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.

Friday KC Dark Night - II

continued..

Double next to Tau CMa (New): while looking for Tau CMa, saw this double yellow-blue pair. Don't know the name yet.. Tau CMa is on southern side of Delta CMa, while this double is on northen side of it.. really wide double..

M46-M47: To compare 15mm, 24mm and 25mm eyepieces, moved to M46. At 15mm 80x and 24mm 48x PN was visible nicely.. but jon asked me to try his WO 28mm UWAN, and it was marvellous image.. 82 deg widefiled with whole star cluster crispy clear in the view.. and PN was also clearly visible.

With Jon's 28mm UWAN on my scope,

Thor's Helmet: Failed..Tried to locate this one, but failed.. too low on horizon.. porbabaly ended up at M50.. need to learn this star hop (??)

From low horizon, moved to overhead constellations..

Leo M65-M66-3628 triplet: Impressive in UWAN, 3628 is clearly visible, perfect edge on, but both ends are sort of blown up..

Leo Gamma Doublet Gal: Again nice pair.. easy to catch.. these are really tiny and faint galaxies.

NGC 2903: Edge on - Easy catch @ head of Leo.

M81-M82: Browsed to M81 and M82. while finding the exact location, ended up with near by NGC3077. M81 and M82 both bright and fits in same uwan view. NGC 2796 nearby.. In Jon's 16.5" M81 looks nice.. the middle vertical dark lane was clearly visible.

M108-M97: Easy catch. Both in same view.. Owl is definitely brighter than the galaxy. din't try to increase magnification so that can use uwan much more.

M109: Its a huge galaxy, don;t remember details..

M51 whirlpool: M51 and nearby NGC are visible clearly.. the conneciton betn them not directly visible.. m51 is bright.. occastionaly, coupel of stars/bright spots on N and NW poping up.. with averted vision had spiral structure feeling.. And all this just in 28mm uwan..42x !!

continued..

Friday KC Dark Night - III

Continued..

Coma/Virgo browsing: Wanted to browse galaxies in Virgo and Coma. Started with Denebola and moved 6 Coma. Doing it for first time..

M98-M99-M100 chain (New):

M98: W of the 6coma. bright..
M99: SE of the 6coma. bright..
M100: Move way up..

From M98, Move down to 11 Coma star.

M85 (New): bright with faint NGC companions

Markarian's chain:

M84: Aligned with M99-M98 line.
NGC4388: Sort of edge-on + elliptical.
M86: Bright. Elliptical
The eyes - 4438-4435
NGC 4461-4473-4477:
Continue the chain for M88 and M91

In Jon's 16.5" scope, From Epsilon Virginis to Rho virgo. Either saw M60 or NGC4647 not sure.. Too many of them..Lost it.. wasn't sure if i saw siamise twins or not..

Once we removed UWAN from my scope, I din't want to look at virgo again without it :)

Tired of fuzzies so GC time..

Omega Centauri: perfected my location. light pollution. not great in resolving stars.. not crispy clear view.. Observed thru all 3 scopes including 120mm refractor..

M13 GC in Hercules: Few stars at core Resolvable at 76x.

M92 GC:definitely tiny as compared m13. Don't remember when i saw this one last time. with Jon's helps, perfected star hopping (??)

PN 6210 in Hercules (New): Tiny PN.. small scale ghost of jupiter.. bright blue color.. perfect star hopping (??).. nearby star group visible in finder..

M107 in Ophiuchus (New): Faint. similar to M92. Easy to star hop from the bright star of Oph (??)

M4: too close to horizon to see any details.. M80 near M4, Tried but didn't spend much time..

M53 Coma GC: Aplha star (??) and GC in almost same view. Visible in finder. Fought for nearby 5053 GC.. Hard to see in my scope. In Jon's scope.. its like really really faint.. instead of GC, seemed like an open cluster.. difference in M53-and this NGC is sort of similar to the difference between M46-47 fomr LP sky... bright star cluster vs almost invisible sparse star cluster.. Have to be really careful when we starhop.. there are indeed lot of faint objects from the dark location. Also, before hunting or objects, I should get a judgment on size and magnitude..

M104 Sombrero: Marvellous view.. Dark lane visible clearly.. Finder shows it too. In Jon's 16.5", looks much better.. bright and dark lane clearly visible.. the sombrero head structure with bright sphere is clearly visible..

M68 GC (New): Just next to the corvus star (?). Tried to find it from home, but was too difficult.. From dark place, hard to see in finder.. Both star and the GC are in the same 32mm view (38x).

Ghost of Jupiter: Bright blue disk.. higher mags didn't help on this to see any details.. Jon's 16.5" didn't help either.. I had better view of this from my home. Infact from Jon's home, have seen the middle bright star.. Here, seeing was probably getting worst.

M83 seashell Gal (New): Fun star hopping. showed the star hopping sequence to Jon :). Galaxy is really bright and huge.. clearly visible in refractor also just at 30x..

continued..

Friday KC Dark Night - IV

Continued..

NGC 3115 spindle Gal (New): Star hop sequence.. star hopping lil difficult than m83 sequence.. In 32mm,24mm Edge-on. dust lane visible..core is not that bright.. smaller than m104.

M57 Ring nebula: In Jon's 16.5" just too big as compared all those tiny PNs.. master piece.. in my scope, 32mm, its looks ghost of jupiter @ 10mm... 7.5mm mag supported.. 2'o'clk star.. 4mm wasn't that great.

M56 GC: Actully its easy to find.. but took me a while.. again ..seems like m92 in Hercules..

Alberio: Color contrast is marvelous. Yellow, blue pair. Masterpiece.. still low on horizon..

Double Double in refractor: Hard to resolve.. too windy..

Saggi was almost up..

M8-M20 in 16.5: No filter.. Lagoon is bigger as compared to Triffid.. Lagoon star cluster shows up really well. In lagoon, dark lane is clearly visible.. lane is also too wide as compared to Triffid. In Trifid, one lane is directly visible.. for another lane eye has to get comfortable..then will see more.. third was in-out.

M6-M7 in refractor - i think i saw only M7. wasn't able to find another one.

Moved the refractor across all Sagittarius objects. Lagoon-Triffid-Swan-Eagle.

M17 Swan in refractor: 2 shape is visible upside down. view was not that great..

M16 Eagle visible: V shaped star cluster easily visible.. nebulosity sort of visible..

Veil in 16.5" with filter... too close on horizon.. loop visible.. not that impressive though.. had better views than this..

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..

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..

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.

First session with Jon Issacs...

Date: 28th June 08, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:30pm to 12:00pm (3:30 hrs)
Location: KC, CA
Weather: Seeing was “okay” not excellent. Lil bit windy and after 12:00 winds picked up. Not cold at all. Survived on t-shirt. Lil bit of light pollution on south because of border patrol check-post.
Buddies: Jon Issacs. Only two of us at this dark spot. Plenty of discussions.
Instruments: My 6” dob. Jon’s 12.5 discovery dob. Williams 80mm APO, 10x50 binocs.

Got in touch with Jon thru craigslist. Overall, in this observing session, I wanted to learn as much as possible thru Jon’s 20 years experience. I didn’t have any observation plan. The only thing which I had in mind is to point my 6” dob to each and every object that Jon points thru his 12.5” dob. Compare both views. Try Jon’s eyepieces on my dob, if possible and compare both views.

This is first time I tried the laser collimator. Jon has a nice 1.25” laser collimator. Initially I collimated my scope with my collimation cap. It wasn’t perfect, but almost there. With laser collimator, I realized how easy and precise collimation can be. Jon mentioned that my mirror cell seems to be push-pull cell and described me the use of locking vs collimating screws. In the process, we realized that my focuser tube is also having some problem. Optics doesn’t align properly when focuser tube is fully inwards vs fully outwards. Need to find out more.

Tried the collimation star test on Vega, but Jon mentioned that star tests are pretty good on small apertures or refractors. For big apertures its hard to see those concentric circles. Also seeing wasn’t good enough to try it on my scope.

Double Double: Able to resolve it at 96x only (25mm x 2x). Jon was able to resolve it with lower magnification. My vision is still not fully adapted to these observations. I also tried Jon’s 9mm eyepiece (135x), and seemed like it showed me high contrast in the view than my 25mm x 2x combo.

Saturn: It was close to horizon and was still under dusk. Seeing wasn’t that great. A moon aligned on left side of the rings and titan, aligned at 4 o’clock of rings, were clearly visible in my scope. Again, Cassini division eluded me. In Jon’s 12.5”, Saturn was beautiful & crisp. One more moon was visible next to the first one I saw in my scope. Rings were nice, but I didn’t pay attention to Cassini division. Damn it !!

M57: Ring Nebula: While observing for Ring nebula, got acquitted to left eyed finder on Jon’s 12.5” dob. He also mentioned a trick for locating objects thru finder by using both eyes so that the brain creates combined image of cross-hairs of finder on the naked eye sky image and it helps to quickly locate the objects. Its was lil bit difficult for me in the beginning, but I got used to it while locating star clusters in later session.

Because of dusk, the Ring nebula wasn’t a clear view, on my scope initially it looked like out of focus star, but with Jon’s 12.5 nebulosity was clear. We should have tried it late night. Also use of filter would have been useful.

I need to confirm and understand the location of Ring nebula in the map.

Omega Centauri: Initially wasn’t able to find it with naked eye. But browse thru binocular really helped. Thru Jon’s 12.5”, it was simply fabulous. I was able to resolve the stars in the outskirts of the globular, but the center was too dense. Whole eyepiece was filled up with the globular (don’t remember the magnification). Thru my scope, it was a nice image too.. but Jon had a better contrast than mine. Again it was too low on horizon and border patrol strong lights were killing it.

M4: Fabulous view thru Jon’s 12.5”. In my scope, the M4 and globular NGC 6144, next to Antares, were in same eyepiece view. Pretty nice.

Northern Jewel Box: NGC 6231: I always heard abt it, but never looked at it. Jon pointed to it. In the binocs, APO and finally in my scope. Beautiful !! didn't pay much attention to colors.

M6: Ptolemy’s cluster: It always looks better in wide angle or binoculars.

M7: Butterfly cluster: this is first time I indeed saw the butterfly shape in this cluster. The red star the end of the butterfly body was noteworthy. With my 32mm (38x) color of the red star was noteworthy, but with 3x barlow on it (76x), the color went down to orange. Jon’s 16mm Nagler (76x) eyepiece view was much wide angular than my 16mm setup. It looked nice thru Jon’s 80mm refractor.

M11: wild duck cluster: Nice view in 12.5” dob. Unable to see the shape: flock of flying ducks. I didn’t try it in my scope. We were star-hopping just too fast :), but I confirmed the location thru my binoculars.

M80: Jon pointed to it.. I saw it and forgot :). Just too fast star hopping !!

M8: Lagoon Nebula: While looking for M11 wild duck cluster in my scope, I accidently, pointed to a nebulous object and Jon mentioned that I am infact pointing to Lagoon nebula. I have seen and pointed to Lagoon before (8 months back), but I have just forgotten it completely.

Browsed through binoculars to locate Lagoon. M6 -> M7 -> Lagoon -> Triffid

The nebula also had a star cluster located at 2 o’clock of it. (NGC 6530). Fabulous view thru my 23mm (38x). We tried Jon’s Luminicon deep sky filter on it and nebulosity indeed became brighter. Lagoon was sort of in a circular shape. Second part of nebulosity was lying 1 o’clock to this circular shape and was bifurcated by a dark lane. Also I felt that another nebulosity part was there around 5 o’clock of this circular shape. No dark lane, but separation was clearly visible. Nice view thru Jon’s 12/5” dob. was able to see bright stars at the core of the nebula. Missed the hourglass nebula inside Lagoon. Need to observe carefully and with high magnification.

Missed Triffid and Swan.. instead we moved to Dumbbell nebula.

M27: Dumbbell Nebula: the interesting part of M27 was to indeed find it. Jon gave me amazing star-hopping session with binoculars to locate and confirm dumbbell nebula.

Altair -> three stars aligned with Altair in middle. -> 9 o’clock of Altair around 5 deg N (left) -> three sections aligned: Wider pair of stars + below it, shorter pair of stars + below it, single bright star. -> In between the middle shorter pair and single bright star, there are three stars in a cluster and M71 globular is next to it. -> back to middle shorter pair of stars and move to N (left) around 5 deg. Bright star. 4 o’clock of which is dumbbell nebula. -> Pair of stars at 9 o’clock of dumbbell is aligned to point to dumbbell -> Pair of stars at 11 o’clock of dumbbell is aligned to point to dumbbell

Also, From Altair -> Move to 11” 4 deg and see the Coat Hanger. This star alignment is fabulous and looks like real coat hanger :). Coat hanger extended W (up), points directly to dumbbell nebula.

Jon’s star-hopping skills are indeed commendable.

With this knowledge of alignments thru binoculars, it took me less than a minute to point my scope to dumbbell nebula.

Another fabulous view thru my 32mm (38x) and 25mm (48x). Had filter on 25mm. really bright nebulosity. Didn’t observe thru 12.5”

Leo triplet: M65 M67 NGC3628. With my previous TDS experience, I found it easily. Bad seeing and its was at 5 deg from horizon hill. Better look in 12.5”. Was able to see lil bit of dust lane in NGC3628

Jupiter: Extremely bright. 4 bands visible. 3 moons visible on right and one on left. 3 moons were not as a pointed star but more-ever like a disk..

Canes Venatici Galaxy Cluster: Hickson68 This is Jon’s favorite object. Observed thru 12.5” dob. Kite formation – First vertex is a Bright star. Below it was a tiny galaxy (NGC5350) as a second vertex and pair of galaxies as third vertex (NGC5354 & NGC5353). All three aligned in a straight line. Pair seemed to be brighter than stand alone one. Below it, there is another faint galaxy (NGC5355), edge on, at the fourth vertex aligned in a straight line with first vertex bright star. In the same eyepiece view, way down, there is another bright star and above it a bright and big galaxy (NGC 5371)… this was brighter and bigger than any other galaxies in the view. Jon didn’t remember numbers for these objects, but pointed to them with his excellent star-hopping skills. I didn’t have stamina to find them by myself :). Also there is supposed to be 5th member in Hickson 68 group in the same eyepiece view. Need careful observation next time.

M51: Whirlpool Galaxy While browsing in Ursa-Major, I asked Jon to look for M51 and M101. Again, both of us had excellent star-hopping session for these objects thru binoculars. M51 was an easy catch. Saw thru 16mm Nagler on my scope. Compared to (32mm x 2x) barlow combo, 16mm Nagler contrast view was great. Bad seeing, so hard to see the spiral structure. On12.5” dob, spiral structure was somewhat visible, but because bad seeing and less enthu, I didn’t delve into details.

M101: Thru binoculars it was easy catch, but I wasn’t able to catch it on my scope. I was too tired I guess.

Veil Nebula: Jon pointed his 12.5” dob on both parts of nebula. In first part, central bright star (52 Cygnus). Nebulosity on both side. Right side nebulosity brighter than left side, but left side size is bigger than the right side. Second part thru my scope. Impressive view. Tried with 32mm filter. Also tried to understand the precise location. Pretty easy to confirm location because of 52 Cygnus star. Now I have read more description abt this nebula, I should be able to observe it in finer details.

Alberio: Just before leaving, I pointed to Alberio to see the colors. Immediate split with 32mm. nice golden and green/bluish pair.

Overall, It was great session. More than 20 DSOs and two planets. Two doubles. Learnt a lot abt telescope, eyepieces, collimation and star-hopping. Jon also mentioned that he liked my technique of star hopping thru clock positions. It was first time he heard abt it and indeed liked it. On the negative side, I felt like we rushed really fast in the whole session. It should have been lil bit slow with details observations and discussing those. Also whole session was without dinner :). If I would have eaten something in the middle, I would have preferred to stay longer.

Any way, Last two months or last 8-10 weeks are THE BEST time of my astronomy life. Moving to "next level" pretty fast, unexpectedly.