Hartley, Neptune, Blue Flash and NGCs.. I

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...

Friday Night with Oreo Cookies - II

Continued..

Blinking PN 6826: There is huge difference betn this one and M57. Compared to their sizes, this one is really really tiny. probably its 1/5th the size of ring. Easy to locate. I think i saw it @ 50x. As I bumped up the mag to 87x with 16T2, the blinking star inside the PN was sort of visible.. More the mags, the blinking effect just went away and bright white star in the bluish disk stays nicely. Unlike M57, this disk is not donut shaped.. the disk is complete, no hole, and the star is perfect white. The blue color depth keeps on reducing from edge to center, probably because of the existence of the star. the more you look at the star more brighter it seems. Blinking PN was masterpiece of the night.

M39 (New): Naked eye object. Thru binocs or lowest mag shows the stars in pyramid/triangle shape. Whole triangle is filled up with stars. Its indeed beautiful.

M29: While hunting for Crescent Nebula, browsed thru this one. Its a small open cluster. Not that impressive for an open cluster..around 15 stars. It shows sort of butterfly shape or outwards curved H. Because of the shape definitely stands out in the view.

Crescent Nebula (New): This is indeed a hard object. In 28mm @ 50x or at higher magnification also, nothing is visible in direct sight. If looked carefully at correct location, then with 50x, i can see the typical curved fuzziness, but still really really faint. After adding the filter, nebula shows up.. With 16T2 @ 87x, it indeed shows the typical Epsilon E-C shape. It fills up around 25% of the eyepiece in center. It is indeed fainter than veil pickering part. Jon wasn't even able to find it. But i got it luckily and then figured out the exact location from M29 and deneb. Should be able to find it next time.

Helix Nebula: Just wanted to take a look thru bigger aperture. Din't make much difference. Filter helps to brighten it up, but then it still din't show any details in the helix. Interesting thing to note is, I can see 4 bright stars inside/on the helix. Some of them seem to be behind the helix too. Being closet PN, probably should highly magnify it to see the details.

Scl GC 288 + Sculptor Gal 253: Both of them are easy catch. Can't fit them in same view @50x with UWAN 82deg, but they are close.. probably in the same view in Ethos 100deg may be possible. The GC is resolvable @ 87x in 16T2, seemed like yellow stars sprinkled on bluish cluster disk. the galaxy is also huge.. it feels up 80% of the 16T2 eyepiece. being sort of edge on, seemed pretty thick too. I felt like i saw some mottling or vertical line/gap on the left side of the galaxy, lil bit like M82 ?? TBD.

Sculptor Dwarf Gal: Failed. The skymap shows it pretty huge object... and so i tried to look for it..Fought for it but didn't find it. Jon also tried it but failed.. when we checked the details of the object, the description indeed shows huge size, but surface brightness is +17.0 magnitude. Completely useless. Need bigger aperture or is it just a photographic object?

MCG -06-03-015 Sculptor Dwarf, Constellation: Sculptor, Dimension: 40.0'x 31.0', Magnitude: 10.50, Surface Brightness: 17.10, Description: vvL,eeF,lE ESO 351-G030,Member of Local Group,large and dim


M34: Tired..so revisiting something. Messed up the location. Picked up wrong stars in perseus and andromeda to look for it. It indeed seems like bouquet or probably diwali cracker - zaad.

M52: Hunt for bubble in Cassiopeia starts with M52 cluster.. because of the filter, cluster is dim, but still the bright star, at the edge of the cluster, seems prominent. With 87x, this one seems interesting. dint try high mags without filter.

Bubble nebula: failed. After the inspiration from Crescent nebula, tried for bubble nebula. Jon mentioned to use H-beta filter on this. He also said that he has tried for it a lot but failed. Indeed hard object. Wasn't even sure how its supposed to look like or how faint it is..

M31-M32-M110: Quick browse thru refractor.. M32 and M110 are indeed tiny with 14x 35mm panoptic.

Pleiades M45: All bluish stars..no fuzziness. Didn't fit in the same view of Pan 14x.

Cygnus PN 7048 (Failed) 7026 (New): Initially we started looking for 7048. It was indeed hard to locate. Later I realized that in cloudy nights article i read abt 7026 and not 7048.. So we switched to 7026. Jon found 7026 quickly. Next to Cyg 63. This one exactly looks that 6441 GC next to G scorpi star. Really close to the bright star. Indeed big, all white in color. Considering the location of 7026, I should be able to locate it next time. 7048 seems to be lil bit tough object and indeed lil bit difficult to locate. Not sure if its worth observing.

Planetary Nebula NGC 7026, Constellation: Cygnus, Dimension: 0.4'x 0.2', Magnitude: 12.00, Surface Brightness: 8.50, Description: pB,biN
Planetary Nebula NGC 7048, Constellation: Cygnus, Dimension: 1.0'x 0.8', Magnitude: 11.00, Surface Brightness: 12.20, Description: pF,pL,dif,iR,vlbM

The whole confusion betn 7048 and 7026 happened because my pocket sky atlas maps 7048 but doesn't even show 7026, though 7026 seems brighter than 7048. I think surface brightness makes a huge difference and pocket atlas should have considered it in the mapping. Same thing also applies for Scultor dwarf. The skymap shows it to be a huge object, but otherwise it was really hard to see visually because of lower surface brightness.

Milkyway Alignment: Over the last 3 months i have seen how milky way moves around the northen celestial pole..e.g. how the milky way in saggitarus rotates much faster than the one in cygnus or much less rotation in cassiopeia, but again much wider angled rotation in Orion. Obviously southern parts are gonna move-rotate much faster and wider as compared to northern objects, but the interesting part here is that..because milkyway is a single line or disk, it moves around and shows the real alignment. All the arms and dust lanes shows the disk rotating precisely.. So is it actually rotating around galactic north star? Where is the galactic north pole ?? Probably 23N of north pole..not sure TBD. Milkyway must be rotating around it. Need to see the relationship betn celestial pole (earth), Ecliptic pole (solar system alignment), galactic pole (milkyway alignment)

Getting Into The Rhythm - III

Continue..

Helix nebula: Observed this one again after long time. In 17T4 70x fills up the center and probably lil smaller than lagoon nebula. but lagoon is brighter than Helix. With Cel 2" OIII filter, increases the contrast heavily. Everything is white fuzzy, can not see any details.Center doesnt have much fussiness, but dont see any star in the middle either.

With filter ON, checked veil and little dumbbell again.

North American nebula: It is hard to see anything here. Probably the size. with filter on 17T4, 70x, its not gonna help much. Need to try Jon's refractor UWAN combo with filter ON. or my 30mm with filter.

M27 Dumbbell: Without filter also, its an awesome sight. With filter, can clearly see more fuziness just outskirts of the dumbbell.

M57 Ring: At 70x, 17T4, the ring is tiny, but with filter ON it shows huge contrast. Donut shape is marvelous. the brightness definitely pops up in the eye. Distinctive bluish color. More mags on this one is better, but because of filter i stayed with 17T4 only.

Because the filter was still on.. looked for nearby tiny PNs in skymap.

Aquila pn: triple cave: one of them 6804: Jon had never seen this before.. in some sense its difficult to locate. Definitely faint that our usual tiny PNs (snowball, saturn)..but stil you can see it. Exactly between two field stars. HArd to find it in jon's scope.. not sure why.. After 10mins search, we got this one on his scope. Lil brighter in his scope.. surely bigger aperture helps. Map says there should be 2 PNs with 0.5 deg view.. but we saw only one. They are +12.6, +11.2 mags.. 6804 is fainter but bigger than 6803. 6803 is definitely harder.. will try next time. 6807 in triple cave doesn't seem feasible to me..
http://www.umich.edu/~lowbrows/reflections/2002/dscobel.7.html

Aquila globular: In the process, saw a globular..but its not even mentioned in my skymap. Need to read more. check wikisky. (Read more.. there is no globular here..probably just concentration of stars and nothing more.. false alarm)

Sculptor GC 288, Gal 253:
Just before moonrise, asked Jon for older Sculptor galaxy. somehow both of us had hard time o nthis one becase of mismatched location of "TBD" star. but i figred out the correct location and we saw both GC and the gla.. Both objects, esp GC shows up in finder smoothly. Gal is NW of it in 2-3 deg apart. Gal is way too elongated and seemed like a white strip. both objects are indeed bright. Need to read more details.

Moon: Observed moon thru refractor. Din't see much color problem in achro. Probabaly because moon was still on horizon..not too bright..and more yellowish than white.. Jon's 16.5" shows marvellous views of moon..no doubt.. seeing was bad being moon on horizon..

Jupiter: Observed Jupiter multiple times during the night.. thru all instruments.
1 sat + disk + 3 sat alignment. Binoc showed it clearly too. thoug hinitially seeing was bad, jupiter was again a masterpiece.. crispy shot 180x.. 3 bands so clearly visible.. with some dark spot at the center on NE band.

For Next time:

Saggi: m54, m70, m69, GC in M7, m18-swan, m55
Aquila: m11-26,
Capri: m75
Oph: m9
Sco: m19, m80
Peg: m15
Cyg: m29, blinking pn, Veil third component, m39
Her: m92
Lyr: m56
Cassi-Per: Try to picturize shapes in messier OCS.
Scl and For browsing

what is LDN ? how to observe them? Lynds dark nebula catalog..skipping it for a while.

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

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..

SDAA BBQ Night - Part II

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. :-(