Continued..
Blinking PN 6826: There is huge difference betn this one and M57. Compared to their sizes, this one is really really tiny. probably its 1/5th the size of ring. Easy to locate. I think i saw it @ 50x. As I bumped up the mag to 87x with 16T2, the blinking star inside the PN was sort of visible.. More the mags, the blinking effect just went away and bright white star in the bluish disk stays nicely. Unlike M57, this disk is not donut shaped.. the disk is complete, no hole, and the star is perfect white. The blue color depth keeps on reducing from edge to center, probably because of the existence of the star. the more you look at the star more brighter it seems. Blinking PN was masterpiece of the night.
M39 (New): Naked eye object. Thru binocs or lowest mag shows the stars in pyramid/triangle shape. Whole triangle is filled up with stars. Its indeed beautiful.
M29: While hunting for Crescent Nebula, browsed thru this one. Its a small open cluster. Not that impressive for an open cluster..around 15 stars. It shows sort of butterfly shape or outwards curved H. Because of the shape definitely stands out in the view.
Crescent Nebula (New): This is indeed a hard object. In 28mm @ 50x or at higher magnification also, nothing is visible in direct sight. If looked carefully at correct location, then with 50x, i can see the typical curved fuzziness, but still really really faint. After adding the filter, nebula shows up.. With 16T2 @ 87x, it indeed shows the typical Epsilon E-C shape. It fills up around 25% of the eyepiece in center. It is indeed fainter than veil pickering part. Jon wasn't even able to find it. But i got it luckily and then figured out the exact location from M29 and deneb. Should be able to find it next time.
Helix Nebula: Just wanted to take a look thru bigger aperture. Din't make much difference. Filter helps to brighten it up, but then it still din't show any details in the helix. Interesting thing to note is, I can see 4 bright stars inside/on the helix. Some of them seem to be behind the helix too. Being closet PN, probably should highly magnify it to see the details.
Scl GC 288 + Sculptor Gal 253: Both of them are easy catch. Can't fit them in same view @50x with UWAN 82deg, but they are close.. probably in the same view in Ethos 100deg may be possible. The GC is resolvable @ 87x in 16T2, seemed like yellow stars sprinkled on bluish cluster disk. the galaxy is also huge.. it feels up 80% of the 16T2 eyepiece. being sort of edge on, seemed pretty thick too. I felt like i saw some mottling or vertical line/gap on the left side of the galaxy, lil bit like M82 ?? TBD.
Sculptor Dwarf Gal: Failed. The skymap shows it pretty huge object... and so i tried to look for it..Fought for it but didn't find it. Jon also tried it but failed.. when we checked the details of the object, the description indeed shows huge size, but surface brightness is +17.0 magnitude. Completely useless. Need bigger aperture or is it just a photographic object?
MCG -06-03-015 Sculptor Dwarf, Constellation: Sculptor, Dimension: 40.0'x 31.0', Magnitude: 10.50, Surface Brightness: 17.10, Description: vvL,eeF,lE ESO 351-G030,Member of Local Group,large and dim
M34: Tired..so revisiting something. Messed up the location. Picked up wrong stars in perseus and andromeda to look for it. It indeed seems like bouquet or probably diwali cracker - zaad.
M52: Hunt for bubble in Cassiopeia starts with M52 cluster.. because of the filter, cluster is dim, but still the bright star, at the edge of the cluster, seems prominent. With 87x, this one seems interesting. dint try high mags without filter.
Bubble nebula: failed. After the inspiration from Crescent nebula, tried for bubble nebula. Jon mentioned to use H-beta filter on this. He also said that he has tried for it a lot but failed. Indeed hard object. Wasn't even sure how its supposed to look like or how faint it is..
M31-M32-M110: Quick browse thru refractor.. M32 and M110 are indeed tiny with 14x 35mm panoptic.
Pleiades M45: All bluish stars..no fuzziness. Didn't fit in the same view of Pan 14x.
Cygnus PN 7048 (Failed) 7026 (New): Initially we started looking for 7048. It was indeed hard to locate. Later I realized that in cloudy nights article i read abt 7026 and not 7048.. So we switched to 7026. Jon found 7026 quickly. Next to Cyg 63. This one exactly looks that 6441 GC next to G scorpi star. Really close to the bright star. Indeed big, all white in color. Considering the location of 7026, I should be able to locate it next time. 7048 seems to be lil bit tough object and indeed lil bit difficult to locate. Not sure if its worth observing.
Planetary Nebula NGC 7026, Constellation: Cygnus, Dimension: 0.4'x 0.2', Magnitude: 12.00, Surface Brightness: 8.50, Description: pB,biN
Planetary Nebula NGC 7048, Constellation: Cygnus, Dimension: 1.0'x 0.8', Magnitude: 11.00, Surface Brightness: 12.20, Description: pF,pL,dif,iR,vlbM
The whole confusion betn 7048 and 7026 happened because my pocket sky atlas maps 7048 but doesn't even show 7026, though 7026 seems brighter than 7048. I think surface brightness makes a huge difference and pocket atlas should have considered it in the mapping. Same thing also applies for Scultor dwarf. The skymap shows it to be a huge object, but otherwise it was really hard to see visually because of lower surface brightness.
Milkyway Alignment: Over the last 3 months i have seen how milky way moves around the northen celestial pole..e.g. how the milky way in saggitarus rotates much faster than the one in cygnus or much less rotation in cassiopeia, but again much wider angled rotation in Orion. Obviously southern parts are gonna move-rotate much faster and wider as compared to northern objects, but the interesting part here is that..because milkyway is a single line or disk, it moves around and shows the real alignment. All the arms and dust lanes shows the disk rotating precisely.. So is it actually rotating around galactic north star? Where is the galactic north pole ?? Probably 23N of north pole..not sure TBD. Milkyway must be rotating around it. Need to see the relationship betn celestial pole (earth), Ecliptic pole (solar system alignment), galactic pole (milkyway alignment)
Showing posts with label MilkyWay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MilkyWay. Show all posts
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Sunday, September 9, 2007
First Light @ TDS - 8th Sept 2007
Date: 8th Sept 2007, Saturday
Observation Time : 8pm to 11:30pm (3:30 hrs)
Location : TDS, CA
Seeing : Good (for me, "excellent")
Transparency : Good (for me, "excellent")
Cloud Cover : None
Instrument : My 6' dobsonian reflector Celestron StarHopper 6, Bob's 17.5' dobsonian reflector, 22' SDAA observatory telescope, My 10x50 Nikkon binocs.
Buddies : Ranga and SDAA president Bob for a while
Highlight of the night : M17 - Swan Nebula
TDS was an awesome experience. This is first time I took my 6' dob there. I have browsed the sky using the dob from home, but dark sky from TDS was a feast. It was the true "First Light" for my telescope.
Some mistakes on my side. Actually, I forgot to take the side fixers of the telescope. Means.. I wasn't able to hold on to a object through telescope for others to see.. It was somewhat a mess... but Ranga and me pulled it together really well.
Milky Way: Never seen before like this. Milky way cloud was amazing, flowing from Sagittarius , Cygnus to Cassiopeia. The milky fuzziness was so bright, that any one can mistake it for a normal cloud, but when scanned through my 10x50 binocs, I can see millions of stars in that milky cloud. I have seen pictures of these on my "binocular astronomy" book, or on APOD, but seeing by yourself is an ultimate satisfaction. Also tried to observe the dust lanes of milky way, but wasn't able to see it clearly. Need to study more on this one.
While explaining Ranga about deep sky objects in Sagittarius, we scanned through them with binoculars as well as my 6' telescope.
M7: The Ptolemey's open cluster M7 was visible with naked eye. Scan through 10x50. revealed hundreds of star distributed over 2 deg field. Lots of stars at the center and more widely distributed at outer fringes.
M6: The butterfly cluster can be barely made through naked eye, if you know where to look at, but caught easily through 10x50. M7 and M6 are around 7 deg apart. Both clusters can not be observed in the same eyepiece view as my binocs. Considering the number of stars and distribution of stars in M7, M6 is not that impressive. Not sure why it is called "butterfly".
M22: The Sagittarius cluster is a globular one. Really good through binoculars. It is around 3 deg apart from Sagi-Lambda. With my 6' dob, 32mm eyepiece and 2x barlow, under 80x magnification, it is an awesome view. I can resolve the outer fringe stars clearly. Tried to observe the colors, but all of them seemed to be almost same.. white mainly.. I thought that cluster is divided in 2 parts, 99% is one side. At 7' clock from the main one, has remaining stars like a small open cluster.
M25-23 open clusters and M24 star cloud: North of M22, around 8 deg, lies M25 open cluster. Its located nicely inside a shape of stars like a shell or a logarithmic curve is formed by these stars and M25 is at the center of it. The cluster is typical open cluster. I felt the stars to be yellowish.
Exact west of M25, around 5 deg apart, the star cloud M24 exists. I really don't understand what specific fuzzy object Messier saw here, but i can see the cloud like all other clouds, which are part of Milky way... the interesting part here is I can see the stars inside M24 arranged in an oval shaped heart.
Exact west, little bit towards north, you can see small open cluster of M23. Because of being small, its not as impressive as M25, but still M25-24-23 alignment is good to watch.
M17-Swan Nebula: when I watched M25-24-23 alignment thought binocs, I accidentally saw two fuzzy objects above M24. First one turned out to be M17 swan nebula, while other one to be M16 Eagle nebula.
M17 is like 2 or 3 degrees apart from M24 oval shape. I didn't really understand what it is from my binocs, but the moment my telescope hit on it, I was spellbound. I saw the "swan". The nebulous gas is indeed in the shape of a swan or looks like number "2" to me. I observed it in 80x, 100x and 200x magnifications. The 200x magnification was good, but lack of light/aperture didn't make it good enough, but 100x magnification made it excellent. I saw one star at the head of the swan and two stars aligned in the neck of the swan.
While talking with SDAA president Bob, he showed me the Swan through his 17.5' dobsonian. He explained me the use of OIII filter for nebulas. He showed me the contrast in Swan nebula through this filter. With the filter, the gaseous part of swan nebula was strikingly bright than any other field stars. I think I need to buy the OIII and UHC filter. Thanks Bob !!
Swan nebula was indeed a "holy" site for me :) and finding it through my 6' dob, was the achievement for the day.. to be literally correct,... the achievement for the "night" :) !!
(photo credit: from net somewhere.. this is how it looked from 6" dob, but in black-white)
M16 Eagle nebula: Being impressed by Swan, I moved the dob to Eagle nebula, but I didn't see any fuzziness in this area. I saw the shape of stars to be in the "wing" shape.. the arrangement was like the "marathi number 4"... or the way kids draw the bird in their picture of "nature"... the stars were indeed closer to each other forming this shape. ..but no fuzziness... need to read more about this object.
M8-Lagoon nebula: I have seen this in MTRP, but wasn't really sure if indeed it was Lagoon. From TDS, lagoon was excellent. It is divided in two parts by the "dark" lane. On the right/east side, I saw the open cluster NGC-6530 inside lagoon. On east side, we have two stars parallel to the cluster. At 10'clock position of these stars, we have second component of lagoon which is strikingly bright than the first part. Infact this second component was visible from MTRP. I should have had the OIII filter here. Lagoon through Bob's 17.5 dob was excellent. the dark lane is indeed really wide and you can see the two parts of lagoon so clearly. Because of OIII, the cluster on the first component wasn't that impressive.
M20-Triffid Nebula: I pointed the dob at the location, where M20 is supposed to be, but I wasn't able to see anything fuzzy. I got surprised and checked my location again. but still nothing impressive in my eyepiece. I compared the magnitudes of M20 with M8 and they are of same mag 5. but still nothing in eyepiece... but then i watched it carefully. and i saw really dim fuzziness around a star.. indeed it was there... Around 4' clock position of the central star, two stars form a line, which is exactly next to one of the dark lanes of Triffid. All other lanes were not that clear enough. I tried it with Bob's 17.5' dob, and triffid dark lanes popped immediately through OIII filter.
Overall, M20 fuzziness is not as bright as M8.. I need to verify the magnitudes of both and other people's observations of M20.
All these objects are part of Sagittarius and ...indeed.. Sagittarius is worth to spend plenty of time.
M31 Andromeda-M32-M110 Galaxy Triplet: I have watched Andromeda Galaxy - M31 from my home, but from TDS it was just beautiful. The core of the Galaxy is like bright cotton and the outside is like dispersed cotton. The outside bright haziness continues everywhere, mainly across the horizontal axis of the galaxy. The whole eyepiece was full of just this haziness. Wasn't able to resolve anything inside Andromeda.
Got a chance to watch Andromeda through Bob's 17.5' dob. Instead of going deep into Andromeda, he pointed me to Andromeda's satellite galaxies.. M32 and M110. M32 was around 1 deg apart due east. It looks like small globular cluster. compared to Andromeda, it is like 1/5th in size, circular in shape. M110 was 1 degree apart form Andromeda due north-west, It is almost parallel to Andromeda but I think it was on the edge view for us and indeed more elongated than Andromeda. Need to verify these things.
I tried the triplet again through my 6' dob, and indeed with lowest magnification of 38x, I was able to put all 3 of them in the same eyepiece view.
M33- Triangulum Galaxy: In my first attempt i wasn't able to locate Triangulum. Scanning through binocs also was a failure. But Ranga found it for us and kind of mentioned the location and i was able to see some fuzziness through my binocs. I pointed the dob towards it and i indeed saw the fuzziness, but i really didn't pay careful attention to this object. Later i spotted Pegasus constellation and confirmed the location of M33, and indeed the fuzziness which we saw before was Triangulum. This galaxy is the most distant naked eye object that can be seen from the earth. Need to watch it more carefully next time.
Perseus Double Cluster:
Visible Naked eye object. I think magnitude is same as M7 cluster. Individual cluster as such is really small, but both being together makes it naked eye object.
M57-Ring Nebula:
With OIII filter on Bob's 17.5' dob, it was a good sight. All other field stars were dim. but still the rng was somewhat fuzzy. Infact i felt it like a hazy blue-white color disk rather than a ring. Bob/Rick blamed the "seeing" conditions.
with my 6' dob, I caught M57 in first shot. Indeed it was awesome. I was barely able to make out the color, but ring was surely visible. but considering "seeing" conditionals, i think I had a better view on this one from MTRP than TDS.
M27-Dumbbell Nebula:
with my 6' dob, dumbbell was an easy catch, but it was just some haziness to me. Didn't see any dumbbell shape. Better luck next time.
M2 - Globular:
M2 was the only object I watched through 22' SDAA scope. It was beautiful. The core of M2 was strikingly bright. Was able to resolve most of the stars on the fringes of the cluster. All stars seem to be yellowish.. hmmm.. not sure why..
M13 - Hercules globular cluster:
It to a while to locate M13 through 6' dob. I think I attempted it at wrong time. It was located way high in the sky. Ranga also tried it, but didn't work. After my 3 attempts, I found it, but somehow it wasn't that impressive as compared to M22. I had really high hopes from M13 being it better than M22. I am not sure why it happened.
Infact overall I think whatever objects I saw in the the later half of the night, weren't much clearer. Probably "seeing" to blame to, but milky way cloud was still strikingly bright. so i really can not say that "seeing" was bad... hmmmm i think more experience and more observation times will answer it by itself !!
On the planets side,
Jupiter: It was the first one of the night to look at. 3 satellites, two being on the extreme end, while one being closer to it, was a nice view. Really clear sky conditions, pointed out the bands on the Jupiter clearly. I have seen them before, but not as bright as this one. They were brown and in the northern hemisphere of Jupiter, just above the equator.
Uranus: First time of my life, I watched Uranus through Bob's 17.5' dob. It was indeed a bluish disk. but somehow the image wasn't as clear. I tried to focus, but it didn't work. (Bad seeing??) Bob mentioned that he watched Uranus's moon the previous day, but we weren't able to see anything. He blamed for bad "seeing". I didn't know the precise location of Uranus, so haven't attempted it through my 6' dob.
TBD:
- Read more and observe Milky way dust lane
- Star colors in M7 through telescope.
- M6 called "butterfly" .. why ?
- M28 next to Saggi-Lambda.
- Read more about OIII and UHC filters and lists of objects to be viewed through the filter.
- M24 star cloud.. what is it ?
- M19 Eagle nebula... is it supposed to be fuzzy ?
- M8-M20 magnitudes and other people's observations.
- M33 careful observation for next time
- Uranus
- Wild duck cluster. Somebody was talking abt it really loud, during the star party. What/where it is ?
- M2 through my 6' dob.
Observation Time : 8pm to 11:30pm (3:30 hrs)
Location : TDS, CA
Seeing : Good (for me, "excellent")
Transparency : Good (for me, "excellent")
Cloud Cover : None
Instrument : My 6' dobsonian reflector Celestron StarHopper 6, Bob's 17.5' dobsonian reflector, 22' SDAA observatory telescope, My 10x50 Nikkon binocs.
Buddies : Ranga and SDAA president Bob for a while
Highlight of the night : M17 - Swan Nebula
TDS was an awesome experience. This is first time I took my 6' dob there. I have browsed the sky using the dob from home, but dark sky from TDS was a feast. It was the true "First Light" for my telescope.
Some mistakes on my side. Actually, I forgot to take the side fixers of the telescope. Means.. I wasn't able to hold on to a object through telescope for others to see.. It was somewhat a mess... but Ranga and me pulled it together really well.
Milky Way: Never seen before like this. Milky way cloud was amazing, flowing from Sagittarius , Cygnus to Cassiopeia. The milky fuzziness was so bright, that any one can mistake it for a normal cloud, but when scanned through my 10x50 binocs, I can see millions of stars in that milky cloud. I have seen pictures of these on my "binocular astronomy" book, or on APOD, but seeing by yourself is an ultimate satisfaction. Also tried to observe the dust lanes of milky way, but wasn't able to see it clearly. Need to study more on this one.
While explaining Ranga about deep sky objects in Sagittarius, we scanned through them with binoculars as well as my 6' telescope.
M7: The Ptolemey's open cluster M7 was visible with naked eye. Scan through 10x50. revealed hundreds of star distributed over 2 deg field. Lots of stars at the center and more widely distributed at outer fringes.
M6: The butterfly cluster can be barely made through naked eye, if you know where to look at, but caught easily through 10x50. M7 and M6 are around 7 deg apart. Both clusters can not be observed in the same eyepiece view as my binocs. Considering the number of stars and distribution of stars in M7, M6 is not that impressive. Not sure why it is called "butterfly".
M22: The Sagittarius cluster is a globular one. Really good through binoculars. It is around 3 deg apart from Sagi-Lambda. With my 6' dob, 32mm eyepiece and 2x barlow, under 80x magnification, it is an awesome view. I can resolve the outer fringe stars clearly. Tried to observe the colors, but all of them seemed to be almost same.. white mainly.. I thought that cluster is divided in 2 parts, 99% is one side. At 7' clock from the main one, has remaining stars like a small open cluster.
M25-23 open clusters and M24 star cloud: North of M22, around 8 deg, lies M25 open cluster. Its located nicely inside a shape of stars like a shell or a logarithmic curve is formed by these stars and M25 is at the center of it. The cluster is typical open cluster. I felt the stars to be yellowish.
Exact west of M25, around 5 deg apart, the star cloud M24 exists. I really don't understand what specific fuzzy object Messier saw here, but i can see the cloud like all other clouds, which are part of Milky way... the interesting part here is I can see the stars inside M24 arranged in an oval shaped heart.
Exact west, little bit towards north, you can see small open cluster of M23. Because of being small, its not as impressive as M25, but still M25-24-23 alignment is good to watch.
M17-Swan Nebula: when I watched M25-24-23 alignment thought binocs, I accidentally saw two fuzzy objects above M24. First one turned out to be M17 swan nebula, while other one to be M16 Eagle nebula.
M17 is like 2 or 3 degrees apart from M24 oval shape. I didn't really understand what it is from my binocs, but the moment my telescope hit on it, I was spellbound. I saw the "swan". The nebulous gas is indeed in the shape of a swan or looks like number "2" to me. I observed it in 80x, 100x and 200x magnifications. The 200x magnification was good, but lack of light/aperture didn't make it good enough, but 100x magnification made it excellent. I saw one star at the head of the swan and two stars aligned in the neck of the swan.
While talking with SDAA president Bob, he showed me the Swan through his 17.5' dobsonian. He explained me the use of OIII filter for nebulas. He showed me the contrast in Swan nebula through this filter. With the filter, the gaseous part of swan nebula was strikingly bright than any other field stars. I think I need to buy the OIII and UHC filter. Thanks Bob !!
Swan nebula was indeed a "holy" site for me :) and finding it through my 6' dob, was the achievement for the day.. to be literally correct,... the achievement for the "night" :) !!
(photo credit: from net somewhere.. this is how it looked from 6" dob, but in black-white)
M16 Eagle nebula: Being impressed by Swan, I moved the dob to Eagle nebula, but I didn't see any fuzziness in this area. I saw the shape of stars to be in the "wing" shape.. the arrangement was like the "marathi number 4"... or the way kids draw the bird in their picture of "nature"... the stars were indeed closer to each other forming this shape. ..but no fuzziness... need to read more about this object.
M8-Lagoon nebula: I have seen this in MTRP, but wasn't really sure if indeed it was Lagoon. From TDS, lagoon was excellent. It is divided in two parts by the "dark" lane. On the right/east side, I saw the open cluster NGC-6530 inside lagoon. On east side, we have two stars parallel to the cluster. At 10'clock position of these stars, we have second component of lagoon which is strikingly bright than the first part. Infact this second component was visible from MTRP. I should have had the OIII filter here. Lagoon through Bob's 17.5 dob was excellent. the dark lane is indeed really wide and you can see the two parts of lagoon so clearly. Because of OIII, the cluster on the first component wasn't that impressive.
M20-Triffid Nebula: I pointed the dob at the location, where M20 is supposed to be, but I wasn't able to see anything fuzzy. I got surprised and checked my location again. but still nothing impressive in my eyepiece. I compared the magnitudes of M20 with M8 and they are of same mag 5. but still nothing in eyepiece... but then i watched it carefully. and i saw really dim fuzziness around a star.. indeed it was there... Around 4' clock position of the central star, two stars form a line, which is exactly next to one of the dark lanes of Triffid. All other lanes were not that clear enough. I tried it with Bob's 17.5' dob, and triffid dark lanes popped immediately through OIII filter.
Overall, M20 fuzziness is not as bright as M8.. I need to verify the magnitudes of both and other people's observations of M20.
All these objects are part of Sagittarius and ...indeed.. Sagittarius is worth to spend plenty of time.
M31 Andromeda-M32-M110 Galaxy Triplet: I have watched Andromeda Galaxy - M31 from my home, but from TDS it was just beautiful. The core of the Galaxy is like bright cotton and the outside is like dispersed cotton. The outside bright haziness continues everywhere, mainly across the horizontal axis of the galaxy. The whole eyepiece was full of just this haziness. Wasn't able to resolve anything inside Andromeda.
Got a chance to watch Andromeda through Bob's 17.5' dob. Instead of going deep into Andromeda, he pointed me to Andromeda's satellite galaxies.. M32 and M110. M32 was around 1 deg apart due east. It looks like small globular cluster. compared to Andromeda, it is like 1/5th in size, circular in shape. M110 was 1 degree apart form Andromeda due north-west, It is almost parallel to Andromeda but I think it was on the edge view for us and indeed more elongated than Andromeda. Need to verify these things.
I tried the triplet again through my 6' dob, and indeed with lowest magnification of 38x, I was able to put all 3 of them in the same eyepiece view.
M33- Triangulum Galaxy: In my first attempt i wasn't able to locate Triangulum. Scanning through binocs also was a failure. But Ranga found it for us and kind of mentioned the location and i was able to see some fuzziness through my binocs. I pointed the dob towards it and i indeed saw the fuzziness, but i really didn't pay careful attention to this object. Later i spotted Pegasus constellation and confirmed the location of M33, and indeed the fuzziness which we saw before was Triangulum. This galaxy is the most distant naked eye object that can be seen from the earth. Need to watch it more carefully next time.
Perseus Double Cluster:
Visible Naked eye object. I think magnitude is same as M7 cluster. Individual cluster as such is really small, but both being together makes it naked eye object.
M57-Ring Nebula:
With OIII filter on Bob's 17.5' dob, it was a good sight. All other field stars were dim. but still the rng was somewhat fuzzy. Infact i felt it like a hazy blue-white color disk rather than a ring. Bob/Rick blamed the "seeing" conditions.
with my 6' dob, I caught M57 in first shot. Indeed it was awesome. I was barely able to make out the color, but ring was surely visible. but considering "seeing" conditionals, i think I had a better view on this one from MTRP than TDS.
M27-Dumbbell Nebula:
with my 6' dob, dumbbell was an easy catch, but it was just some haziness to me. Didn't see any dumbbell shape. Better luck next time.
M2 - Globular:
M2 was the only object I watched through 22' SDAA scope. It was beautiful. The core of M2 was strikingly bright. Was able to resolve most of the stars on the fringes of the cluster. All stars seem to be yellowish.. hmmm.. not sure why..
M13 - Hercules globular cluster:
It to a while to locate M13 through 6' dob. I think I attempted it at wrong time. It was located way high in the sky. Ranga also tried it, but didn't work. After my 3 attempts, I found it, but somehow it wasn't that impressive as compared to M22. I had really high hopes from M13 being it better than M22. I am not sure why it happened.
Infact overall I think whatever objects I saw in the the later half of the night, weren't much clearer. Probably "seeing" to blame to, but milky way cloud was still strikingly bright. so i really can not say that "seeing" was bad... hmmmm i think more experience and more observation times will answer it by itself !!
On the planets side,
Jupiter: It was the first one of the night to look at. 3 satellites, two being on the extreme end, while one being closer to it, was a nice view. Really clear sky conditions, pointed out the bands on the Jupiter clearly. I have seen them before, but not as bright as this one. They were brown and in the northern hemisphere of Jupiter, just above the equator.
Uranus: First time of my life, I watched Uranus through Bob's 17.5' dob. It was indeed a bluish disk. but somehow the image wasn't as clear. I tried to focus, but it didn't work. (Bad seeing??) Bob mentioned that he watched Uranus's moon the previous day, but we weren't able to see anything. He blamed for bad "seeing". I didn't know the precise location of Uranus, so haven't attempted it through my 6' dob.
TBD:
- Read more and observe Milky way dust lane
- Star colors in M7 through telescope.
- M6 called "butterfly" .. why ?
- M28 next to Saggi-Lambda.
- Read more about OIII and UHC filters and lists of objects to be viewed through the filter.
- M24 star cloud.. what is it ?
- M19 Eagle nebula... is it supposed to be fuzzy ?
- M8-M20 magnitudes and other people's observations.
- M33 careful observation for next time
- Uranus
- Wild duck cluster. Somebody was talking abt it really loud, during the star party. What/where it is ?
- M2 through my 6' dob.
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