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.

Messier Marathon - Part I

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..