Hartley, Neptune, Blue Flash and NGCs.. I

Date: Oct 9th, 2010 Saturday
Observation Time: 8pm to 1pm (5hrs),
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Excellent.. No clouds.. Seeing was okay, not the best. 6/10.
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob, my 10" dob, NP101 APO.
Buddies: Jon

Highlight of the night: Detecting movement of Comet 103P/Hartley2 in Perseus, Locating Neptune, NGCs in southern sky, and locating very tiny Blue Flash Nebula.

Comet 103P/Hartley2 - It was fun observing Hartley2 during 5 hrs period.
~8pm: It was above Eta Persei (Miram).. probably 0.4 deg NW it.
~11pm: It was just SW of Eta. Infact becasue of the star brightness, had hard time locating it in binocs also.. It means it traveled that much within 3 hrs.
~11:30pm: It has moved lil more.
~:1145: you can see the location has changed relative to the start.

Apart from earth bound satellites, I have never seen any object moving that fast during one observation. Its indeed impressive

Overall, it was bright and you can clearly see the fuzziness. Again, its not as bright either. People are saying it will become naked eye object, but currently, its even harder to see it in binocs from San Diego as well. Lets see how it goes.

Helix Nebula: Jon showed the precise location of Helix again. Fomalhaut => North => Aqr C1-89-C2 => North => Delta Aqr pair => Jump West 3:30'clk => g Aqr pair => West => Upsilon Aqr. Near by this star is Helix located. Quick hunting in binocs, compared the brightness with comet and helix seemed similar or lil brighter. In 17T4, big, bright probabaly filled up 25% of the eyepiece at the center. Can see 5 stars within helix. 3 on one side in triangle format, one at the center and one on the opposite end. After looking at hubble picture, this view seemed miserable because you can not really see any details in it.

Jupiter: Visited multiple times during the night. Seeing never improved.
~ 7:30pm: 10" dob shows one of the moons, Calisto, close to NE corner (bottom-left) of the Jupiter disk. Not much details on the disk.
~ 9:30pm: Later Jon's 16" scope showed lot of details on the disk. NEB, NP, SEB, SSTB and SP visible. The Great red spot was visible in SEB on Western side (upper-right corner of the disk). GRS wasn't really poping out, but still visible.
~ 11pm: Jupiter moon Calisto moved towards East and just below the N pole of jupiter disk. Disk and Calisto separated by very slight margin. GRS seemed to be at opposite location i.e. upper-left corner. So is GRS and moon moving in opposite directions ?? Implies that Calisto was in the orbit behind Jupiter ... nice :-)

Uranus: Close to Jupiter, sort of blue-green color visible. Seeing was too bad to see the satellite moon of Uranus.

Neptune: Being in Capricorn, very close to a bright star Mu Capri, very easy to locate. Compared to other stars, you can see the disk (white color). Can see it from binocs as well, but seemed like yet another star in binocs.

Had nice binocs browsing session with Jon. Jon wanted to compare my 10x50 with his 10x50 and 10x42 binocs. My 10x50 binocs definitely has bigger field of view. For brightness, wasn;t able to compare much. Jon didn't say anything either. Somehow i feel this binocs is indeed good to have.. (from olympic NP experience as well, when compared with Shardul's and Adwait's binocs)

M8 and M20: M8 visible in binocs and probably a open cluster around it.. M20 doesnt seem to be a reasonable object in binocs. Jon also wasn't sure..

M24: Star cluster above M8 also visible.

M17 Swan: can see the fuzziness in binocs.

M7-M6: butter fly and Potlemy shows bright views in binocs.

M22-28: Bigger brighter, while M28 is compact, still bright.. both can fit in the same view. Observed M22 in 16" scope and compared it with M55 and M13 GCs as well. Mentioned below.

M25: Open cluster, at the end of inverted comma, above M22, visible nicely in binocs.

M55: Sigma-Tau Saggi, upper two stars of the Tea-Pot handle points to M55. Seemed similar to M22, may be fainter.

M22-M55-M13 Comparison: Observed all three in Jon's 16" scope ~100x and my 10 dob ~71x with 17T4.

In 10" scope, M13 core seem fabulous, the longer you look at it, more stars will be resolved at the core. M55 in my 10" shows the core iwth few stars resolved.. it also shows a bright star just outside the GC, probabaly not even a part of GC.. Interesting thing is, if we focus on the bright star and see the core at an angle of an eye, then M55 core gets resolved with more stars..more stars pop at the core.. impressive.. didnt see M22 from 10"...

Jon's 16" scope @ ~170x/200x shows massive and awesome view of M13.. core is well resolved with yellow bright stars.. M55 seemed lil dull after viewing M13. Can resolve those bright stars at the core and they didnt seem that impressive. M22 was resolved fully and showed more brighter stars than M55, but lesser than M13. It also seemed more brighter than M55.

Deer Lick with 7331: In Jon's 16" scope 7331 ~100x looks bright, edge on, can see angled top surface. 7331 shows three companions on top. All three in right-angle format. I can see two of them clearly. The top one 7340 and base one 7335, just above the center of the big 7331 disk. third one 7337 just above the corner of the 7331 disk, its aligned with three bright stars and in betn bottom stars, but closer to the middle star. third one seems to be way fainter and lil hard to even see it. Probably because of not-so-excellent seeing, we were having hard time.

In my 10" dob, 7331 was again easy to locate. In 17T4 @ 71x, it shows up like tiny bright needle. Didn't even bother for high magnification to catch satellite galaxies.

Stephan's Quintet: Jon pointed to this one as well. It was like you are looking into some dark view with stars. When i get adapted with the view, then i can sort of see two faint fuzzies in the middle. These two fuzzies seemed fainter than deer look satellites. (Mag shows that stephans are brighter) Indeed hard to see them. Never saw others. Quintet was a doublet to me. Observing, infact locating, these in 10" must be super hard.

Continued...

La Posta Dinner with Late night Moonset - II

Continued..

There are bunch of clusters in nearby area of m103, so started browsing them. considering moonlite, probably OCs are better to observe.

NGC663 OC: While browsing for m103, saw another cluster next to it, which was probably better/bigger than m103.

NGC654 OC: Yet another tiny OC, but still can be identified easily.

NGC637 OC: Seemed to have "gun" shape, bright smaller. but because of tight concentration, feels like a cluster.

NGC559 OC: don't remember anything special in this one..

NGC457 OC: This is definitely bigger and had a curved alignment of stars.

NGC436 OC: Not impressive..also lil bit difficult identify the cluster.

NGC225 OC: Easy catch betn Gamma and Kappa Cas. Bigger..wider.. don't remember the shape again..

M29 OC: Easily visible in 16".typical shape.. seemed tiny.

Perseus double cluster: At high mags, completely looses its charm, At 28mm UWAN, seemed nice.

~11pm, was lil bit tired, also lil cloudy.. so decided to lie down for a while in the car trunk. The space is huge as compared to it seems. Can comfortably fit in two people without any trouble. Still wasn't able to sleep.. Pleiads on east, while Jupiter on west clearly visible thru car windows. Jon got up around ~00:30..everything was clear by then..no clouds and no moon.. excellent seeing.

M42 Orion - m43: At horizon, the trapezium was too wavy. visited it again after an hour when it was lil up in the sky.. It was excellent.. 6 stars in trapezium clearly visible. Awesome seeing. In 28mm UWAN, the nebulousity was fabulous, feeling up the whole 80deg EP. M43 next to it was showing the nebulosity too.. Easily supported high mags.. the internal details of two dark clouds near trapezium was also clearly visible.. indeed gives 3D feeling. The nebulosity near running nebula cluster was also visible.. still ll hard to discern the dark running man. is this just a photo graphic object? probably it is.. Jon has never seen it either.

M78 - bump up mags... nebulosity on next star also. 2071??

M1 Crab

Auriga clusters with 2 ngc objects

M44 cancer

ngc7331

Cephus, cluster + galaxy

stephans quintet

Cephus u cephi IC OC fuziness

sculptor gal 253, gc 288

new scultor gal 247 easy find.. huge ..faint.. with refractor also

M41 - CMa

M46 - planetory

M47

Gemini M35 - ngc next

Eskimo nebula

Double planetory

Asterism 37 OC 2169

Tau CMa

Thors helmet

M74 - next to aries

Doubles:

Rigel

Castor - refractor reflector refractor,

Beta Mono ceris - triplet

lambda orionis - almost like cancer

sigma orionis - 6 star system

milky way alignment - cephus alignment, scultor alignment

Independance Night

Date: August 15th 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 10:30pm (2.5 hrs)
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Exellent Seeing and Transparency. Lil bit windy.. and chillier later though in summer.
Instruments: Jon's 12.5" dob, My 10" dob.
Buddies: Jon and his friend Rick wih his Twins.

Total Objects: 15 = 14 + Jupiter
New Objects: 3

Tried iPhone software SkyVoyager for guidance. Overall, excellent experince using it. For whole night, I didn't even touch my paper sky atlas. The best part is the object descriptions are also available and it helps to observe the object with its description in your head. Helps in understanding the object.

The trouble with the softwar was:
- Night mode vision is really not that Red. so for faint objects, was loosing the darkness adpting.
- Doesn't have any recently observed object lists. would have helped to remmebe rhte browsing order next day.

Jupiter: Indeed bright view, 4 satellites 3 on one side and one on other side of the Jupiter disk. Two dark gaseous strips clearly visible. Becasue of wind not a stable view. Also after sunset, not yet dark enough to see the details.

M7 Ptolemy, M6 Butterfly: Wonderful views of M7 and M6 in 17mm Nagler.

M22 Globular: Bright Globular in 17mm. No realization of any shape or any colors.

Tried Jon's Celestron OIII filter on varoius Nebulas with 17mm Nagler.

M8 Lagoon: In non filter view, can see the lagoon island, a dark lane and some fuzziness on other side wiht a star cluster. Filter view really brings up the fuzziness and shows how much fuziness is indeed there. The dark lane shows full version of inverted "C". The size of the lagoon got increased and the other side of the darkness C is all fuziness. The filter indeed helps to see the fuziness, but it deemed the cluster. In jon's 12.5" scope, stars were lil brighter.

M20 Triffid: In non filter view, Triffid doesn't show much in 17mm (76x). Filter view indeed helps to bring the nebulocity and was able to see one dark lane and second one with averted vision. More magnification would have helped. Overall, first time I understood the difference betn the size of Lagoon and Triffid. Lagoon is probably 3-4 times bigger than triffid.

M17 Swan: In non filter view, M17 shows the typical "2" shape, but the filter brings all the fuziness surrounding "2". Again size of total fuziness is lil smaller than lagoon and more dispersed.

Veil Nebula: It was indeed hard to see the veil without any filter in my 10" dob. the nebulocity near Cyg 52 is still visible. But the second component was hard to find. With filter, almost all background stars were gone and the cyg52 nebulocity easily pops up.. the witchb room shape shows up immediately with all corners. the second circular component also easy to find and shows up nicely.. its surely fainter than first component.

M57 Ring: In 10mm Xcel can clearly see the ring structure, but it gave a feeling that its not focused. In Jon's 9mm Nagler, its indeed a sharp view and ring structure seems to be focused. I indeed felt the difference in two eyepieces clearly :). Ngler rules !! Filter didn't make much difference.. porbably ring was lil brighter, but i like the ring with stars around so didn't like the filter view much. probbaly needs more magnification with filter.

M11 Wild duck cluster: In 17mm Nag, Its a maervellous view..clear represntation of salt and paper cluster. One bright orange star is in the view. which outshines the cluster. not sure if it is in field of view or in cluster itself. Wih 9mm Nag, the bright star sort of lost the color, but it indeed showed the details on the cluster. the V shape of stars was visible clearly. also the surrounding dark lane V was also visible. probably V shapes imples the name wild duck (group) cluster.

M71 globular (New): Searched at wrong location and jon made fun of my star hopping skills :). M71 really tiny and not at all impressive.. just yet another GC type.

M27 Dumbell: Was marvellous and easy to pick up. Shows up easily in the finder. Dumbell conrast indeed supports high magnification. Too much nebulocity without filter itself. Din't try the filter.

M51 Whirpool Gal: Good view in 17mm Nag. You cna clearly see the 8 shape. The bridge betn the pair is not visible. some averted vision gives the feeling of spiral shape or dark lanes in M51. Infact in 9mm magnification, the spiral shape thru averted vision is visible.

Stephan's Quintet Galaxies (New): Jon tried to show this one, but it was indeed hard. Probbaly pushed the limits of 12.5" scope. Was looking into nothingness. With heavy averted vision probabaly saw two galaxies really close to each other in UL and BR line. surely not the object for 10" scope.

NGC7331 Galaxy (New): Saw it first time.. Edge on galaxy.. really really tiny. Still 30mm superview showed it. In 17mm Nagler it shows the edge on shape clearly. Din't get a chance to try the 10mm or 9mm view.

Overall, Din't observe too many objects. Left early. Still whatever objects I watched were with careful observations, with filter. Also iphone sw made the observations insightful. Astornomy sessions are surely getting better.