TBD:
Tracking GRS visibility. (Sky & Telescope - GRS Transit times)

DSO Marathon - Part I

2008-09-01T17:11:00.004-07:00

Date: 31st August 08, Sunday. Labor Day Long Weekend
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 1:00pm (5:30 hrs)
Location: Boulevard Oaks campground, CA
Weather: Seeing was Good.. not excellent. Heavy Dew. Lil bit cold because of humidity. All things got wet, but still survived for long time :)
Instruments: My 10” dob & 10x50 binocs. Jon's 12.5” dob, and Astrotech 120ED refractor.
Buddies: Jon and his wife Francis.

Total Objects: 49. The max I have ever seen in one shot :)
New Objects: 16 + Ophiuchus OCs (4)

Had a great session with Jon Isaacs. Jon knows so many “different” objects and their precise locations that otherwise it would have taken me a while to just know them. Had a great DSO marathon.

Venus: Venus was popping on western sky 15 deg above horizon. Because of high clouds on west, the view was bit “shaky” and wasn't able to get sharp image (150x, 96x). As Jon pointed out correctly, because of color aberrations in refractor, upper part of Venus has purple shade, while lower part seems orange in color. While in out of focus, it gets green shade. Jon mentioned that phase was almost full, but because of blurry image didn't see much.

Mercury: It was around 4deg SE of Venus in same binocular view. Was really bright than I hoped. Surely smaller in size and fainter than venus. Thru refractor just seemed to be a “dot” and nothing more. (150x)

Mars (New): 7 deg NE of Venus. Nice and bright. Jon moved his refractor to Jupiter, saying clouds on west are killing everything. so din;t observe it from telescope. Completely missed it.

Jupiter: Fabulous view thru refractor at 150x. I cannot believe that 120mm refractor apperture gives so sharp and crispy views as 250mm (10”) reflector. NEB, SEB, NTZ, STZ were clearly visible. The great red spot was popping into the eye, Shape was prefectly visible, but thecolor seemed to be white. The STZ (upper part) also had some sawtooth structure. All 4 moons were widely spaced. Precisely same view thru my 10” dob at 135x. Cranking up the mags at 270x, killed the view.

Also, because of lil bit “wavy” “shaky” views, Jon suggested not to crank up mags.

M4 & NGC 6144: Antares, M4 and NGC 6144 were not impressive. Because of twilight, 6144 was almost invisible. M4 was just another globular, nothing specacular.

M7-M6: Both of them at 38x were impressive. Red tail star of M6 butterfly, seemed more orangish. Stars in M7 most of them seem yellowish with few seemed to be white.

M28-M22: Quick browsing thru lambda saggi, Kau Borealis, M22 was impressive. Able to resolve outskirts with 38x. M28 was really tiny, but bluish color wasn't as impressive as seen before.

Veil Nebula: I told Jon abt my last observation to see the nebulousity of veil, without filter. On 12.5” dob, Cyg52 veil neb was barely visible to me. I can feel the neb, but not the shape of it. Second part was also disappointing. With filter, some of the shape was perceptible, but again not impressively. Later at night, we saw Veil again and it was fabulous with filter. Veil was overhead and we captured 3 parts of veil. Cyg52 veil was great with its unique broomstick shape. The other end was also impressive from end to end. And in middle of these two, exists another one.. its bit fainter, but visible..also its more close to cyg52 veil component. Veil is Jon's favorite object, he watched it probably 4 times during the whole session.

Sagittarius browsing: Thru refractor, with wide-angle view (~30x), browsed saggitarius. It was marvelous and heavenly sight. It really gives a perspective on all objects at the same time. M8 Lagoon & its cluster, M20 Triffid, M21 OC in same view. M20 is really smaller than M8. M24 star cloud, M25 OC on moving left and M23 OC (New) on moving right looked great. M17 swan and M16 eagle were again in same view at two ends. Swan shape was clearly visible.

M8 Lagoon: Thru 10” dob, with the OIII filter on 24mm eyepiece (~50x), M8 was marvelous. The nebulousity was prominent. Semi circular dark lane seemed to be really wide. The left side neb seemed smaller than right+lower side neb. Hour glass also seemed to be brighter and lil bit bigger than non-filter views. Because of filter, only bright stars were visible and all stars indeed lost their charm. OC Cluster wasn't impressive either. High mags with filter (100x) surely killed all stars. Neb also seemed to be fainter than 50x view.

M20 Triffid: At 50x with filter, the nebula was indeed impressive. Dark lane Y shape was making sense as compared to non-filter views. The middle 3 stars were not that bright and hard to resolve the central star into double. Cranking up the mag to 100x helped lil bit with dark lanes and central double star resolving.

M17 Swan: this is one of the best objects in sky and with filter it became impressive. Along with 2 shape, the right and lower side nebulosity was clearly visible, more-ever like a peacock :). these two parts are extended almost as the same size as 2 shape. The central two bright stars in 2 shape seemed really dim.

M16 Eagle: With non-filter 38x view, the nebulousity was fainter. The characteristic, V hsape and the arc in the middle was impressive. With filter, the nebulousity brightness increased. Not as great as other nebulas, but still decently visible. Neb is just on the upper side of V.

M57 Ring: To have more fun with Filter, I pointed it to M57 and this is first time, I felt the blusish color. Ring was strikingly bright and with high mags it made it more impressive. Jon also mentioned that high mags + filter + planetary nebula combination works great as compared to other nebulas. With 150x, still the central star not visible. Also because of filter lost 2 o'clk star.

M27 Dumbbell: Brighter views with filter. Characteristic dumbbell shape with upper and lower wings. Left and right wings also mix well with dumbbell and are pretty bright..

The use of OIII filter on all 7 nebulas, really enhanced the view and had more fun in observing.

Saggi OC browsing: Thru binocs, captured M24 star cloud, M25 OC on left and M23 OC on right. Also captured fainter M18 OC (New). M18 wasn't much impressive thru 38x either. It was yet another OC.

Continued...

DSO Marathon - Part II

2008-09-01T17:11:00.003-07:00

M11 Wild duck cluster: visible naked eye. At 135x, bright tiny yellowish stars. High concentrations of stars for being a open cluster (??). Also didn't see any wild duck shape in there.

M26 & NGC 6712: (New): After M11, 6712 is just next to it. At 135x, tiny bluish GC. M26 was visible thru binocs, but hard to capture in telescope. Accidentally, I left 9mm eyepiece in the view and so not able to find anything. Didn't realize it till I moved to next object. Should have tried with lower mags.

NGC 6441: (New): Tiny globular just next to star G scorpi. (Map 58). Bluish & fainter.

M54: (New) Being a messier object, this GC is really tiny, still bigger than other NGC GCs. Notihng much to say. Just to tick-mark another messier object.

M69: (New): Quick glance to M69. Bigger than M54. Still was fainter as M54. Nothing impressive. Also Saggi was way too close to horizon, so probably I dind't find M54, M69 & 6441 that great.

So being tired, started talking with jon and he kindled my interest with tiny nice objects.

Blue Snowball Nebula: (New): Tiny planetary nebula located in Andromeda. Easy to locate as its next to a bright star. Its like mini M57 ring, but much strikingly bright compared to the size with M57 and that too without filter. The size is probably 1/5th of M57. The bluish color was impressive and better than M57. Tried with my 10” dob. So 38x view shows it, but its so tiny that high chances of interpreting it for blue star..

NGC 253 Galaxy: (New): Just know the location visually, wasn't able to confirm anything from the map. (??). binocular view brightness seemed like M33, but smaller in size. My dob, 38x view and then 76x view really shows the edge-on shape. Its not sculptor dwarf galaxy.

Green Nebula NGC 6572: (New): Tiny planetary nebula in ophiuchus (Map 65), Seemed like bluish in color than green in 12.5 dob. Hard to locate. Smaller than blue snowball nebula. Didn't try it in my dob.

Saturn Nebula: (New) Yellowish planetary nebula in capricorn. Easy to catch. Bigger than snowball nebula. Yellowish color is prominent. Ring and middle darkness visible at 76x. High mags killed it.

Ophiuchus OC browsing (New): Quick bino browsing. (Map 65) Star Beta Ophi → Gamma Ophi → 2 o'clk of Beta is IC 4665 OC → 9 o'clk of Gamma is Cr 350 OC → 2 o'clk of Beta around 6 deg are stars 71 & 72. → 10 o'clk of which is Green nebula 6572 → 11 o'clk of star 71 is OC 6673 and IC 4756 OC.

M72 (New): Tiny globular in capricon. Visble thru binoc. Similar to M54.

M73 (New): Messier mistaken object. Tiny tringular star alignment just next to M72.

M30 (New): Impressive GC. The shape is bizzare. Two parallel lines like H shape merging. Right side vertical line upper end has all stars of GC, like a lollypop :). not sure if the stars in H are part of GC (??) Considering star's H alignment, it seems like they are. Need to spend more time on this one next time (???)

M13: Easy catch with both bino and dob At 38x shows the rich filed of stars and outskirts stars resolvable.. Higher mags increases the beauty.

M92 (New): Fellow GC in Hercules. Easy catch with bino. This one is also impressive as M13 but lil bit smaller. M13 probably being closer seems bigger (or it really is). At 38x, hard to resolve any stars. At 76x, outskirt can be resolved easily.

UGC 10822: Tried to find this galaxy next to M92, but failed: Need to read more (??)

M31-M32-M110: At 38x, the dark lane is visible with averted vision. The core is so bright that it becomes hard to see the dark lane. But 38x indeed shows the bigger size of M31. Probably the dark lane width is bigger than M32 size. With averted vision, I imagined the length of dark lane to really long and nice curvature, than probably it is :-). Need to verify (??). M32 is really tiny fuzzy spot and smaller than M110, but still brighter than M110. Thru refractor, lower mags ~30x & wide-angle, shows the grandness of M31. M32 was almost invisible. But M110 was clearly visible. Again, I think I saw the dark lane of M31.

NGC 404 Galaxy next to Mirach (New): The Beta Andromeda, Mirach, has a small companion galaxy NGC 404. Hard to see at 38x, At 76x, really faint. Fuzziness is also not clear. Seemed like lot of bright dots in concentrated area.

M33 Triangulum: Observed M33 in great detail. With high mags (76x, 150x), with averted vision, the upper arm extending to left is visible. Lower arm extending to right was also visible. Both of them really faint. Lower-right arm vanishes in the middle and ends with bright fuzzy region NGC (??) along with a bright star.

Perseus double cluster: Naked eye. At 38x, both OCs fit in the same view. Upper one seems bigger and wider, while lower is comparatively concentrated. Still, lower one seems to have more brighter stars than upper one.

Had some interesting non-duality discussions, flute session and hot tea break from Jon's wife Francis.

TBDs:
- Buy laser collimator asap
- UHC or OIII filter is must. Investigate on various brands
- Best of NGCs object study

Online References..

2008-08-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

Keep on Updating..

** Stars **
> Double Double
- Sketch

** Planetary Nebula **
> M57 Ring
- Sketch

** Galaxies **
> M31 Andromeda - M32 - M110
- Sketch
> M33 Triangulum
- Sketch

10" dob @ TDS - Part I

2008-08-24T22:15:00.000-07:00

Date: 23rd August 08, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 12:00pm (4 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Seeing was excellent. Lil bit windy in the end. Slightly hot.
Instruments: My 10” dob & 10x50 binocs
Buddies: Bill and Mohammad from next pad.

Total Objects: 27
New Objects: 9 (Mercury, Neptune and Saggi globular clusters)

This is first time I took this 10" dob to a dark site.. It was a rewarding experience. This aperture is indeed satisfying my thrust :). The saggi globular hunting is a proof of it.

Tried to collimate the dob with Collimation cap, but not precisely. Edward with 17" dob, helped me to collimate it with his howie glatter laser collimator. I really need to buy one.

Started with Venus & Mercury. Venus wasn't sharp.. green ghost shadow with actual image.. indeed out of focus.. also too low on horizon. I guess collimation wasn't perfect. Didn't try any high mags on Venus either. Mercury, a small dot was visible in 9x50 finder, but didn't find it in dob...way low on horizon.. Any way, this is first time i saw Mercury with optics. To make sure collimation is correct, I moved to Jupiter, but still wasn't able to focus clearly... bit frustrating.

< Lyra >
Double Double: At 97x, bare split of double double. It was indeed hard to see anything below that (76x). With 135x and 270x it was fabulous. I guess inter-pair split is probably around 60-70 arc seconds, while each individual pair split might be 1-2 arc seconds. bluish-white star colors. Check Here. Inter-split estimation incorrect.. need to verify again..

At high mag, it was really hard to keep in focus. The spring tension system on the dob is not that great. With both mount springs attached, it becomes too tight, while with single spring, the dob moves lil bit because of its weight. Comparing both options, two springs setup was better and tried to keep the objects in view as far as possible.

Alberio: Fabulous view. nice colors. With 38x, out of focus color contrast was great. with 135x and 270x nice color contrast with sharp focus. 38 arc seconds split. I estimated double double split up values based on Alberio split up.

M57 Ring Nebula: Easy catch: Really nice wide angle view in 38x and ring pops in the view easily. Tried all mags 76x, 135x and 270x... 135x was best view. Outer ring and middle dark hole was clearly visible. Averted vision really helps to view the ring. No colors. No central star visible to me. A field star at 2" clock immediate next to ring (Confirmed)

Binocular Star-hopping:
While confirming location of veil nebula, Mohammad from next pad showed up. It was his first time and he was really exited. So I gave him quick binocular tour of DSOs in Sagittarius M7 Ptlomey's OC -> M6 Butterfly OC-> M8 Lagoon -> M20 Triffid -> M24 Star cloud -> Saggi constellation -> Galactic Center -> M22 GC -> M25 OC -> M28 GC.

Also he asked for M13 GC. I got it in my binocs within few seconds, but it was hard to show him exactly where to look at :). Also tried Omega Centauri GC, but failed. I really need to confirm the location (??)

< Scorpius >
M4 & 6144 GC : Instead of browsing to Veil, I started with M4 Glob. Fabulous GC. No colors. Easy to resolve all outskirts stars. 6144 was also next to it. Out of 6144, M4 and Antares, only two objects can be in the 1.0 deg view at a time. 6144 GC is indeed twice the size of Antares, but Antares is too bright and close, dimming the 6144 brightness.

Northern Jewel Box (6231) : Too low on horizon.

M7 Ptolemy OC: Fabulous yellowish stars in view. At 36x whole eyepiece was full of yellow stars. Heavenly experience

M6 Butterfly OC: Butterfly shape visible in 36x, with Reddish orange star tail. The upper wing is loosely attached on a point to the central body, while lower wing is smaller in size. At 135x (9mm), too much mag to see the shape. also reduced some contrast on orange tail star.

< Sagittarius >
Spent hell lot of time in Sagittarius.

M8 Lagoon + Hourglass : Observed in detail. 36x showed the dark semi circular rift. The right side of the rift (E) has a small open cluster (6530). The bottom part of rift (N), has some nebulosity, while The upper part of the rift (W) has another region of nebulosity. At 76x and 135x, the upper nebulous part shows distinctive features: A bright fuzzy object and two stars aligned in SW-NE line. Fuzziness is larger in size and higher magnitude than those two stars. I think this fuzziness is hourglass nebula and with some creativity, you can imagine the shape @ 270x as hourglass aligned at SW-NE line. (Need to confirm). Deep sky filter would have really helped.

M20 Triffid + M21 : Observed in detail. 36x shows the Open Cluster (M21).. This OC is indeed bigger in size than Lagoon OC. Upper Left (SW) of which, lies the nebulosity. In the Y rift shape the bottom of Y prong is aligned SW-NE and is the only visible rift. Two stars are aligned with it on upper side. while 2 more bright stars defining edge of lower nebulosity. The 72x clearly shows one more star at the center of Y shape. It is also aligned with previous two stars. 76x also reveals the other 2 rifts of Y shape upper prong is more visible than lower prong. 76x reveals that the central star in Y is indeed a double star. 135x view was good too, confirming all details. Deep sky filter would have helped.

Kaus Borealis, M22, M28 & NGC-6638 GC: the 5th star of Tea pot is Kaus Borealis (lambda). I wasn't aware abt the name before. "Kau's" :) !! M22 is fabulous GC.. probably slightly fainter than M4. Looks good in high mags. M28 is also nice, bluish and tiny as compared to M22. Hard to resolve anything in there. while star hopping within 32mm eyepiece (36x), I accidentally saw a tiny GC next to Kaus Borealis, which was smaller in size than M28. Map confirmed that it is NGC 6638. It's probably same size as Antares, but bluish and fuzzy in size. Its like sky-blue color fuzzy dot. Also, map shows a planetary nebula NGC 6644 next 6638 but didn't see anything (confirm the mag and try it next time. ??)

10" dob @ TDS - Part II

2008-08-24T22:14:00.000-07:00

...continued.

Globular Hunting:
My own discovery of NGC 6638, sparked some enthu in me and i started browsing all tiny globulars within Sagittarius :). I spotted NGC 6624 GC, next to Kaus Media star (delta). Again, next to Alnasl (Gamma) were NGC 6528 GC, NGC 6522 GC, NGC 6558, NGC 6569. All of them were bluish and fuzzy in color probably 3-5 arc minutes in size. 6569 was lil bit brighter and bigger in size than 6558. (Right)

Neptune : When I was moving to Kaus Australis, I heard people talking abt "Neptune" from next pad. Fellow "Gilbert" showed me Neptune in his 10 inch Meade Cassegrain. Neptune was white in color.. "a dot" in the view.. having on board computer indeed helps... According to gilbert, if you make it lil bit out of focus, you can see a out-of-focus disk for that "dot", but other stars still remain as pointed dots and thats the key to identify. hmmm.. After some discussions and with few more objects, i realized that his telescope his not properly aligned. When i asked him to point to Uranus, which i have seen before, it didn't show anything. Also pointing to Mizar in UMa implied its completely out of alignment..so i am really not sure what i saw was really Neptune :)..

Because of Neptune, I got distracted from my GC starhopping and inturn afterwards I realized that I missed some nice globs M69, M70 and M54... any way.. next time !!

Veil nebula : missed - need to read more... nebulousity wasn't visible at all...means i felt something smoky around star 52, but the shape wasn't discernible. Filter would have really helped.

M31 Andromeda - M32 - M110: Because of Veil nebula frustration, i picked best object for nice view. M31-M32-M110.. was awesome.. M31 just doesn't fit into any eyepiece. binocular shows its real size. M31 and M32 fir in same view (36x). M32 is tiny, but still really bright and its ecliptic shape is clearly visible. M110 is indeed faint. Probably fainter than M33-Triangulum galaxy (Wrong) and all high mags just killed it. I tried to put some high mags on M32 to catch any glimpses inside. but i can see only the bright core. I wonder what kind of aperture or magnification you need to see all Andromeda globular clusters. (???)

M33 Triangulum: I misinterpreted the map and it took hell lot of time to get M33 in the view. Binocular really helped here. Probably I spent more than 10-15 mins just to find M33 in binocs and in turn in the dob. It was disappointing.. Again, i didn't see much in the view.. it seemed to be brighter than M110.. but it was hard to see any shape or arms. (??)

M27 Dumbbell: After frustrating M33, I moved to familiar one. Altair + coat hanger and M27 dumbbell the starhopping session i learnt from Jon is so precise and imprinted in my brain, that it didn't take much time to locate M27. Infact coat-hanger was visible with just naked eyes. M27 view was fabulous. I caught it dob, within a minute.

Jupiter: At the end of session pointed to Jupiter. 36x or 76x wasn't impressive. but 135x was THE best. Higher magnification of 270x didn't help. Wasn't able to focus clearly. NEB, NTB, Equatorial zone & SEB were clearly visible. STB was lil bit hard. Sawtooth in SEB was nice. I saw great red spot also. Again.. only the shape was perfectly visible. Need to read more (??)

Moon: Moon rise just washed out whole deep sky... Browsing to moon thru dob was nice. It was too low..

Problem Faced:
- Dob movement not smooth. spring system
- Observations at zenith. Lost direction sense in the view. Chair height.
- Judgment of distances within a field of view.

TBDs:
- Laser Collimator
- Chair with proper height.
- Deep Sky Filter

First light with 10" dob..

2008-07-04T01:03:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First session with Jon Issacs...

2008-07-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon’s star-hopping skills are indeed commendable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moon Geological Period & Jupiter Belts

2008-06-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

Date: 15 & 16th June 08, Sunday & Monday
Observation Time: 11:30pm to 1am (1:30 hr) on both days
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Seeing was excellent. Because of moon light, whole sky was washed out.

Highlight of the Night: Moon geological period and Jupiter disk.

Phase of the moon: 2 days before full moon. Waxing gibbous with 96% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

Watched moon on both sun & mon. Mainly at 194x, with 12mm 2x barlow.

Followed the terminator from SW corner to NW. Crater Schikard, Fourier, humorium basin, Eddington basin and Crater Pythagoras.

The main thing I focused on is to get the angular judgment of the size and distance of these craters compared other prominent feature. e.g. It was fun to measure distances between Crater Kepler to Enke, which was ~4deg.. and Kepler-Mauris around ~12 deg. Again these distances are just rough estimation, but it was fun to get the judgment correct.

Another thing i focused on is to understand the geological time scale of these features. E.g crater Tycho being in Copernitian period, while crater Phtyagoras is in Eratosthenes period... means tycho being much younger than pythagoras, which must be younger than nearby crater babbage which must be younger than crater archimedese or crater plato. This estimation of age was fun to track.

Watched Jupiter on both sun/mon. On sunday, Just watched it for 5 mins and clouds rolled over. On monday spent more than 20mins. Overall, I saw jupiter with really good clarity. On sunday, Calisto was transitioning on Jupiter at the NE edge..

Most of the observations of Jupiter were at 194x, with 12mm 2x barlow. I used blue, green and red filter on it. The blue and green filters were indeed helpful. I also tried the moon filter on jupiter.. it indeed reduced the brightness of jupiter disk.. but din't help anything more than that.

North equatorial belt south equatorial belt were clearly visible. northen belt seems to be darker than southern one, but southern one is surely wider than nourthen one. Also, with some effort, I saw N & S polar regions as well. also, I saw the north tropical zone gap. I felt its existence because that area is like a strip which is brigher/white than the north eq belt.

It must be fun to watch Jupiter without moonlight.. also at 250x and above. Lack of high magnification eyepiece indeed made me sad :) !!

Any way, it was first time, I watched Jupiter so seriously and with such a clarity.. It was indeed a good learning experience on how you can train your eyes to see a object.

Lunar Mare Imbrium

2008-06-12T22:49:00.000-07:00

Date: 12th June 08, Thursday
Observation Time: 9:15pm to 10:30pm (1:15 hrs)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Seeing was excellent. Clouds started coming over afterwards.. so was hard to focus with high magnification.

Highlight of the Night: Mare Imbrium and Crater Sarabhai

Phase of the Moon: 10th day after new moon. waxing gibbous with 79% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

Initially took me a while to figure out where is the terminator lying in the map. I thought that it is in Mare Serentatis, but it was in Mare Imbrium. Good part is figuring out N-S-E-W in the eyepiece was easy. so looking into the map was easy afterwards.

Most of the observation was with 184x magnification, 12mm with 2x Barlow. Occasionaly I switched to 96x, with 25mm, 2x barlow. Moon filter was indeed helpful at 96x. At 184x i preferred to observe without it.

Mare imbrium is indeed nice, with bunch of Craters: Copernicus, Eratosthenes, Archimedes and Plato.

Crater Copernicus western wall was striking bright, i guess because of sun light. Its really rough wall, or possibly multiple walls. Crater walls seemed pretty deep. At the center there are 2 prominent peaks, strikingly white in color.

Crater Eratosthenes is at the beginning of mountain range, Its features are like small scale Copernicus...except.. at the center of this crate, it has 3 peaks in triangular fashion.

Map says that the mountain range near Eratosthenes is of ~3000m elevation... but really didn't feel it.. I think if i would have observed couple of days before, i would have able to feel the height because of shadow. The mnt range at W and NW wall of Mare Imbirum seemed pretty tall. these mnt were in the dark, after the terminator, but their peaks were bright in the dark, must be because of their height.. I will watch them again tomorrow and will confirm it.

Crater Archimedes: Its a filled up crater, really smooth. nothing special with walls .. neigther have any central peak... but SW of it, there is some what rough area.. small scale mountain range.

Crate Plato at N of the Mare.. is indeed nice. Compared to other craters, size wise: Plato >> Copernicus > Archimedes > Eratosthenes. This is also a smooth, fllled up crater , no peaks. The W wall of this crater is impressive, the large rock sliding is visible.

As i mentioned in the beginning, I interpreted Mare Imbrium as Mare Serentatis.. so I opened a map of Serentatis.. and guess what... it has a really tiny crater called as "Sarabhai" .. It is named after Dr Vikram Sarabhai, ISRO founder. Felt really good. I should find out, if any other Indian celebrities are reached to the moon.

Crater Sarbhai is nothing special. Its really really tiny. only 7km wide, as compared to Copernicus being 93km It was really hard for me to catch it at 96x. At mag 184x, it was visible clearly, but no details..

TBD:
- Lunar regions named after Indian celebrities.

31st May 08 @ TDS

2008-06-01T18:14:00.000-07:00

Date: 31^st May 08, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:30pm to 12:00pm (3:30 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Seeing was “okay” initially, but afterwards it improved, but still not excellent. Cloud cover was always there near horizon. Little bit breezy till 10pm. and it was freaking cold.. 44 deg F. If yahoo weather say “almost clear', then think before heading to TDS.
Buddies: Bill from next pad. Didn't talk with him much..

Highlight of the night: I cracked complete Leo constellation DSOs and surprise look of Omega Centauri.

Another constructive session at TDS. Actually I wasn't sure abt visiting TDS, because of late afternoon lunch at friend's daughter's first birthday party. So was somewhat tired.. but 25 mins nap did the magic, and ended up gong to TDS late evening.

Not many people were around.. probably 6-8 telescopes. Weather was awful when I was driving to TDS. The clear sky clock showed few “faint blues”, while yahoo weather had a doubt with “Almost” clear.

Faced some trouble with collimation.. I think primary mirror is not fully visible in secondary.. I tried my best.. but still I think its still wrong.. wasn't able to focus on Saturn precisely.. I was seeing the double images except the fine tuned point.. I should not see double images.. out of focus is okay.

**** Saturn:
Because of bad weather,, I started with Saturn. In32mm, 38x, Saturn was perfectly visible with 3 moons. 2 on one side, while one on another. Rings were visible with a separation from planet. 97x with 25mm 2x barlow, indeed showed something dark band on Saturn. Ring's overlap over the planet was clearly visible.. still wasn't able to see cassini division. Its hard to keep saturn in high mag view.

*** Leo
I followed again the cloudy night article regarding “Leo”.. page by page..

> M65 – M66 – NGC 3628 Triplet
It was again perfect catch absolutely no trouble. in finding it. all three visible in same view. NGC 3628 was really faint. View was not that great, because of bad seeing I guess.. Didn't try high magnification.

> NGC 3607 – 3608 – 3605 Triplet
Easy to find. all three lined up in a triangle. The one in the middle is really bright, other two were barely visible to me. Required averted vision. Infact I am not sure if I saw correct one.. I have a sketch with galaxy and surrounding stars and its not matching with cloudy nights.. I need to verify with ma10 sky chart.

> M95 – M96 – M105 Triplet
this time I located it precisely and in first shot :) .. The stars “p”, 53, 52 and 43 form perfect trapezoid. and in the same view finder. If we take perfect mid-point of 52 & 53, thats where galaxy triplet can be found. All three can not be in same view, some bright star, M105 and M96 are in perfect view like a right angle triangle.. if we pick up M96, then another 90 deg twist gives M95.. perfectly aligned. so all four objects for one-side angled square.

M96 is the brighter between them. M105 and M95 seemed of same magnitude. M95 seems to be the bigger in size than M96. I need to verify these observations.

> M105 – NGC3371 – NGC3373 Triplet
3371-73 should have been 3384 and 3389.
M105 itself is a triplet. M105 is at 6 o'clock from the bright star. 3371 is at 8 o'clock. There are 3 stars lined up on right side of 105-3371 line. If we pick up the middle star, then with averted vision, 3373 is clearly visible. Simply fabulous !! 3373 is just too faint and tiny.. 3371 is bigger and brighter than 3373 and can be seen fairly.. Bill from next pad was happy to see the triplet-triplets..but 3373 was too hard for him.

> NGC 2903
Following pocket sky atlas, gave me the precise location of this guy and easy to catch. it looked like as elongated as NGC 3268, Nothing much special..

> Alpha Leonid – Regulus:
I am still not able to resolve this double star. .not able to resolve it with 6mm also, 184x.. Freaking, there is something terribly wrong.

> Gamma Leonid – Algieba:
This double star is fabulous. in 32mm, 38x not able to resolve it, but 76x showed me the “peanut” shape. companion is so close and smaller than gamma, so it looks like uneven 8 or a peanut. Both of them golden yellowish color.

I am done with Leo now.. need to move to new one.. probably virgo !!

*** Cancer
> M44 – Beehive cluster – fabulous as usual !!

> M67 – open cluster – not as impressive as M44.. its really tiny. but its hard to locate.

*** Omega Centauri
This is first time I saw this glob in my life.. From India, for the roof of my place in pune, I have seen it., but I never knew that this is THE BEST glob in whole night sky. and yesterday I saw it.. Initially thru my binocs 10x50. its almost 4 times the size of M13 Hercules glob. M13 is really tiny in front of this one. Its naked eye... 2-3 deg from southern horizon. At 38x with 32mm, it was fabulous.. not able to resolve any stars, but it was too dense more than a cotton.. really fuzzy !! 32mm with 2x barlow, 72x resolved some outskirt stars, but 25mm 2x 98x was indeed impressive... more you look in the eyepiece, the more you have adapted your eyes to the view, the more I was able to resolve the stars in it.. all of them seemed to be of same color. Again as it was too densely packed.. I am just not able to see any shape.. This was-is indeed memorable sight !!

*** Ursa Major
After dinner, I tracked few objects in big dipper. I should have read the cloudy nights article in detail.

> M81 – M82 pair:
M81 is indeed brighter & bigger than M82. M81 is edge on.. again both of them seemed to be too faint to observe anything.. again following sky atlas pointed perfect location and first shot catch !! high mag didn't help much !!

> M108 galaxy – M97 Owl nebula pair:
This was indeed hard to catch because of my stupidity. I misinterpreted the view through finder and was looking on the opposite direction of “beta”.. moment I realized my mistake, in next attempt the pair was in my eyepiece.. its indeed fainter than M81-M82 pair.. the distance between them is more than 81-82 pair. Again high mag really made them faint.. M97 is indeed brighter than M108. M97 is in perfect circular shape while M018 is elongated edge on.

> M109 - It was too faint .. I don't remember much !! it was yet another DSO.. nothing more..

> M51 whirlpool galaxy:
This was indeed great. clearly visible in 32mm, 38x.. pretty bright.. in 8 shaped with left galaxy smaller than right one. but both of them were brighter.. high mag didn't show much !!

Next time I need to watch Ursa DSOs carefully.

** Jupiter
From bill's Orion 6” MAK , it was indeed good, crispy clear image.. all 4 satellites, two on each side.. The bands were clearly visible and impressive.. but still image was not crystal clear.. too bright !! Also Jupiter was low on horizon.. similar view from my scope, but not as crispy as from bill's. I tried the red filter on it, to see the bands.. but total failure.. I think scope needs to be collimated properly..

Mistakes:
- Its freaking cold out there. A sweat shirt and jacket is not enough.
- I should right down each observation.. otherwise i forget

TBD:
- Collimate the scope properly..
- Red torch with a string

Moon - NW Rim..

2008-05-17T01:28:00.000-07:00

Date: 17th May 08, Friday
Observation Time : 11:45pm to 01:00am (1:15 hrs)
Location : SD Home
Weather: Seeing was good.. No cloud cover.. some wavy views thru eyepiece..

Highlight of the night: Crater Aristarchus and its surrounding region..

Observed few craters on Moon NW Rim and lil bit of SW Rim.

Moon phase is in its 13th day. Waxing gibbous with 95% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

With 32mm, prominent stuff is visible.. 32mm x 2x, 25mm x 2x combos were fine too... but 12mm x 2x eyepiece combo was THE great. It indeed showed details of craters and its surrounding prominently..

Few problems with this high magnification eyepiece combo were:
- The view in the eyepiece was moving too fast. so lil bit difficult to observe a feature for long time. Auto-Tracking on telescope would have been helpful.
- Focusing precisely at this high magnification is difficult. Why does the high magnification or short focal eyepiece focusing is so difficult?
- Felt vibrations of the cement floor in the eyepiece view. it was shaking a lot. Need rubber pads or something similar for telescope tripod.
- Preffered to observe without eyeglasses.. my impression abt 12mm eyepiece was bad before.. but this observation made me realize that the aperture size of the frontal lens is not bad.. Infact during observation I didn't feel at all that aperture hole is that small.. Thought that I should buy high eye relief 10mm eyepiece.

Moon filter was useful with 32mm... but didn't help much on 12mm x 2x eyepiece.

Crater Aristarchus: 12mm x 2x eyepiece really worked great.. crater and its surrounding were beautiful.. was able to see valleys around it clearly.. It was fun to follow the entire valley and mountains range from N of this crater to S till Crater Mauris. Mountains are visible clearly.. Couple of bright white spots on those mountains.. Shadow on east rim of the crater. West side of the crater was really bright. It sort of gave the perception how deep the crater is..

Crater Gassendi: Lil bit of shadow on east side visible.. the mountain in the center of Gassendi was strikingly bright..

Crater Kepler: Kepler and Enke were visible.. Enke was too faint becasue of moon light.. none of the moon domes were visible.. but bright rays emanating from Kepler and going towards Crater Mauris were easily visible.

Crater Mauris: Nothing special.. but because of shadows, looked like really prominent one.. Kepler + Mauris combo looks good.

Crater Babbage + J Herschel at N: Babbage and Babbage A was easy to find.. just below sinus Iradium. Compared to babbage, J herschel was too faint.. Pythagoras was still in the dark.