Back to stargazing... Part 4 / 4

Continued..

Needle Galaxy 4565: tiny spiky needle.. looks big from the 16" scope.. middle buldge is clear.. its like tiny sombrero galaxy. Another fuzzy 4559 next to it..

Whale galaxy 4631 is along the same lines. in npo, you can easily see all these three galaxies needle-4559-whale.. not in the same view 24mm @ 22x. Whale seemed much bigger object than others.. Whale in 16" @103x seemed impressive object. irregular elongated paintbrush stroke shape.. the middle part has lot of stars just on the galaxy surface. interestingly there is a bright star just above the disk at center. and there is yet another tiny fuzzy next to it. 4627.. its like slash dot |-

Yet another galaxy 4656 closer to whale, easily observed in the 16" scope.. but not visible in np101. this one also has some stars on the surface of the galaxy on bottom side, just like whale..

spindle galaxy 3115 in hydra.. closer to ghost of jupiter. these two objects should be seen together. Smaller than any of the other galaxies like needle-whale or Coma fuzzies. Remembering the location is hard.. but was able to see thru the apo @ 22x as well.. very very tiny streak..

M3 from apo..is very very tiny.. but from 16" had fabulous view.. can resolve almost all stars from outer and central core..

Hickson 68 and 5371 - Jon showed yet another fuzzy structure in Uma tail.. I think i have seen this one before.. We located in apo @ 22x.. Two of them very close to the star..elliptical fuzzies.. these two are part of hickson 68 group.. while another one 5371, way below in the view next to another bright star.. this one semeed lil bigger

Comet Garradd C/2009 P1 in draco - in apo 31mm.. very bright..cicular bright in center and fuzzier-fainter from outside.. no tail as such poking out.. perfect circular object.. near Eta Draco star.. +30 deg above horizon... it was last object of the night..

Overall, we saw so many tiny little fuzzies NGC objects from the apo, during this observation. When its dark and clear, indeed this tiny aperture can still show you these fuzzy objects.. Its not like they are impressive at this aperture level, but the fact that we can even see them with this tiny scope impresses me a lot.

Missed Dhruv..for these 8-10 hrs..

Being Obsessive.. Part II

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
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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.

Fuzzies Everywhere - I

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..

Night of Leo Fuzzies - I

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...

Dark night kickoff in freezing cold - II

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.

MTRP - Calle De Vida

Date: Apr 12th 2009, Sunday
Observation Time: 8pm to 9:45pm (1:45 hrs)
Location: MTRP, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing 4 of 5. Transparency 3 of 5.
Instruments: XTi 10.

MTRP Clairemont Mesa entrance is closed now. So entered thru another entrance Calle De Vida, 2 blocks from original entrance.

Alcor-Mizar: Started with double. At 38x itself, clean split of all MizarA-B. All three white in color. Had hard time determining position angle.

Gamma Leonois: At 38x hard to split, 76x was hinting of a split, but 120x was better... really close.. Yellowish pair.

Regulus: document says its double, but is it? there is a faint star in the vicinty, seems to be optical double.

Orion M42: Okay.. Disk visible. M43 was sort of fuzzy. Trapezium E-F not resolvable at all.

Flame nebula: Failed. Just no nebulosity at all..

M78: Location was perfect, as mentioned from last observation. barely visible though.. faint.

Castor (New): Really close double. 120x is the first one to split.. really close.. higher mags help.. again white pair..

Gem Double Planetary: Jon has shown me thos one multiple times, but i didn't know precise location neither how it looks in finder. Atleast at 38x really hard to see anything. Its one of those objects that need higher mags and precise location. FAILED.

M35 OC: Impressive... The curved line inside the cluster.. didn;t find the NGC OC just otside it. Need to remember the relative position of it wrt the curved line.

Pollux (New): Not a double, but nice yellow-orangish star. Nice contrast betn Castor and Pollux.

M65-66 Triplet: Really too faint. Found it easily. but M65 and M66 were visible. NGC was sort of averted vision, giving a hint of it.. but wasn't sure.. Overall the M65-66 pair was so faint that wasn't worth increasing the magnification.

M81-82: thought that had it in the view, but didn't.. just too faint to see anything.. Last time, caught it without any trouble, but this time had hell lot of trouble in star hopping. nedd to learn abt background stars. Dark night makes thing simpler :)

Saturn: Spent lot of time on this one. Tested Jon's planetary eyepieces TMB 4mm and 6mm on this one. Went all the way to 2mm using barlow. Somehow seeing/scope was stable. Saturn was marvelous, in-and-out focus, in 3mm (400x) itself and I had breathtaking view. Surprisingly with 600x, it wasn't sharp at all, but still disk was huge and gap between disk & rings was clearly visible.

M3 GC: Naked eye Star hopping session required. hopefully next time i will remember it. Finder shows it clearly. At 38x its fuzzy, At 76x Outskirts is resolvable. At110x few star in front of the core are resolvable. 200x didn't make much difference.

M53 GC: Easy. Next to Aplha-Com. Finder barely sees it. 38x, 76x shows it as fuzzy, but 110x resolves couple of bright stars at outskirts.

Messier Marathon - Part III

Continued..

Virgo-Coma Galactic Cluster: Jon showed me in 16.5' with 35mm Panoptic. Marvellous.. 9 galaxies in same view. 5 of them were pretty sharp. This is a galactic heaven. Don't know which objects I saw, but seemed like Markarain's chain. Wasn;t sure abt the location.

As per star atlas, started with epsilon virginis and must have gone towards M60-M59.. not sure.. tried to browse nearby.. but its easy to loose yourself easily in this galactic zoo. Star hopping in this area is real skill. Need to read more on this one. (TBD ??) .. but its unbelievable view. Can spend hours on this one.. and soon I will :)

In my 10', 42mm 30x view, looks good, but Jon let me borrow his 28mm UWAN with parracor. WOW !! no words !! The field of view 82deg rules ..keeps lot of galaxies in same view. with paracor, view was awesome.. but with parracor, every star is tack sharp. Also tried 22m Nagler.. Hssh !!

For rest of the night, i used Jon's 22m Nagler :) (50x) !!

- Ursa Major:
M81-M82 Bode's Nebulae: Easy catch, extending Alpha-Gamma line, towards pole. Bright pair, barely in 22mm. M81 vertical dust lane visible (??). In 16.5 impressive-bright view. Wish jon would have increased the mag.

- CVn:
M63 Sunflower: Bright and big, unexpectedly.

M51 whirlpool: Galaxy pair merge clearly visible. I guess because of nagler, they look so bright. Smaller than M63.

- Bootes:
M3 GC: Jon showed the location. Still tricky to find it. MArevellous globular.. bright-bluish. Probably can resolve some outer skirt stars with 22m.. high mag required.

- Coma:
M53 GC (New): Identifying Coma constellation was headache. but once found alpha, M53 is an easy catch. Beautiful GC. Smaller than M3.

M64 Black Eye (New): Yet another.. but easy to find.

Seems like i was too tired... just too many fuzzies for one night :) !!

- Ursa Major:
M108 - M97: Both M97 Owl nebula and M108 fits in same view. Nebula is brighter than galaxy. galaxy seems elliptical.

M109: Yet another fuzzy, don't remember much.

M40 (New): Its double rather than any fuzzy. Messier mistake.

M101: Lil tricky, may get confused because of NGCs nearby. but big & bright.. feels up whole eyepiece.. this seemed to be of unusual shape.

- CVn:
M94: Easy to catch with star atlas. Yet another galaxy.

M106 (New): Failed.. too tired.. thought that saw it thru binos, but that can not be..its too faint for binos.

- Hercules:
M13 GC: Sort of in clouds. Still got it. Way bigger than M3 also.. too bright..but wasn;t clear..seeing was just too bad..


TBDs:
- Are we/milkyway part of Virgo galactic cluster?
- Field stop of an eyepiece
- Barlowed laser collimator
- T CMa
- Nagler-Panoptic eyepieces on 10"
- Trapezoid E-F stars: Seeing is better in TDS than KC

Lot of fuzzies while browsing thru the sky. Impressive to see how many "things" are there in the sky.

SDAA BBQ Night - Part I

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.