New Year Kickoff

Date: Sat 5th Jan 2013, from 6pm to 8pm: 2hrs
Location: Jon's @ Boulevard
Weather:  Seeing 7/10, Transparency 4/10. No wind. in the beginning clouds on wester horizon.. central and eastern horizon clear... after two hours transparency messed up and cloud cover was almost everywhere.
Instruments: jon's 16" and TV101. Two Nikon and one Celestron 10x50 binocs

Highlight of the night: kickoff for 2013 after almost two years..


M38, 37, 36: All three clusters looked beautiful in both scopes and binocs. Crystal clear pinpoint stars.

M35: Looked way bigger than the above triplet.. never noticed it before.. in binocs, the difference in  clearly visible

Pleides: simply beautiful in both scopes.. no nebulosity.

Jupiter: watched multiple times. because o no winds, fantastic view.. main two belts + 1 more belt line visible.. southern fainter wider band visible..  5 satellites: 2 on each side and one on southern side..

Veil nebula: spent lot of time on this one.. very nice.. in 16" scope main two components visible.. the middle third one visible as well plus some fuzziness visible around.. in TV101..you can see both easter and western part... but you will notice that western is much brighter than the eastern part (next to the star).. never noticed it before.. no other components visible.. OIII filter was on.

california neb: in TV101, with H-Beta filter. some fuzziness visible.. somewhat hard.. no discernible shape either... without the filter, it was just impossible..

north american neb:  OIII (???) was on.. Large fuzziness object visible..seemed like divided in two parts... no discernible shapes.. again nothing visible without filter.

M42: fabulous. trapezoid was pin point. 4 stars visible with nag31, lowest magnification. very nice nebulous cloud, brightly lit.

ngc2301: Long elongated star cluster with some circular/heart shape cluster in the middle. Clearly visible in binocs or finder.

binoc comparision: compared jon's nikon 10x50 Action with mine nikon 10x50 Action EX. FoV is same. jon'd are not sealed, so image is not crispy in his, when humidity was high.
 
called off the night earlier because of cold and cloud cover.. i have lost my survivial skills in cold.. have to get back in schedule soon..

Back to stargazing... Part 2 / 4

Continued..

California Neb in Perseus ngc1499: (New) Tried it multiple times during the night with np-101 apo. the best view was with 31mm nagler @ 17x with H-beta filter on. very-very faint.. infact i had hard time seeing it, though it was in the view. with filter on can see something, but really not sure abt the shpae or borders. Not very impresive object. (btw, the description says that this neb is in perseus, but still in orion arm of the galaxy.. interesting). this is first time i observed it.. I think i had tried it in past, but failed.

Medusa Nebula (Abell 21)- (New) In Gemini. yet another very-very faint fuzzy.. Tried it 4-5 times during the night. Very hard to see.. in 20mm @103x can see some fuzziness with averted vision. Later after moonset, with O-III filter on, fuzziness shows up lil better. bigger object like thor's helmet, but definitely way too fainter. First observation.

Ghost of Jupiter in Hydra- Very bright object..O-III Filter helps.. in APO with 24mm@ 22x, it shows up as blue star. but there are no other blue stars in the view and hence you know this is the ghost. with jon's 16" scope, with 20mm @ 103x with O-III give fabulous view.. very bright disk of the ghost. can see some patterns in the disk, but cant grasp it. Just for fun, want to check the first observation from oak springs camground..I still remember it, when Jon showed it to me for first time.

Eskimo nebula in Gemini: Very bright object.. more the magnification, you can clearly see the detailes inside.. white disk.. Bright star in the center visible. Its a disk, made with lot of patterns circling around the central star.. wasn't able to locate it in np-101 quickly..

Rosette nebula in Monoceros (New): Very big object.. relatively fainter object.. but with UHC filter on 20mm in np101 (~25x) fills the whole field of view... the star cluster ngc2244 with 6 bright stars is at the center. these are like three pairs. The whole nebulosity surrounds this star cluster in C shape. The C shape itself is very dense. Tried it with 16" scope with 31mm @ 66x. Very bright nebulosity. O-III filter kills the star cluster, but UHC filter works well on this object. First observation.

Hubble variable nebula in Monoceros (New): in 31mm @ 66x, looked like a very tiny, comet spaed object.. it lokks like ideal sketch of comet, or a street llight with light shapde. As we zoom in, there is a nice bright star at the tip. So it must be reflection nebula, with star light reflecting.. as we zoomed in, you can indeed see the curvature at the end of the fuzzy object indicating the light just shows up at that point and doesnt pass thru.. Very interesting object.. saw it first time, need to see it again..

Orion inverted 37 star cluster ngc2169: directly at high magnification, i think. Seemed very dim, though no filter.. perfect interveted 37 shape. 7 shpae has ~3 bright stars, while shpae 3 had 4 or 3 bright stars.. and all other stars are very dim. total ~15 stars.

Continued..