Hartley, Neptune, Blue Flash and NGCs.. III

Continued..

Hunted bunch of NGC below Sculptor.

NGC 253 Sculptor Gal and 288 GC: The NGC 288 GC is not a typical GC. Its disperesed. Its very faint as well. From Jon's 16" scope also it seemed fainter, but the fuzziness can be felt in the finder as well. Indeed conflicting observation. Need to read more abt this one TBD. Once 288 is found, 253 is easy to locate. Again, can "feel" it in finder. Very large, Very elongated. At one point, felt like it has filled up the eyepiece. Messier wound't have missed it if it would have been on northern side. the galaxy defitnely shows some motelling-spots on it.

NGC 55: Jon showed me this one in NP 101. Very faint. I tried it in 16". Very easy to locate from Alpha Phx (southern constellation Phonix, just below sculptor). Huge, may be lil fainter than 253. Both 55 and 253 seem similar to me, except the mottelling part in 253.

NGC 300: Jon found this one in NP 101, but I wasn't able to locate it in 16". In NP 101 view, 300 seemed again similar to 55, may be lil smaller and fainter.

NGC 247: Don't remember much, except the location. Was an easy catch thru 16" scope as well.

M11 : Wild duck cluster seem fainter and very disperesed in 16" scope at 100x. When the sky rotates overnight, i have observed that its hard for me to locate the familiar object like M11 :).

Blue Flash nebula: Near del and saggita, was the highlight of the night in star hopping and locating this guy. the difficult part is its so small that you have to use lil higher magnification and that makes life lil difficult in low-mag star hopping. Its not like i haven't seen this guy before, but very hard to locate. Jon pointed to this one in NP 101, 16" and then i tried it with 10". In 10" with 17T4 @ 71x. You have imagine flipping the whole saggita constellation from Western to easter side. So its betn 29 Vul and Gamma Sge, with Del on left-southern side. In 71x, with 82deg nagler, you can fit 4 bright stars in a trapezoid shape, in one view. This nebula is at the center of one of the edges on left. It seems like a very-very small cluster of three stars and nebula is at the center. It looks like very-very small fuzzy ring, but still can be differentiated from the star...very hard.. You have to get familiar with the view, and then only you can really see it there. Once found, then high mags shows the details. disk doesn't show any blue color.. not sure why they call it blue flash, it confuses people ( me :-) ), when we look into the eyepiece. disk shows up like a big thick ring. central part shows lil dark hole (??).

M45 : when tired did lil bino viewing, and M45 again impressed me. 10 sisters shows up nicely. very bright blue stars. Fills up the whole view in binocs.

Double cluster : With low mags on Jon's 16" scope (~100x) shows the double cluster nicely. Can clearly see one is smaller than other. smaller is more compact than the bigger being being disperesed (isnt that obvious). Saw this one while looking at the comet.

Some double in orion head: Jon showed some double in the head of the orion, but seeing was way too bad to split the double..

M1 : Crab shows up nicely. In 16" as well cant see much details on the crab.. Its just one big, elongated fuzzy bright disk. absolutely no details inside.

In the end did some bino browsing for the comet..

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

Friday Night with Oreo Cookies - II

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)

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.

Last light with Jon's 10" dob - Part I

Date: Oct 25th 2008, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 12:30pm (5:30 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Seeing was okay..not great. improved after 11pm, probably because of marine layer on SD. Its getting really cold too..
Instruments: My 10” dob & 10x50 binocs.
Buddies: Greg (Advanced amateur astronomer)

Total: 26 objects, 1 Asteroid
New Objects: 10

Returning Jon's 10" dob this week, so went for last observing session from this dob. This dob indeed gave me new perspective in handling big aperture telescope and understanding night sky.

Venus: Too low on horizon, so everything was bit wavy...

M8 Lagoon & M17 Swan: Quick glance to these old objects :).. makes you feel good. Night wasn't that dark enough to see the dark rift in lagoon clearly. swan was impressive. Two stars parallel to neck are clearly visible.

M13: Hercules globular was impressive. it always makes me feel if I would have had more aperture. Showed it to the scout group.

M30: I have seen better views of M30.. with 9mm also it still wasn't crispy and clear.

Saturn Nebula NGC7009: Again not the crisp view.. but the bluish disk stands out well. wasn't that much trouble in tracking either.

M72: Tiny globular... can be vividly seen thru binocs. Quick glance thru the dob.

M73: The asterism triangle is beautiful. One of the object that still can't see thru binocs.

Helix Nebula NGC7293: faint big fuzzy... 135x also doesn't show any details inside..

Asteroid Vesta (New): I think I got it.. it seems like one of the Jupiter's moon in high magnification with lil bit out of focus.. brown yellowish in color. Tried on 22" observatory, but nobody helped or enthu there... more aperture helps here too.. I should ask Jon to catch it some time.

NGC 253: edge on spiral Galaxy in sculptor. Greg told me look at it.. and this is precisely the same galaxy which Jon had shown me before. I got it confused with sculptor dwarf.. indeed beautiful. it fills up almost 80% of my 32mm eyepiece (38x). More magnification indeed shows more in the galaxy. i felt there is some dark lane vertical within the galaxy. Galaxy runs in angular fashion to pair of star alignment.

NGC 258 (New): Really faint globular next to 253 and sort of next to south galactic pole.

Sculptor Dwarf: failed.. need to check mags. compare it with ngc253

M57 Ring Nebula: Not the greatest view again... but nice bluish disk and its 2" star in field of view.

Veil nebula: Thru 22" its fabulous, you can see the whole filament near cygni 52 star so well that it indeed shows that the dust is everywhere, but just a star next to it causes it to glow in nice shape.. the crisp clear image also gave me 3d perspective... i think magic of nagler and filters... thru my dob in 32mm without filter, it was like a faint white streak among background stars... still i saw all 3 components of the veil.

North American Nebula NGC7000, Pelican Nebula IC5067: Failed.. read more..

DSO Marathon - Part II

M11 Wild duck cluster: visible naked eye. At 135x, bright tiny yellowish stars. High concentrations of stars for being a open cluster (??). Also didn't see any wild duck shape in there.

M26 & NGC 6712: (New): After M11, 6712 is just next to it. At 135x, tiny bluish GC. M26 was visible thru binocs, but hard to capture in telescope. Accidentally, I left 9mm eyepiece in the view and so not able to find anything. Didn't realize it till I moved to next object. Should have tried with lower mags.

NGC 6441: (New): Tiny globular just next to star G scorpi. (Map 58). Bluish & fainter.

M54: (New) Being a messier object, this GC is really tiny, still bigger than other NGC GCs. Notihng much to say. Just to tick-mark another messier object.

M69: (New): Quick glance to M69. Bigger than M54. Still was fainter as M54. Nothing impressive. Also Saggi was way too close to horizon, so probably I dind't find M54, M69 & 6441 that great.

So being tired, started talking with jon and he kindled my interest with tiny nice objects.

Blue Snowball Nebula: (New): Tiny planetary nebula located in Andromeda. Easy to locate as its next to a bright star. Its like mini M57 ring, but much strikingly bright compared to the size with M57 and that too without filter. The size is probably 1/5th of M57. The bluish color was impressive and better than M57. Tried with my 10” dob. So 38x view shows it, but its so tiny that high chances of interpreting it for blue star..

NGC 253 Galaxy: (New): Just know the location visually, wasn't able to confirm anything from the map. (??). binocular view brightness seemed like M33, but smaller in size. My dob, 38x view and then 76x view really shows the edge-on shape. Its not sculptor dwarf galaxy.

Green Nebula NGC 6572: (New): Tiny planetary nebula in ophiuchus (Map 65), Seemed like bluish in color than green in 12.5 dob. Hard to locate. Smaller than blue snowball nebula. Didn't try it in my dob.

Saturn Nebula: (New) Yellowish planetary nebula in capricorn. Easy to catch. Bigger than snowball nebula. Yellowish color is prominent. Ring and middle darkness visible at 76x. High mags killed it.

Ophiuchus OC browsing (New): Quick bino browsing. (Map 65) Star Beta Ophi → Gamma Ophi → 2 o'clk of Beta is IC 4665 OC → 9 o'clk of Gamma is Cr 350 OC → 2 o'clk of Beta around 6 deg are stars 71 & 72. → 10 o'clk of which is Green nebula 6572 → 11 o'clk of star 71 is OC 6673 and IC 4756 OC.

M72 (New): Tiny globular in capricon. Visble thru binoc. Similar to M54.

M73 (New): Messier mistaken object. Tiny tringular star alignment just next to M72.

M30 (New): Impressive GC. The shape is bizzare. Two parallel lines like H shape merging. Right side vertical line upper end has all stars of GC, like a lollypop :). not sure if the stars in H are part of GC (??) Considering star's H alignment, it seems like they are. Need to spend more time on this one next time (???)

M13: Easy catch with both bino and dob At 38x shows the rich filed of stars and outskirts stars resolvable.. Higher mags increases the beauty.

M92 (New): Fellow GC in Hercules. Easy catch with bino. This one is also impressive as M13 but lil bit smaller. M13 probably being closer seems bigger (or it really is). At 38x, hard to resolve any stars. At 76x, outskirt can be resolved easily.

UGC 10822: Tried to find this galaxy next to M92, but failed: Need to read more (??)

M31-M32-M110: At 38x, the dark lane is visible with averted vision. The core is so bright that it becomes hard to see the dark lane. But 38x indeed shows the bigger size of M31. Probably the dark lane width is bigger than M32 size. With averted vision, I imagined the length of dark lane to really long and nice curvature, than probably it is :-). Need to verify (??). M32 is really tiny fuzzy spot and smaller than M110, but still brighter than M110. Thru refractor, lower mags ~30x & wide-angle, shows the grandness of M31. M32 was almost invisible. But M110 was clearly visible. Again, I think I saw the dark lane of M31.

NGC 404 Galaxy next to Mirach (New): The Beta Andromeda, Mirach, has a small companion galaxy NGC 404. Hard to see at 38x, At 76x, really faint. Fuzziness is also not clear. Seemed like lot of bright dots in concentrated area.

M33 Triangulum: Observed M33 in great detail. With high mags (76x, 150x), with averted vision, the upper arm extending to left is visible. Lower arm extending to right was also visible. Both of them really faint. Lower-right arm vanishes in the middle and ends with bright fuzzy region NGC (??) along with a bright star.

Perseus double cluster: Naked eye. At 38x, both OCs fit in the same view. Upper one seems bigger and wider, while lower is comparatively concentrated. Still, lower one seems to have more brighter stars than upper one.

Had some interesting non-duality discussions, flute session and hot tea break from Jon's wife Francis.

TBDs:
- Buy laser collimator asap
- UHC or OIII filter is must. Investigate on various brands
- Best of NGCs object study