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..

Messier Marathon - Part II

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..

First Dark Night with Orion XTi 10 - I

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

31st May 08 @ TDS

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