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...
Showing posts with label Uranus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uranus. Show all posts
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Late night Jupiter
Date: Sept 25th, 2010 Sat
Observation Time: Late night 1:15-2:00am (45 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: Lil clouds. Full Moon.
Instruments: AT102ED
Jupiter - All 4 moons visible. Best View with 7T1 @ 107x. Tried higher mags with Xcel-10-x2 (@ 140x), TMB 4mm @ 177x, 7T1-x2 @ 202x , but they weren't great. So just stayed with 7T1 @ 107x
Didn't remember the nomenclature, while observing, but now it seems like observed: EZ, NEB NTB NPR, SEB, SPR. A black spot on NTB.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Jupiter_Belt_System.JPG
http://www.astrosurf.com/cidadao/jupiter_obs.htm
Uranus - In Pan35 @ 20x and 17T4 @ 40x, it didn't show distinctive blue color again, but in 7T1 @ 100x, it showed the color, as well you can feel the disk spae, compared to background pin-pointed stars.
Tried NGC 253 Gal and NGC 288 GC located in the nearby regions. the location was spot on, but i didn't see both of them. Considering ~8.0 magnitude, i thought that it will be visible, but again FAILED.
Observation Time: Late night 1:15-2:00am (45 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: Lil clouds. Full Moon.
Instruments: AT102ED
Jupiter - All 4 moons visible. Best View with 7T1 @ 107x. Tried higher mags with Xcel-10-x2 (@ 140x), TMB 4mm @ 177x, 7T1-x2 @ 202x , but they weren't great. So just stayed with 7T1 @ 107x
Didn't remember the nomenclature, while observing, but now it seems like observed: EZ, NEB NTB NPR, SEB, SPR. A black spot on NTB.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Jupiter_Belt_System.JPG
http://www.astrosurf.com/cidadao/jupiter_obs.htm
Uranus - In Pan35 @ 20x and 17T4 @ 40x, it didn't show distinctive blue color again, but in 7T1 @ 100x, it showed the color, as well you can feel the disk spae, compared to background pin-pointed stars.
Tried NGC 253 Gal and NGC 288 GC located in the nearby regions. the location was spot on, but i didn't see both of them. Considering ~8.0 magnitude, i thought that it will be visible, but again FAILED.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Observing Uranus
Date: Sept 22nd, 2010 Wed
Observation Time: Late night 1:00-1:15am (15 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: Lil clouds. Full Moon.
Instruments: Binocs 10x50 Nikon Action Ex.
Uranus: Full Harvest Moon, Jupiter and Uranus are very close to each other tonight. Uranus is always hard to catch, but just being so close to Jupiter its easier to locate. Its only a degree apart from the Jupiter towards NW towards moon. The Uranus magnitude is almost same as 24 Psc which is SW of jupiter on opposite side. mag 5.4. So its indeed Uranus. Uranus-Jupiter-24 Psc were in the same field of view of my binocular.
Can't see the bluish disk. it seemed yellow.. it wasn't really a clean sight. probably because of moon light.. so didn't try it in the APO... but will watch it again after few days and should be able to see the bluish color.
Saw this fella probably after two years.. nice !!
Jupiter: Dazzling bright in the binocs. Ganymede and Europa at two opposite ends. Hard to get IO-Callisto pair near Europa. Too much shaking.
Observation Time: Late night 1:00-1:15am (15 mins),
Location: Archstone Apts, Mission Valley, SD CA
Weather: Lil clouds. Full Moon.
Instruments: Binocs 10x50 Nikon Action Ex.
Uranus: Full Harvest Moon, Jupiter and Uranus are very close to each other tonight. Uranus is always hard to catch, but just being so close to Jupiter its easier to locate. Its only a degree apart from the Jupiter towards NW towards moon. The Uranus magnitude is almost same as 24 Psc which is SW of jupiter on opposite side. mag 5.4. So its indeed Uranus. Uranus-Jupiter-24 Psc were in the same field of view of my binocular.
Can't see the bluish disk. it seemed yellow.. it wasn't really a clean sight. probably because of moon light.. so didn't try it in the APO... but will watch it again after few days and should be able to see the bluish color.
Saw this fella probably after two years.. nice !!
Jupiter: Dazzling bright in the binocs. Ganymede and Europa at two opposite ends. Hard to get IO-Callisto pair near Europa. Too much shaking.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Last light with Jon's 10" dob - Part II
Crescent Nebula NGC6888: Failed... indeed frustrating... this one is listed as top 10 deep sky object for October sky and it was unbelievably hard to find.. just spent too much time, but still no success.. Greg mentioned to me that without filter its hard...
M29 (New): Curved H - nice tiny open cluster.. in H shape.. but vertical lines curved outside.
Berk86 (New): open cluster in V shape, next to M29
Blinking Planetary NGC6828 (New): This was perfect catch. Star, in one field of view a pair and half field of view, the blue lil tiny disk in 32mm eyepiece. its hard to se it in 32mm.. but lil bit more magnification shows it well.. no blinking effect in 10" aperture.. but looks good... probably less brighter than blue snowball. Need to revisit for details.
IC 1396 cluster and nebulosity: In Cephus, listed as best object for telescopes and binocs... but failed..
M33 Triangulum: From Greg's 10". sort of able to see the spiral structure.. in two arms.
M74 (New): In Pisces, Nominal fuzzy object visible thru binocs also.
M77 galaxy (New): In Cetus. Bizzar shape sort of like m30, but only with a star.. high magnification didn't help to resolve much either. but this is indeed an interesting object. need to revisit. its tiny fuzzy.. I wonder how messier saw this.. wasn't able to see much thru binocs. Tiny galaxies 1055 and 1087 are on opposite sides of M77. Its hard to distinguish if they are galaxies or tiny globulars...probably for tiny globulars they seem bluish..but these tiny fuzzies didn't.
Mira: Didn't know what to look for in the star. Read more.
Caroline cluster in Cassiopeia (New): Don't know the NGC number. open cluster like wild duck, but really spread over large area.. like sprinkled salt.. but really faint. all the stars seem like field stars, but no other stars in vicinity near the cluster, hence all the stars in the view can be treated as part of open cluster
Uranus: Quick glance at bluish disk.. nothing interesting.
Spectrographs of Antares and Vega (New): graph, Vega graph was on left side, showing blue wavelengths. It Greg showed me his spectrograph which he has collected form SBIG instrument. Antares graph was sort of in red wavelength (right), Showed multiple heavy dips representing element titanium. and one h-alpha dip. compared to Antaresdidn't have any titanium dip, but it had all h-alpha, h-beta lines. mainly showing hydrogen and helium. On right side, there was one big dip showing water vapor, because of earth's atmosphere. All the dips indicate absorption lines, while all peaks indicated sort of reflection lines.
M1 Crab Nebula: Easy catch.. Still not able to see any details in crab. elongated fuzzy disk..
M42 Orion Nebula + M43: The best view I have ever seen. Marvellous. First time from TDS. At 38x, viewing thru 32mm eyepiece gave me a feeling that the whole cosmos is indeed full of dust, but we can not see it, until there is a star nearby. The reflection of nearby stars indeed gives the shape to the nebula. I really experienced this textbook definition with orion nebula. At 38x, almost 80% eyepiece filled up. M42 with deep dish shape with two dark columns perpendicular to each other visible. Deep dish dust is so much that on one side nebula is bright, while on opposite side non of the light passes thru. On opposite side, M43 visible as white fuzzy ball. The trapezium in M42 dark column is visible with only 4 stars. 5th star barely visible. More magnification on this gives more. In the dark columns, got the 3D feeling.
M78 (New): Easy catch. Bright star with dark nebula column. 3D feeling. The dust is indeed so much you will see reflected light on one side. This makes the nebula shape.
Horsehead Nebula: Failed. Difficult to catch.
M29 (New): Curved H - nice tiny open cluster.. in H shape.. but vertical lines curved outside.
Berk86 (New): open cluster in V shape, next to M29
Blinking Planetary NGC6828 (New): This was perfect catch. Star, in one field of view a pair and half field of view, the blue lil tiny disk in 32mm eyepiece. its hard to se it in 32mm.. but lil bit more magnification shows it well.. no blinking effect in 10" aperture.. but looks good... probably less brighter than blue snowball. Need to revisit for details.
IC 1396 cluster and nebulosity: In Cephus, listed as best object for telescopes and binocs... but failed..
M33 Triangulum: From Greg's 10". sort of able to see the spiral structure.. in two arms.
M74 (New): In Pisces, Nominal fuzzy object visible thru binocs also.
M77 galaxy (New): In Cetus. Bizzar shape sort of like m30, but only with a star.. high magnification didn't help to resolve much either. but this is indeed an interesting object. need to revisit. its tiny fuzzy.. I wonder how messier saw this.. wasn't able to see much thru binocs. Tiny galaxies 1055 and 1087 are on opposite sides of M77. Its hard to distinguish if they are galaxies or tiny globulars...probably for tiny globulars they seem bluish..but these tiny fuzzies didn't.
Mira: Didn't know what to look for in the star. Read more.
Caroline cluster in Cassiopeia (New): Don't know the NGC number. open cluster like wild duck, but really spread over large area.. like sprinkled salt.. but really faint. all the stars seem like field stars, but no other stars in vicinity near the cluster, hence all the stars in the view can be treated as part of open cluster
Uranus: Quick glance at bluish disk.. nothing interesting.
Spectrographs of Antares and Vega (New): graph, Vega graph was on left side, showing blue wavelengths. It Greg showed me his spectrograph which he has collected form SBIG instrument. Antares graph was sort of in red wavelength (right), Showed multiple heavy dips representing element titanium. and one h-alpha dip. compared to Antaresdidn't have any titanium dip, but it had all h-alpha, h-beta lines. mainly showing hydrogen and helium. On right side, there was one big dip showing water vapor, because of earth's atmosphere. All the dips indicate absorption lines, while all peaks indicated sort of reflection lines.
M1 Crab Nebula: Easy catch.. Still not able to see any details in crab. elongated fuzzy disk..
M42 Orion Nebula + M43: The best view I have ever seen. Marvellous. First time from TDS. At 38x, viewing thru 32mm eyepiece gave me a feeling that the whole cosmos is indeed full of dust, but we can not see it, until there is a star nearby. The reflection of nearby stars indeed gives the shape to the nebula. I really experienced this textbook definition with orion nebula. At 38x, almost 80% eyepiece filled up. M42 with deep dish shape with two dark columns perpendicular to each other visible. Deep dish dust is so much that on one side nebula is bright, while on opposite side non of the light passes thru. On opposite side, M43 visible as white fuzzy ball. The trapezium in M42 dark column is visible with only 4 stars. 5th star barely visible. More magnification on this gives more. In the dark columns, got the 3D feeling.
M78 (New): Easy catch. Bright star with dark nebula column. 3D feeling. The dust is indeed so much you will see reflected light on one side. This makes the nebula shape.
Horsehead Nebula: Failed. Difficult to catch.
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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