M57 Ring Nebula in City lights

 

Date: July 26th 2026, Sunday
Observation Time: 9:30pm to 11pm (observing time ~1.5hrs), 
Location: SC Home
Weather: clear Skies, but heavy light pollution because of street light & moon white-wash 
Instruments: Astrotech 102ED APO  

9:30pm. Watching towards East. On South side (right), moon is shining bright in gibbous phase 2 days shy of full phase. On North left side bright white street light has caused white wash. So I am hiding away behind patio wall. That's the whole city light pollution. 

Just for fun was browsing Zenith sky near Vega and Alberio, 

Alberio was fantastic & crisp. Even Aparna clearly saw the split, orange-blue colors in default 20x. 

From there, kept on browsing the sky upward North towards Lyra in 20x with 35mm Pan. During Houge park, telescope showed the ring nebula nicely, so I just wanted to see how it looks thru my scope from city lights. Alberio to Sulafat and the line of parallelogram. I can clearly see a faint object at mid-center. Bingo. Even in so much light pollution its visible Mag-8 object. 42x Nag17 shows it clearly. Even Dhruv was able to see the dark ring, when I explained it to him. Tried UHC filter on it. Slightly brighter (but it may be psychological perspective)

Overall it's impressive what you can see. If moon and street light can be fully avoided, I am sure it will pop up nicely. 

Moon: Later switched it to moon. Dhruv enjoyed it quite a lot. Also lot of Q&A on moon geology.

 

     

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!

  

 

Little one @ Blvd

Date: August 18th 2012, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 11pm (observing time ~3.5hrs), 
Location: Jon's @ Blvd
Weather: fine.. 4/5 seeing.. before sunset it was cloudy, but later clouds just disappeared. Moon - 1st day 
Instruments: Jon's 16" scope and his Williams 80mm scope  


Our little one visited Jon's place in mountains for first time. Slept all the way during the drive. But played for a while at their place. Later got into daycare anxiety mode and just made everybody go nuts..later got back to normal.

Moon: FAILED. Started observation with locating first day phase moon. But it was way too hard. Never found it. It was Ramadan Ed 1st day moon.

Saturn: Saturn-Mars-Spica triplet as visible in evening dusk. Saturn visible nicely. Tried thru Williams 80mm with 9mm, 4mm TMB eyepieces. Saturn rings clearly visible, front rings are on bottom, while the back side f the ring moves upwards. As night moved on, can clearly see the dark gas lanes on the saturn disk. No details / gaps on rings. Still it was impressive what 80mm scope showed from the dark place.

Mars: 80mm is not enough for mars details. Seemed like big orange bright spot in the scope. Going closer to horizon, so dint get a chance to see thru 16" scope.

M6-M7: naked eye visibility. Fits in same view in the binocs ~6deg FoV. Jons 16" scope lot of details on both. Butterfly shape. apparently i got this pair confused with m46-m47 and ended up looking for the planetary nebula in it. Jon reminded me of absence of last year. Hsshh..

Antares GC M4: Visible thru bincs. 800mm with 24mm EP, shows the GC nicely. Very tiny though. With 9mm, i think can resolve some outskirt stars. 

Northern Jewel Box: Looks nice from all three instruments. Binocs show 5-7 stars low on horizon. 80mm has the best view. Cluster fills up 50% of the view. bright stars with some E + 4 + curved shape visible. In Jons 16", view was fully filled with eyepiece. Can see very faint stars. 

M8 - M20: Quick browse thru. Lagoon without filter still shows lot of nebulosity and C shaped dark lane separation clealt from 16" scope. Triffid looks smaller as compared to Lagoon, but whole nebulosity is nice. More I spent time in EP for Triffid, the dark lanes started popping up.

Swan M17: Quick browse again.. but impressive.. distinctive shape and bright stars at the bottom and another one at the center  in the curvature shape. 

Eagle M16: no nebulosity... typical star formation like a symbol of an angle.

M22 GC above star: quick browse thru binocs and 80mm.. is it bigger than Antares GC 

M25 OC Flipped comma: Binocs show the 3 deg view of this object with inverted comma shape. OC at the center of the comma is smaller, but the whole spae makes it beautiful. 

M23: While looking for Crescent nebula ended up on this one. very bright and impressive object. 16" scope view is just lightend bright with this object. lot of yellow white stars. 

Crescent Nebula: Very tiny fuzzy object from the 16" scope.. but its definitely bigger than other planetary nebula objects like saturn nebula or ghost of jupiter. Can not miss the object frm 16" scope.. next to a star. Infact i found this one first rather than way bigger M23 :). Increasing the mags didn't make much difference though in the visibility... There is a GC nearby it.. i think you can definitely distinguish betn the type of these objects i.e. GC vs nebula.

M10-M12: Browsed the Ophiuchus GCs. Very impressive. looks similar in size as well brightness..somehow binocs gave impression that m12 is bigger, but scope shows m10 t be bigger. Hshh.. must be feeling sleepy. Very easy to locate. Probably saw these after a long time. no discernible shape.. but these are definitively bigger than m92 in Hercules (later).

Planetary ngc 6445 Box Nebula (New): Jon showed this planetary. seemed like bright blue circle...very very tiny.. dont remember anything else. Later i was able to locate it smoothly. There is another GC next to it ngc 6440. In moderate view the pair looks nice.. very tiny and faint..probably only possible in high apperture 16" scope

Ngc oc - Ic oc - Ic oc: NGC is definitively looks nice from the16" scope.. but IC objects are better in binocs. ngc-ic and the planetory fits in same view. 

Gc near spica: Jon showed this one. wasnt able to locate it by myself. its seemed like OC, but its loosely connected GC.

M13: Took a long time just to locate HER constellation. I sort of lost the scale of quadrilateral size. It is smaller than what I was thinking. One year gap in observation made me forget lot of things. M13 is fabulous.. supports magnification really well. yellow white stars.. very bright.. 

Gal: Gal near M13.. very faint and tiny as compared the M13. Wasnt able t fit both in the same view of 16" scope.

Planetary: Again.. yet another planetary..

M92: Tiny as compared to M13.. but i compared it immediately with m10-12 pair.. and m92 seems smaller and fainter than those.. Its sort of lost beauty in front of other fabulous GCs in the sky.

Saturn Neb: Easy to locate. White bluish object.. tiny.. 

M Gc.. M oc: browsing all three objects including saturn neb, is an interesting experience. It shows the differences in the object size. The triagnle is so tiny.. OC is very tiny as well.

M30: Viewed thru binocs.. very tiny.. the typical shape sort of shows up but not discernible well from binocs.

Milkyway: the orion and Perseus arms were marvelous.. its like very bright white cloud belt in the sky.. Dark skies rules... simply breathtaking.

Aparna's @ School and that means... :-)

Date: 10th March 2011, Thu
Observation Time: 7pm - 8pm (1hr)
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: No clouds, lil windy. Moon 6th day.
Instruments: AT102ED f/7, 7x20 Finder.

Pan 35 - 20x
Nagler 17 - 42x
Xcel 10 - 71x
Nagler 7 - 102x
Nag 7 x2 - 204x

Rigel -
35mm Pan : Can not split it.
17mm Nagler : when switched from 35 to 17mm, can not see the split, but when switched from 10mm to 17mm, then can sort of see the companion star, but its lil hard.
10mm Xcel : Not very clean split, but can see the companion star just below rigel.
7mm Nagler : Clear split. The magnitude difference is clearly visible. Rigel is not that bright and doesn't emit rays like Sirius, hence can observe the brightness of the companion. After previous dark night observation from Jon's place, can get the feeling of 10" seconds separation. Its very close at this magnification as well.
7mm x2 : Not a sharp image. 7mm was the best image.

M41 - Can locate it from the finder. Pan 35 and Nag 17 shows the best view. C shape and 2 V shapes of bright stars should be the distinctive mark for this one. (TBD: older observations)

Tau CMa -
Can not see the cluster in the finder. Hence Possible to get confused with the wrong star.
Pan 35 : barely shows the cluster, you can see very faint stars around the brighter Tau CMa, but nothing distinctive.
Nag 17 : Shows better view of the cluster. Can see around 10-12 faints stars in the vicinity. no distinctive shape. but all stars are well surrounding the brighter Tau.
Xcel 10 : More fainter stars visible. Total star count is 20-25.
Nag 7 : More fainter stars. ~35. Probably this is the best view.

M93 :
Don't remember much about this one. (Write the observation immediately. I am writing this one 4 days later.)

M46-M47 : From dark sight like Jon's place, M46 is very impressive and better than M47. But from polluted place like our mission valley home, M46 is totally washed out. M47 shows more brightness.

In M47, k shape visible, with arcs instead of straight lines. As magnification is increased, more fainter stars are visible. M47 clearly visible in finder as well.

M46 is totally washed out. Finder doesn't show it at all. Very hard to see in Pan 35 as well. It needs to be located based on M47 and nearby two brighter stars, as mentioned in the star map. Nag 17 shows some fainter stars.

NGC 2423 Near M47 : Quickly tried NGC above M47.. but nothing impressive at all. In Nag 17 barely 5 stars visible. Proabaly better from darker sight.

M48 : is out of reach. APO is almost going vertical form the patio.

M42 - M43 with UHC : M42 visible from finder.
Pan 35 shows M42, lil bit of saucer and then dark pillar is visible. two stars in trapezoid are resolvable. M43 not visible. Pan 35 fits in other two stars of the orion belt as well. Apparently each star is a small open cluster in itself.

Nag 17 magnifies the image well. Trapezoid 4 stars visible. Saucer and dark pillar visible nciely, 3 stars in parallel to the pillar are visible nicely. When added UHC filter, stars turned blue. Can only resolve 3 stars in the trapezoid. but the nebulosity increased noticeably. Saucer shows more nebulosity than Pan 35 view itself. M43 is now visible as well. The dark piller and surrounding area stars showing more depth. the nebulosity around the trapezoid seems more brighter. Second pillar shows up from the saucer, pointing towards trapezoid, but at right-angled position from the main pillar. I have see nthis pillar before, but i had totally forgoten it. but tonights view brought it back. Surprisingly, I missed this second pillar shape in Jon's 25".. I wonder how..

Nag 7 wasn't able to resolve the trapezoid. Also image wasn't stable. Nag 17 + UHC view was the best for the night.

Sigma Orionis - Read my past observations about this one in the morning. So visited it. Easy catch.
Pan 35 : shows 2-2-1 star alignment. (i.e. pair-pair-single stars). First pair is STF 761, second pair, in the middle, Sigma Orionis. Can resolve only two stars (A & E). 'A' is definitely brighter than 'E'.

Nag 17 : shows one more star in A-E.. D shows up. Fainter than E. Very close to A.

Nag 7 : C pops up in this one. Lil Further from A than D.

Overall A-B was never split. I dont know how much mags it requires (??). I should tried the barlow. (Description below says that i can not")

From internet: "Sigma Orionis consists of 5 components, the main components A and B at present only 0.3 "apart, and thus for amateur telescopes hardly separable. The components C, D and E each have a distance of 11.5", 12.7 " and 41.4 "of AB"

Mintaka : Nice binary. Easily split in Pan 35. Primary is brighter my huge margin than secondary.

Moon : Observed moon for ~10 mins In Pan 35, Nag 17 and Nag 7. Details TBD.

Moon - First Quarter

Date: Sept 14th, 2010 Monday
Observation Time: 8pm to 8:45pm (45 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: White zone observation. No clouds. Moon (first quarter).
Instruments: Astrotech 102ED APO. Pan35 (20x), 17T4 (41x), 7T1 (101x), 7T1x2 (202x)

Observed Moon:

Crater Aristoteles and Crater Eudoxus : Just next to terminator, these crater shadows look fabulous. Shows massive depth.

Montes Haemus : Western border to Mare Serenitatis, across N-S. Shows good details on these mountains peaks. These peaks are just on the terminators today. Tomorrow might be better day to observe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montes_Haemus

Crater Posidonious and the wrinkles : On the North-Eastern edge of Mare Serenitatis. Its like small scale Crater Plato. Also has a crater inside its plain surface. the plan surface also shows a big wrinkel across N-E-S border.

Crater TheoPhilius, Crater Cyrillus, Crater Catharina : These three craters in SE region (bottom corner). Cyr-Cath are joined together. Yesterday they were closer to terminator, so they showed this connection very well, because of the shadows. Its like shape of 8 but middle section sort of merged. Today being away from terminator, they were washed out. They didn't show this connection very well today.

Crater Maurolycus: Being closer to terminator the central peak shows good details. It seemed to be made up of 3 mountain pieces in itself. Third one is actually complex in formation.

--

Kaus Australis i.e. Epsilon Saggi: Brightest star of the Saggi constellation. Map shows it as double, but seems like the binary component is too faint to be seen. FAILED.

--

Moon Observation projects to follow:
http://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/lunar/lunar2.html
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/moon/3308811.html

Archstone First Light..

Date: Sept 13th, 2010 Monday
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 8:15pm (45 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: White zone observation. Very light polluted.. .No clouds.. Moon (a day before first quarter).
Instruments: Astrotech 102ED APO. Pan35 (20x), 17T4 (41x), 7T1 (101x), 7T1x2 (202x)
Buddies: Aparna

Observed first time from new Home. Somehow never got a chance to observe, in last 5 weeks, since we moved here.

Apprently, this is highly light polluted area. This is all white zone area. Summerset atleast was in Red zone. The Naked Eye visibility has gone down drastically. NELM ~3. In Saggitarius, Phi Saggi was barely visible.

http://www.brighthub.com/science/space/articles/50420.aspx
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Sagittarius_constellation_map.svg/2000px-Sagittarius_constellation_map.svg.png

Because of this, it indeed gives new respect for dark skies.. Also, just identifying the constellation boundaries is also tough. Good way to test what you know, based on judgment. e.g. Ophiuchus was visible, but i wasn't able to locate the constellation boundary.

Target List:

CON  OBJECT    OTHER   TYPE    RA       DEC       MAG   SUBR   SIZE_MAX SIZE_MIN NGC DESCR                     NOTES

1  SGR  NGC 6523  M 8     CL+NB   18 03.7  -24 23    5     13      45 m     30 m    !!!;vB;eL;eiF;w L Cl          Lagoon Nebula;Cl NGC 6530 invl;dark lane crosses neb

2  SGR  NGC 6618  M 17    CL+NB   18 20.8  -16 11    6     13      11 m             !!!;B;eL;eiF;2 hooked         Omega nebula;Swan Nebula;many F outer loops;use filter

3  SGR  NGC 6514  M 20    CL+NB   18 02.7  -22 58    6.3   13      28 m             vB;vL;Trifid;D* inv           Trifid nebula;sev dark lanes;H IV 41 & V 10;D* HN 40 invl

4  SGR  NGC 6656  M 22    GLOCL   18 36.4  -23 54    5.2   11      24 m             vB;vL;R;vRi;vmC               Stars mags 11...;one of finest globs

5  SGR  NGC 6626  M 28    GLOCL   18 24.5  -24 52    6.9   11      15 m             vB;L;R;geCM;rrr               45' NW from Lambda Sgr;* mags 14...

6  SGR  NGC 6530  OCL 19  OPNCL   18 04.5  -24 21    4.6   99.9    15 m             Cl;B;L;pRi;f M8               In Lagoon nebula M8;25* mags 7...


7  SCO  NGC 6121  M 4     GLOCL   16 23.6  -26 32    5.4   12      26.3 m           Cl;8 or 10 B* in line;rrr     Look for central bar structure

8  SCO  NGC 6405  M 6     OPNCL   17 40.3  -32 15    4.2   10      20 m             Cl;L;iR;lC;st7;10...          Butterfly cluster;51 members to 10.5 mag incl var* BM Sco

9  SCO  NGC 6475  M 7     OPNCL   17 53.9  -34 48    3.3   12      80 m             Cl;vB;pRi;lC;*7...12          80 members to 10th mag;Fine naked eye cluster

Moon: Moon is just a day before first quarter. Just above the neighborhood roof. Probably because of that high mag views (202x) weren't sharp.

Scorpion - Antares was red OR deep orange-brown. Moon is closer to Antares. M4 (mag 7.12) not visible. Must have washed out because of moonlight.

M7 Ptolemy - M6 butterfly: was easy catch from Sco tail duo stars. Apparently not many background stars in the view were visible. Still M7 shows bunch of bright stars.. sort of like multiple K shapes joined at various angles. Just above towards sco tail, M6 butterfly visible. The red-orange-brown star in butterfly pops up. cluster is not at all impressive. Also the FoV doesn't have any other stars..

While hunting M6-M7, got a feel of refractor orientations again. L-R swapped. U-D are fine. Need to get a judgment on the True FoV so that hunting will logical. Didn't know the APO+EP combination TrueFoV.

M8 Lagoon - Very depressing. Very little nebulosity visible at the central (probably near hourglass). increasing the mags 35Pan-> 17T4 definitely made the view better. UHC in 35mm pan showed similar..but nothing impressive. Still the open cluster 6530 next to M8 stands out. Compact as compared to M6 butterfly. Circular in shape.

M20 Triffid not visible. considering the magnitudes, indeed surprising. Not sure why i din't see it. Moonlight?

M17 Swan visible: Felt like its brighter than M8. OR surface brightness of swan is evenly spread as compared to M8, so feels like it.

M16 Eagle not visible again. somehow i missed the V shape cluster as well.

M22 and M28 - M22 bigger and brighter. Was an easy catch in washed out light. M28 is tight, small and lil fainter. Can fit the Lambda Saggi and M22 in the same view. Not all three in same view.

Quick Browsing before dinner at PB.

Date: 19th March 2010, Wednesday
Observation Time: 7:45pm to 8:30pm (~45mins)
Location: Home.
Weather: clear sky.. but light polluted..as well as Moon waxing on 4th day.
Instruments: AT102ED. Tried new Pan 35 and UHC filter.

Had quick browsing session with Aparna. Moon was waxing 4th day.

M42: Pan35 20x shows whole orion nebula M42 + M43 + running man nebula stars area. BEcasue of light pollution the nebulosity is not as impressive as dark sight..still the middle dark pier pops up in 20x itself. theta Orionis, trapezium, is barely visible. Nag 17T4 41x shows M42 better. Only 4 stars in Theta are resolvable. Nag 17T4 + UHC filter definitely shows more nebulosity, but it made whole image blue.. thats lil bizarre.. first time i used this UHC filter. whats the blue color indicates ?

Hmmm... "UHC (ultra-high contrast) filter has a wider bandpass (22 to 26 nanometers [nm]) than other narrowband filters but a much narrower one than any broadband filter. Through a UHC filter, the background sky appears darker and stars take on a blue color. Emission nebulae benefit most from this filter."

Sigma Orionis: (New): Treated Sigma to be Mintaka. This one is excellent. In 20x Pan35, you can see another trapezium here as Theta Orionis. Right part of the trapez is Sigma, while the left part is STF761. igma shows AB-E pair. With 17T4 41x, star D pops up betn AB-E pair, closer to AB. with 7T1 ~101x, clearly see star C really close to AB, but opposite side of D. Indeed excellent. The 4 stars in 3 different views definitely shows the beauty of magnification and how the magnitude pops up incrementally. Need to observe more carefully.

Description abt Sigma.

M45 Pleiades: In Pan35 20x, looks impressive. 9 stars. Its upside-down and the ? angle switched to Right.

Moon: Naked eye, can see the phase as well as whole dark side sort of lit up.. In Pan35, 20x, its marvelous. The dark side really lits up and can clearly see the difference betn bright and dark side. Picture is so crisp to see the crates on terminator. 17T4, 41x, improved the image with more details on the craters. Aparna went crazy with Pan35 view. Infact best i have ever seen..

Later, went for nice dinner at Cafe Athena at PB with Aparna, Dilip and Ashwin.

Virtual Moon Atlas SW for rescue..

Date: Sept 28th 2009, Monday
Observation Time: 8pm to 9pm (~1 hr)
Location: SD home
Weather: Okay. Moon 77% illuminated.
Instruments: Celestron Nexstar 80GT GOTO Refractor f/5

Used Virtual Moon Atlas to browse thru Moon's features near terminator. Considering the refractor size, it provides interesting features near the terminator. Initially I accidentally picked up the 999mm refractor size and looked for corresponding features, but soon realized that they were too tiny to browse..even hard to see with my max mag @200x with barlowed 4mm TMB EP. After switching to 50mm refractor size, I got the decent features around 10-15 in count.

Crater Euler,
Crater Lambert,
Crater Copernicus,
Sinus Iridum,
Motes Carpatus,
Crater Bullialdus,

While browsing, it seemed like there is pattern in the alignment of these craters.. e.g. Bullialdus and its near by craters A & B are aligned so closely to it, as if they are created becasue of the impact in primary crater. Same thing abt Copernicus-Reinhold-Lanseberg or Archemedies-Timocharis-Lambert-Euler alignment.. considering the distances, I am sure they are not related..but considering the curved pattern just felt like it.

The 6mm @ 66x was definitely sharp image. 2mm @ 200x wasn't helpful at all. Just not able to focus. I think limitation of the scope, should not be the problem with seeing. 3mm @ 133x was okay but still not good..but 4mm @ 100x was the max discernible magnification. So stayed with it.

also, I realized that for more details this aperture is not at all enough.. Limitation on EPs as well small aperture is not good for serious observation. Need to switch to my 10" dob for detailed observation. OR atleast need 4-5" aperture with long focal length refractor..

Also need to get the V block filter. TBD

Faint Fuzzies with the refractor & moonlight..

Date: Sept 24th 2009, Thursday
Observation Time: 8pm to 9pm (~1 hr)
Location: SD home
Weather: Okay. Moon 45% illuminated.
Instruments: Celestron Nexstar 80GT GOTO Refractor f/5

Moon: 6th day: Observed with TMB eyepieces + barlow. Overall 6mm, 4mm and 3mm ,2mm were still nice views.. extreme zoom with 2mm @ 200x wasn't sharp and too wavy.. but high zoom indeed shows lot of details and gives a feeling of moon walk.
- Crater Posidonius at the edge of mare serenitatis was nice.. you can see tiny crates inside it.
- The white ridge, Dorsa Smirnov, inside mare serenitatis was visible clearly and showed its existence.
- Crater Plinius central mountain visibile.. seemed like 2 peaks.
- Crater Theophilius, Cyrillus, Catharina seemed to be connected with crater edges on East side.

Jupiter: Yday watched jupiter, today just tried TMB EPs with high mags.. 2mm @200x was bad.. probably 3mm @ 133x was max i was able to push. Jupiter bands were visible...sort of.. really hard to focus because of R&P. Tried red filter too.. still not that clear.. non-filter view is much better and clear.

M28 - Yday i missed this one, and today while just browsing for M22, I ended up on this one. In 32mm @ 13x clearly visible. Fuzzy tiny and sort of visible. With barlow @ 26x shows some detail, surely kills some brightness.. wasn't able to resolve any details.. but just glad that you can see this fuzzy so clearly at @13x though heavy moonlight is present. This must be visible from my binocs.

M22: Visible in 32mm, thought can not fit both m22 and m28 in same view. With high mags 6mm @ 66x shows marvellous views of M22. can clearly resolve the stars. Though moonlite is present, I was impressed with the quality of the image and the resolution.

M55: Tried hunting for M55, but moonlite kills everything. hunting thru 32mm.. With barlowed 32mm shows some vignetting while searching the object. Lil hard to use. 25mm Elux is better to use after 32mm, instead of barlowed focal 16mm.

Refractor GOTO ran out of battery. Seems to be a trouble for long term.
Need to hunt some double stars.

Overall I am happy with the tiny refractor what it can do, considering its limitations.

Nexstar 80mm Refractor EP Comparision

Date: Sept 23rd 2009, Wednesday
Observation Time: 8pm to 8:45pm (45mins)
Location: SD home
Weather: Okay. Moon 30% illuminated.
Instruments: Celestron Nexstar 80GT GOTO Refractor f/5
Buddies: Ashwin

Trying to understand which EPs are good for this refractor considering just basic needs. So did a quick eyepiece comparision with Ashwin on moon and jupiter.
10mm SMA vs 10mm Xcel
25mm SMA vs 25mm Elux

The scope came with the SMA EPs, but i am just trying if better EPs can make a huge difference for a newbie observer.

Tried it on Moon. (30% illuminated)
25mm => 16x
25mm + 2x barlow 12.5mm => 32x
10mm => 40x
10mm + 2x barlow 5mm => 80x

10mm SMA vs 10mm Xcel: Xcel defintely gives more wide field and better eye relief. The image seemed to be same in brightness. With 2x barlow on, Ashwin picked up 3 different objects at various locations and compared. with barlowed image, he noticed that Xcel gives sharper image. Also to him, xcel seemed to be better in brightness. On other side, Xcel is lil bit bulkier than SMA.

25mm SMA vs 22mm Elux: Ashwin didn't find any difference in the views with this one. Not much different except eye relief. Barlowed image also dint have a huge impact with Elux.

Jupiter: 25mm din't provide much magnification here. With 10mm and barlowed image, definitely gave lil more in the Jupiter. At 10mm 50x, Ashwin had hard time seeing any bands on jupiter. Probably i can see them, because i know they are there. with 5mm 100x, he can make out the bands on the disk.. but color aberration indeed hampers the image.

M22: Wasn't a great view of M22 in 2mm @20x. Moon Light pollution also just makes it bad.

Overall with the EP comparison, I realized that it doesn't make huge difference for a beginner to differentiate.. probably for my dad, it wont make any difference either :) !!

Getting Into The Rhythm - III

Continue..

Helix nebula: Observed this one again after long time. In 17T4 70x fills up the center and probably lil smaller than lagoon nebula. but lagoon is brighter than Helix. With Cel 2" OIII filter, increases the contrast heavily. Everything is white fuzzy, can not see any details.Center doesnt have much fussiness, but dont see any star in the middle either.

With filter ON, checked veil and little dumbbell again.

North American nebula: It is hard to see anything here. Probably the size. with filter on 17T4, 70x, its not gonna help much. Need to try Jon's refractor UWAN combo with filter ON. or my 30mm with filter.

M27 Dumbbell: Without filter also, its an awesome sight. With filter, can clearly see more fuziness just outskirts of the dumbbell.

M57 Ring: At 70x, 17T4, the ring is tiny, but with filter ON it shows huge contrast. Donut shape is marvelous. the brightness definitely pops up in the eye. Distinctive bluish color. More mags on this one is better, but because of filter i stayed with 17T4 only.

Because the filter was still on.. looked for nearby tiny PNs in skymap.

Aquila pn: triple cave: one of them 6804: Jon had never seen this before.. in some sense its difficult to locate. Definitely faint that our usual tiny PNs (snowball, saturn)..but stil you can see it. Exactly between two field stars. HArd to find it in jon's scope.. not sure why.. After 10mins search, we got this one on his scope. Lil brighter in his scope.. surely bigger aperture helps. Map says there should be 2 PNs with 0.5 deg view.. but we saw only one. They are +12.6, +11.2 mags.. 6804 is fainter but bigger than 6803. 6803 is definitely harder.. will try next time. 6807 in triple cave doesn't seem feasible to me..
http://www.umich.edu/~lowbrows/reflections/2002/dscobel.7.html

Aquila globular: In the process, saw a globular..but its not even mentioned in my skymap. Need to read more. check wikisky. (Read more.. there is no globular here..probably just concentration of stars and nothing more.. false alarm)

Sculptor GC 288, Gal 253:
Just before moonrise, asked Jon for older Sculptor galaxy. somehow both of us had hard time o nthis one becase of mismatched location of "TBD" star. but i figred out the correct location and we saw both GC and the gla.. Both objects, esp GC shows up in finder smoothly. Gal is NW of it in 2-3 deg apart. Gal is way too elongated and seemed like a white strip. both objects are indeed bright. Need to read more details.

Moon: Observed moon thru refractor. Din't see much color problem in achro. Probabaly because moon was still on horizon..not too bright..and more yellowish than white.. Jon's 16.5" shows marvellous views of moon..no doubt.. seeing was bad being moon on horizon..

Jupiter: Observed Jupiter multiple times during the night.. thru all instruments.
1 sat + disk + 3 sat alignment. Binoc showed it clearly too. thoug hinitially seeing was bad, jupiter was again a masterpiece.. crispy shot 180x.. 3 bands so clearly visible.. with some dark spot at the center on NE band.

For Next time:

Saggi: m54, m70, m69, GC in M7, m18-swan, m55
Aquila: m11-26,
Capri: m75
Oph: m9
Sco: m19, m80
Peg: m15
Cyg: m29, blinking pn, Veil third component, m39
Her: m92
Lyr: m56
Cassi-Per: Try to picturize shapes in messier OCS.
Scl and For browsing

what is LDN ? how to observe them? Lynds dark nebula catalog..skipping it for a while.

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

Moon Geological Period & Jupiter Belts

Date: 15 & 16th June 08, Sunday & Monday
Observation Time: 11:30pm to 1am (1:30 hr) on both days
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Seeing was excellent. Because of moon light, whole sky was washed out.

Highlight of the Night: Moon geological period and Jupiter disk.

Phase of the moon: 2 days before full moon. Waxing gibbous with 96% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

Watched moon on both sun & mon. Mainly at 194x, with 12mm 2x barlow.

Followed the terminator from SW corner to NW. Crater Schikard, Fourier, humorium basin, Eddington basin and Crater Pythagoras.

The main thing I focused on is to get the angular judgment of the size and distance of these craters compared other prominent feature. e.g. It was fun to measure distances between Crater Kepler to Enke, which was ~4deg.. and Kepler-Mauris around ~12 deg. Again these distances are just rough estimation, but it was fun to get the judgment correct.

Another thing i focused on is to understand the geological time scale of these features. E.g crater Tycho being in Copernitian period, while crater Phtyagoras is in Eratosthenes period... means tycho being much younger than pythagoras, which must be younger than nearby crater babbage which must be younger than crater archimedese or crater plato. This estimation of age was fun to track.

Watched Jupiter on both sun/mon. On sunday, Just watched it for 5 mins and clouds rolled over. On monday spent more than 20mins. Overall, I saw jupiter with really good clarity. On sunday, Calisto was transitioning on Jupiter at the NE edge..

Most of the observations of Jupiter were at 194x, with 12mm 2x barlow. I used blue, green and red filter on it. The blue and green filters were indeed helpful. I also tried the moon filter on jupiter.. it indeed reduced the brightness of jupiter disk.. but din't help anything more than that.

North equatorial belt south equatorial belt were clearly visible. northen belt seems to be darker than southern one, but southern one is surely wider than nourthen one. Also, with some effort, I saw N & S polar regions as well. also, I saw the north tropical zone gap. I felt its existence because that area is like a strip which is brigher/white than the north eq belt.

It must be fun to watch Jupiter without moonlight.. also at 250x and above. Lack of high magnification eyepiece indeed made me sad :) !!

Any way, it was first time, I watched Jupiter so seriously and with such a clarity.. It was indeed a good learning experience on how you can train your eyes to see a object.

Lunar Mare Imbrium

Date: 12th June 08, Thursday
Observation Time: 9:15pm to 10:30pm (1:15 hrs)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Seeing was excellent. Clouds started coming over afterwards.. so was hard to focus with high magnification.

Highlight of the Night: Mare Imbrium and Crater Sarabhai

Phase of the Moon: 10th day after new moon. waxing gibbous with 79% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

Initially took me a while to figure out where is the terminator lying in the map. I thought that it is in Mare Serentatis, but it was in Mare Imbrium. Good part is figuring out N-S-E-W in the eyepiece was easy. so looking into the map was easy afterwards.

Most of the observation was with 184x magnification, 12mm with 2x Barlow. Occasionaly I switched to 96x, with 25mm, 2x barlow. Moon filter was indeed helpful at 96x. At 184x i preferred to observe without it.

Mare imbrium is indeed nice, with bunch of Craters: Copernicus, Eratosthenes, Archimedes and Plato.

Crater Copernicus western wall was striking bright, i guess because of sun light. Its really rough wall, or possibly multiple walls. Crater walls seemed pretty deep. At the center there are 2 prominent peaks, strikingly white in color.

Crater Eratosthenes is at the beginning of mountain range, Its features are like small scale Copernicus...except.. at the center of this crate, it has 3 peaks in triangular fashion.

Map says that the mountain range near Eratosthenes is of ~3000m elevation... but really didn't feel it.. I think if i would have observed couple of days before, i would have able to feel the height because of shadow. The mnt range at W and NW wall of Mare Imbirum seemed pretty tall. these mnt were in the dark, after the terminator, but their peaks were bright in the dark, must be because of their height.. I will watch them again tomorrow and will confirm it.

Crater Archimedes: Its a filled up crater, really smooth. nothing special with walls .. neigther have any central peak... but SW of it, there is some what rough area.. small scale mountain range.

Crate Plato at N of the Mare.. is indeed nice. Compared to other craters, size wise: Plato >> Copernicus > Archimedes > Eratosthenes. This is also a smooth, fllled up crater , no peaks. The W wall of this crater is impressive, the large rock sliding is visible.

As i mentioned in the beginning, I interpreted Mare Imbrium as Mare Serentatis.. so I opened a map of Serentatis.. and guess what... it has a really tiny crater called as "Sarabhai" .. It is named after Dr Vikram Sarabhai, ISRO founder. Felt really good. I should find out, if any other Indian celebrities are reached to the moon.

Crater Sarbhai is nothing special. Its really really tiny. only 7km wide, as compared to Copernicus being 93km It was really hard for me to catch it at 96x. At mag 184x, it was visible clearly, but no details..

TBD:
- Lunar regions named after Indian celebrities.

Moon - NW Rim..

Date: 17th May 08, Friday
Observation Time : 11:45pm to 01:00am (1:15 hrs)
Location : SD Home
Weather: Seeing was good.. No cloud cover.. some wavy views thru eyepiece..

Highlight of the night: Crater Aristarchus and its surrounding region..

Observed few craters on Moon NW Rim and lil bit of SW Rim.

Moon phase is in its 13th day. Waxing gibbous with 95% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

With 32mm, prominent stuff is visible.. 32mm x 2x, 25mm x 2x combos were fine too... but 12mm x 2x eyepiece combo was THE great. It indeed showed details of craters and its surrounding prominently..

Few problems with this high magnification eyepiece combo were:
- The view in the eyepiece was moving too fast. so lil bit difficult to observe a feature for long time. Auto-Tracking on telescope would have been helpful.
- Focusing precisely at this high magnification is difficult. Why does the high magnification or short focal eyepiece focusing is so difficult?
- Felt vibrations of the cement floor in the eyepiece view. it was shaking a lot. Need rubber pads or something similar for telescope tripod.
- Preffered to observe without eyeglasses.. my impression abt 12mm eyepiece was bad before.. but this observation made me realize that the aperture size of the frontal lens is not bad.. Infact during observation I didn't feel at all that aperture hole is that small.. Thought that I should buy high eye relief 10mm eyepiece.

Moon filter was useful with 32mm... but didn't help much on 12mm x 2x eyepiece.

Crater Aristarchus: 12mm x 2x eyepiece really worked great.. crater and its surrounding were beautiful.. was able to see valleys around it clearly.. It was fun to follow the entire valley and mountains range from N of this crater to S till Crater Mauris. Mountains are visible clearly.. Couple of bright white spots on those mountains.. Shadow on east rim of the crater. West side of the crater was really bright. It sort of gave the perception how deep the crater is..

Crater Gassendi: Lil bit of shadow on east side visible.. the mountain in the center of Gassendi was strikingly bright..

Crater Kepler: Kepler and Enke were visible.. Enke was too faint becasue of moon light.. none of the moon domes were visible.. but bright rays emanating from Kepler and going towards Crater Mauris were easily visible.

Crater Mauris: Nothing special.. but because of shadows, looked like really prominent one.. Kepler + Mauris combo looks good.

Crater Babbage + J Herschel at N: Babbage and Babbage A was easy to find.. just below sinus Iradium. Compared to babbage, J herschel was too faint.. Pythagoras was still in the dark.

First Photos of Moon

I regularly watch moon through my 6' dob. With a simple digital camera, my roommate's Sony Cybershot, I got some pictures of moon. I have never taken any astro-photographs before. This is a stupidest attempt by putting the digital camera on the eyepiece. The pictures are not that impressive, but them being the "first one", I like them :) !!

Take a look

After some browsing, I have realized that
- I should have put up the focus of the camera to Infinity
- I need Camera-Telescope adapters to connect Camera to Telescope. ...Hshhh... they are expensive and so does the digital camera. :)