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..

Dark night kickoff in freezing cold - I

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..

Friday KC Dark Night - I

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.

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.

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