Rebooting..

Date: July 24th 2026, Friday
Observation Time: 9pm to 10:30pm (observing time ~1.5hrs), 
Location: SC Home
Weather: clear Skies, but heavy light pollution because of street lights.  
Instruments: Astrotech 102ED APO  

Trying to reboot myself after a long time. It's been 8 years (i.e. SD to SC move) since I did star gazing. Workplace has kept me so interested and busy that I didn't even bother to even watch moon thru my scope. But since last week, I am trying to get back in the game. 

Last week, visited Houge park for SJAA - In town star party. It was a good reboot. 4-5 scopes. Couple of them on Alberio, Venus. Coupel of photography gears pointing to Veil nebula, Whirlpool galaxy (M??). There was 1 scope pointing to M57 rung nebula. This was was a fantastic view. Digital lives photography but view thru the eyepiece. Something unique indeed. 

So today opened my APO 102ED scope. Goal was just get familiar with the instrument and browse the "light polluted" sky. 

Moon: Fabulous view. Crate details clearly visible. Tried 35mm panoptic, 17 Nagler, 7 Nagler and 7x 2xBarlow magnifier. Views in 17 Nagler were the best. higher magnification was hard to focus. Seeing might not be good. Even with 17 Nagler, crater edges were clearly visible. Also the mountain peak at the center of the crater was visible thru 7mm. Though I know geographical map, forgot the names of most the craters and mares. Looking at the map on the phone also confused me in the orientation because of telescopic view vs digital map on the phone. Need to find a good map/app that matches APO/diagonal image alignment. Showed this to Aparna as well. She was quite impressed. 

Vega and Epsilon Lyrae double-double: in 35mm, Vega was crisp. some stars around Vega confused me with double double. Then realized that they are on opposite side of Epsilon lyre, so moved to opposite side of Vega to find empisolon. Can clearly see "double"... higher magnification didn't help resolving double to double-double. It was ay up in the sky close to home roof. So image was wavy and wasn't able to focus. Also eyepiece holder / diagonal doesn't stay at one place because of gravity and had to hold it by hand to get image in focus. Bit of a trouble. Overall, failed.

Alberio: Took lil bit time to locate it because of light pollution and without the finder scope. browsing thru 35mm, finally found it. Beautiful and crisp. 17mm and 7mm nailers did well as well. Crisp image and sharp focus. Orange/yellow bigger star with blue/greenish smaller star.. Higher the mag, the color contrast goes dimmer. So watching in lower mag was good. 

Since not much visible in the light-polluted sky, tried to browse thru Sagittarius thru 35mm. Not having finder scope or binocs was not healthy. Wasn't even sure if I was browsing thru Sagi or Opphicus, Scorpio. Possibly saw some big open cluster in 35mm. Not sure what it is. Overall, failed

I think in light polluted sky, it's good to have the intelliscope, so at least locations where telescope is pointed at is clear so its easier to locate things, when not visible to naked eye. 

Any way, overall a good reboot! Btw, I noticed that I had tried to reboot myself in 2020, but didn't publish the blog post or didn't capture the details. Hopefully, this time I can continue my observing bit in a regular cadence. GN!

  

 

La Posta Dinner with Late night Moonset - I

Date: Sept 26th 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:30pm to 11pm (2.5hrs), 00:30am to 4:30am (4 hrs): Total 6.5 hrs.
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: first session: moon 60% illuminated. Cloudy on SWS. Second session: moon set. No winds. No clouds. Excellent seeing and transparency. Best weather seen after a while.
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob (FL 1800mm with parracor), Jon's Celestron 100mm f/5 achromat. Didn't carry my 10" dob.
Buddies: Jon

While helping Jon in moving furniture, decided to also have a late night stargazing session once moon sets. didnt carry my 10" dob. Jon decided to keep 16" scope at blvd house only.

At 8:30pm, first quarter moon was pretty bright with 60% disk illuminated.

Jupiter: In refractor, clear view. The disk bands were visible. Achro color abberation was killing the image. Two moons on left while other two on right side. In 16" dob @ 9mm 200x awesome view. One of the best views. Two bands + the shade on remaining part of south was clearly visible. Also there was dark black spot exactly at the center on south. Not sure what it is.. but i have seen it before in last dark night observation. Jon also didn't know what it was.

M30: Way too faint in refractor. I realized that without the red-dot founder or telerad, hunting the objects are lil tricky. It does have 6x20 finder, but still I get confused with where its pointing. Just trying to understand the refractor. In the dob, with lil magnification, M30 it its specific shape visible. Not really a crispy clear image. Moonlite washed out the view.. Just no point watching any objects on S or W side.

M13: With dob, clearly resolved and shows how huge it is. Not the usual crispy image. shows clearly in refractor finder. Refractor low mag shows as nice GC similar to M22.

M27 Dumbbell: Jon pointed to this guy.. indeed crispy clear in 28mm UWAN @ 65x. shows the typical shape.

M52: To avoid moon, decided to stay on NE side, exactly opposite of moon. Jon pointed to this one, but "discovered" it. He wasn't sure what this faint lil OC is. cosndering the lcoation and the bright star next to cluster, it was indeed M52. With thig mag 120x on dob, it kills the cluster beauty. Better in low mags.

Mu Cephi (New): Wanted to browse all Cephus objects on this night, so started with Mu Cephi. Jon has never seen this before. Perfect Garnet-Red star. More the mags, more red color i can see. Means in refractor with 40x shows it as red-orangish star, while dob @ 120x shows it as big dark-red orangish star. Indeed an impressive object considering its history.

Iota Cassiopeia (New): don't remember too many details. Jon pointed to it. I remember watching two bright white stars very close to each other. I even tried the refractor, just don't remember what i saw.

At 9:30pm, Jon decided to take a nap for a while till moon sets. I continued..

NGC6939 OC - NGC 6946 Galaxy (New): OC in Cephus, while galaxy in Cygnus at the border. Indeed seemed like salt paper cluster. Individual stars are not that bright. but cluster seems to be rich, like small scale M46. CN small wonders also mentioned abt the galaxy 6946 near cephus-cygnus boundary but din't see it... again must have washed by moonlite.

Revisited this object again late night ~2am. Excellent cluster. In 28mm UWAN ~65x, can fit both cluser and galaxy in same view.. Galxy is indeed faint.. but definitely bigger in size.

M31-32-110: To test the moon effect on galaxies, pointed the refractor to M31. Not a great image.. Infact M32 and M110 wasn't that obvious either. So decided to give up on all fuzzies as well as tiny little objects till moon sets.

Alberio: Color of the pair seemed okay.. orange and bluish-white.

Double Double: Wasn't able to split individual pairs that clearly with 65x.

M103: Don't remember the shape. Clearly visible in the finder itself.

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..

Testing Orion 10" intelliscope setup..

Date: 1st Nov 2008, Saturday
Observation Time: 6:00pm to 7:30pm (1:00 hrs)
Location: MTRP, CA
Weather: 80% cloudy, Sky was in & out
Instruments: New 10” dob & bunch of new eyepieces.
Buddies: Philip and Jack (MTRP Ranger)

Bought a 10" dob last sunday. Orion XT10 intelliscope. I observed jupiter from home, but this was sort of real first session with the dob to test the whole setup and new eyepieces. GSO40mm supeview, Celestron Xcel 10mm and Celestron E-lux 2" 25mm.

Scope wasn't fully collimated. Still not fully comfortable with optics.. Really need laser collimator.

Weather wasn;t friendly either today. Too much cloudy. I think because of clouds, though transparency was bad, the seeing was excellent. So planetary observation was excellent.

Venus phase (New): Venus was best view ever for me.. This is first time I ever saw phase of Venus. I guess the phase was around 70% waxing. Confirm it. (?? Confirmed from heavens-above). With 10mm xcel eyepiece, 120x showed me the phase clearly and luckily, 2x barlow on it, 240x magnification was still in focus. It was fabulous. Orangish-Red color on top-left (NW) edge of venus, while the bottom-right (SE) edge was lil bit greenish. I remember Jon told me abt colors last time.. but I forgot.. Need to read more (??)

Moon: Moon was fine.. the clarity and shaprness of craters was clearly visible. Didn't spend much time in detailed observation.

Tried Jon's GSO 40mm Superview eyepiece. Though i have cleaned the eyepiece, its inner surface is still really dirty. (??)..

Jupiter: With 25mm eyepiece, 48x, Jupiter bands were visible. With 10mm xcel, 120x, it was pretty sharp image. didn't see any other details.

Compared the eyepiece field of view with the Jon's 9mm expanse eyepiece. With Jupiter's moons I was able to get judgment. Indeed expanse had more field of view..probably 7-10 deg more. but i felt that image contrast in xcel was better than expanse.. Need to confirm (??)

Tested the R&P focuser on Jupiter sharpness. focuser is ill bit tight. After using Crayford, use of R&P is indeed undesirable.. the view shakes lil bit while focusing. Need to loose the focuser lil bit. Still.. focuser did excellent job to get the sharp view. Didn't feel like I am compromising on the view...

Alignment and Object locator testing : Spent some time with the "intelliscope".. Two star alignment.. Pointed to Vega. Wasn't able to get a star 60deg away from Vega.. so pointed to Altair.. warp factor was +1.1.. for first shot not bad.. but still should have done better.. but didn't spend much itme becasue of cloud cover rolling in.

Used the intelliscope, to confirm location of Deneb. It was within +/- 1-2deg error margin.
To locate all other objects, used intelliscope.

Alberio: In 25mm view, though not in center. Image was not that great.. yellow-orangish and white-bluish star pair visible. wasn;t the greatest view.

Double Double: Its a good test for eyes, collimation and eyepiece. Again wasn't the greatest view. I think scope wasn;t fully collimated, so was lil bit hard to see the resolving at 10mm eyepiece, 120x.. It should have been perfect at this magnification. but i got the perfect view, at one particular focus.

Again, R&P focus is lil bit tight to handle.

M57 Ring: Pointed to M57 and then checked intelliscope co-ords. In 9mm eyepiece, 135x not the greatest view. Star at2pm missing.. fuzzy ring was visible, but image wasn't sharp. but in 10mm image was great. Star at 2pm visible. I am not sure if transperency got improved within 2mins or not... but image was bright and ring was indeed better than 9mm. Still need to confirm this contrasting aspect in eyepiece comparison.

M31 Andromeda: found out that intelliscope really helps.. It was hard for me to see any reference stars in the clouds... but intelliscope helped...I am too glad that I have it.. worth the money... M31 not the greatest view... clouds to blame. With GSO 40mm widefield.. M32 was lil bit hard, but somehow M110 was visible. Isn't that lil bit contradicting.. any way becasue clouds, didn't think much.

M11 wild duck cluster: Intelliscope for rescue.. but not right on target.. Really hard to see in the finder. I got it once.. bad view..

In 40mm, tried to focus, but felt than focuser tube length is not enough for such a low magnification (30x)... Need to verify the relationship between maximum focuser length and min magnification supported (??)... again i might be wrong.. Need to go to dark sight for perfect focus.

Overall, to summarize..

Intelliscope is indeed a great addition for me.. surely help me in verifying locations and in bad weather. Need to learn better tactics to get warp factor below 0.5

Xcel 10mm eyepiece is probably great addition, if my perception abt image contrast is correct.. though field of view is smaller than 9mm, still image details matter

Not much happy with GSO 40mm superview...again.. weather might be the factor here.. Need to check Orion nebula or Lagoon-Triffid combo in this.

The 2" type of 25mm eyepiece...not sure if it is great or not.. lil bit of pain while swapping eyepieces, because of 2"-.1.25" adapter. Still will check in next few observations..

Indeed glad with the whole scope.. images were good as expected.. during collimation, realized there are coule of spots/scratches at the center of primary mirror. Need to confirm from Jon, if any drawbacks.. Precise collimation is necessary (double-double is the proof)..

Telerad is must... Finding Vega was difficult as hell :) .. It wasn't clouds..it wasn't location either.. but it was me.. and i call myself starhopper ;-D

Quick Browsing..

Date: Oct 29th 2008, Wednesday
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 8:00pm (1:00 hrs)
Location: Jon's place, San diego, CA
Weather: Seeing was good.... but city lights.
Instruments: Jon's 10” dob
Buddies: Jon.

Had a quick night sky browsing from Jon's place. I went to his place to return his scope.

Double Double: Excellent sight. and good split...forgot magnification

M57 Ring: Thru Jon's 32mm Televue Panoptic eyepiece, it was marevellous.. Wide file do of view really helps to get the "cosmic" filing. Star at 2pm was clearly visible.

Ophiuchus Double star (New): Don't know which one was this. But one was orange and other was yellowish. Bright contrast colors.

NGC 6633 OC (New): Really widespread .. don't remember much.

IC4756 OC (New): Jon said he likes this one.. but again ..it was really wide spread.. not that impressive.

NGC 6527 Green Nebula: Exceptionally beautiful. The contrast is probably better than ring nebula. I see blue color, but Jon mainly sees green color. Jon located this object this in a minute.. last time i wasn't able to locate it..

M56 GC (New): first time saw it... easy to locate. In 32mm Televue Panoptics, it was faint. With 40mm GSO SuperView, it was really really faint.

M29 OC: Caught it again..and just with experience of one observation last saturday :).. Nice H shape.

NGC 6910 OC (New): Next to Gamma Cyngni. This is an indeed interesting object.. fuzzy V shape..Felt like some dust in it.. some of the stars are close while others are separated.

Blinking PN: Jon tried to find this one, but he needed to refer to the map.. and thru my sat experience, i caught it in a minute... I was impressed that i was able to find it before him :)..In 32mm eyepiece it was hard to see ..but still in the view. Magnification helps... At highest magnification, ring out of focus, but still see some central brightness.. probably thats the star.

Jupiter Satellite transition: Saw Jupiter satellite transition. Becasue of bad seeing, jupiter was going in & out of focus ... while in focus, the black satellite shadow is strikingly dark..more you concentrate, darker it begins.

Online References..

Keep on Updating..

** Stars **
> Double Double
- Sketch

** Planetary Nebula **
> M57 Ring
- Sketch

** Galaxies **
> M31 Andromeda - M32 - M110
- Sketch
> M33 Triangulum
- Sketch

10" dob @ TDS - Part I

Date: 23rd August 08, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 12:00pm (4 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Seeing was excellent. Lil bit windy in the end. Slightly hot.
Instruments: My 10” dob & 10x50 binocs
Buddies: Bill and Mohammad from next pad.

Total Objects: 27
New Objects: 9 (Mercury, Neptune and Saggi globular clusters)

This is first time I took this 10" dob to a dark site.. It was a rewarding experience. This aperture is indeed satisfying my thrust :). The saggi globular hunting is a proof of it.

Tried to collimate the dob with Collimation cap, but not precisely. Edward with 17" dob, helped me to collimate it with his howie glatter laser collimator. I really need to buy one.

Started with Venus & Mercury. Venus wasn't sharp.. green ghost shadow with actual image.. indeed out of focus.. also too low on horizon. I guess collimation wasn't perfect. Didn't try any high mags on Venus either. Mercury, a small dot was visible in 9x50 finder, but didn't find it in dob...way low on horizon.. Any way, this is first time i saw Mercury with optics. To make sure collimation is correct, I moved to Jupiter, but still wasn't able to focus clearly... bit frustrating.

< Lyra >
Double Double: At 97x, bare split of double double. It was indeed hard to see anything below that (76x). With 135x and 270x it was fabulous. I guess inter-pair split is probably around 60-70 arc seconds, while each individual pair split might be 1-2 arc seconds. bluish-white star colors. Check Here. Inter-split estimation incorrect.. need to verify again..

At high mag, it was really hard to keep in focus. The spring tension system on the dob is not that great. With both mount springs attached, it becomes too tight, while with single spring, the dob moves lil bit because of its weight. Comparing both options, two springs setup was better and tried to keep the objects in view as far as possible.

Alberio: Fabulous view. nice colors. With 38x, out of focus color contrast was great. with 135x and 270x nice color contrast with sharp focus. 38 arc seconds split. I estimated double double split up values based on Alberio split up.

M57 Ring Nebula: Easy catch: Really nice wide angle view in 38x and ring pops in the view easily. Tried all mags 76x, 135x and 270x... 135x was best view. Outer ring and middle dark hole was clearly visible. Averted vision really helps to view the ring. No colors. No central star visible to me. A field star at 2" clock immediate next to ring (Confirmed)

Binocular Star-hopping:
While confirming location of veil nebula, Mohammad from next pad showed up. It was his first time and he was really exited. So I gave him quick binocular tour of DSOs in Sagittarius M7 Ptlomey's OC -> M6 Butterfly OC-> M8 Lagoon -> M20 Triffid -> M24 Star cloud -> Saggi constellation -> Galactic Center -> M22 GC -> M25 OC -> M28 GC.

Also he asked for M13 GC. I got it in my binocs within few seconds, but it was hard to show him exactly where to look at :). Also tried Omega Centauri GC, but failed. I really need to confirm the location (??)

< Scorpius >
M4 & 6144 GC : Instead of browsing to Veil, I started with M4 Glob. Fabulous GC. No colors. Easy to resolve all outskirts stars. 6144 was also next to it. Out of 6144, M4 and Antares, only two objects can be in the 1.0 deg view at a time. 6144 GC is indeed twice the size of Antares, but Antares is too bright and close, dimming the 6144 brightness.

Northern Jewel Box (6231) : Too low on horizon.

M7 Ptolemy OC: Fabulous yellowish stars in view. At 36x whole eyepiece was full of yellow stars. Heavenly experience

M6 Butterfly OC: Butterfly shape visible in 36x, with Reddish orange star tail. The upper wing is loosely attached on a point to the central body, while lower wing is smaller in size. At 135x (9mm), too much mag to see the shape. also reduced some contrast on orange tail star.

< Sagittarius >
Spent hell lot of time in Sagittarius.

M8 Lagoon + Hourglass : Observed in detail. 36x showed the dark semi circular rift. The right side of the rift (E) has a small open cluster (6530). The bottom part of rift (N), has some nebulosity, while The upper part of the rift (W) has another region of nebulosity. At 76x and 135x, the upper nebulous part shows distinctive features: A bright fuzzy object and two stars aligned in SW-NE line. Fuzziness is larger in size and higher magnitude than those two stars. I think this fuzziness is hourglass nebula and with some creativity, you can imagine the shape @ 270x as hourglass aligned at SW-NE line. (Need to confirm). Deep sky filter would have really helped.

M20 Triffid + M21 : Observed in detail. 36x shows the Open Cluster (M21).. This OC is indeed bigger in size than Lagoon OC. Upper Left (SW) of which, lies the nebulosity. In the Y rift shape the bottom of Y prong is aligned SW-NE and is the only visible rift. Two stars are aligned with it on upper side. while 2 more bright stars defining edge of lower nebulosity. The 72x clearly shows one more star at the center of Y shape. It is also aligned with previous two stars. 76x also reveals the other 2 rifts of Y shape upper prong is more visible than lower prong. 76x reveals that the central star in Y is indeed a double star. 135x view was good too, confirming all details. Deep sky filter would have helped.

Kaus Borealis, M22, M28 & NGC-6638 GC: the 5th star of Tea pot is Kaus Borealis (lambda). I wasn't aware abt the name before. "Kau's" :) !! M22 is fabulous GC.. probably slightly fainter than M4. Looks good in high mags. M28 is also nice, bluish and tiny as compared to M22. Hard to resolve anything in there. while star hopping within 32mm eyepiece (36x), I accidentally saw a tiny GC next to Kaus Borealis, which was smaller in size than M28. Map confirmed that it is NGC 6638. It's probably same size as Antares, but bluish and fuzzy in size. Its like sky-blue color fuzzy dot. Also, map shows a planetary nebula NGC 6644 next 6638 but didn't see anything (confirm the mag and try it next time. ??)

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.