Fuzzies Everywhere - II

Continued..

Nearby M99 and M100 lies NGC pair 4302-4928 (New).. not sure if they are related? SkyVoyeger doesn't show distances..

M104 Sombrero: Thru my scope 17T4 70x definitely looks nice. dark lane and halo seems impressive. Can't see it clearly in the finder.

Antenna Galaxies: Can clearly see the fuzzy pair @ 70x in my scope. Can not see any antennas.

M68 GC: Haven't seen this in a while.. Easier to locate below corvus. Left side of the bright star. While switching betn Jon's and my Scope, realized the confusion betn right-angled finder and straight finder.

M83 Gal: Easier to catch. Need to observe it carefully. show lot of details in spiral structure with higher aperture.. i missed all.. I was just elated that i was able to locate it :).. seems like it is referred as seashell or southern pinwheel.

Omega Cen GC - Clear view thru 10" scope. Really need to observe this one without light pollution. Jon's place has lil light pollution near Southern horizon.

Hamburger Cen A Gal: Clearly see the huge dust lane in 17T4 @ 70x.

After this, I switched to Leo galaxies, while Jon continued with NGC objects near M83 hydra. He spent probably 30 mins in this region looking for really faint fuzzies.

He showed me hydra fuzzies 5292 (New), IC 4329-4329A pair (New), 5298 (New) and 5302 (New). It was indeed hard to locate this and see them clearly, just because of 16" aperture, you can feel their existence.

Continued..

Night of Leo Fuzzies - I

Date: 1st May 2010, Saturday
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 12:00pm (~4hrs)
Location: Jon's @ Blvd
Weather: Heavy winds till 9, lower windy till 11pm and calm till 11:30
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob, NP101 APO, my/Jon's AT102ED APO.
Buddies: Jon+Francis+Aparna

Heavy winds when we landed at Jon's place. After some house treasure hunts, started with refractors. Dusk light after sunset was still there..

Venus: Way too shaky image.. can't see any phases.. good comparison of lateral color in NP101 and AT102ED. When out of focus, AT shows lot of violet and green color. While NP doesn't show anything at similar magnification. At really high magnification, NP showed lil color.

Castor: Though it was shaky, casto was good split in both scopes. how much is the separation TBD ?? 4.7" arcsec.

Sigma Ori: Tried sigma Ori 5 star system. winds killed it.. can see it, but worst view..

Eskimo Nebula: Okay view of Eskimo through 16" dob. Because of slight dusk light.. wasn't that bright view.. also wasn't too focused either.. cannot see the middle star..just a fuzzy object..

M35: Tried through 102ED-Pan35. Nothing impressive.

M38 - Same like M35. Northern side outside Auriga. Way fainter than M35.

M65-M66-3628 Galaxies: In Jon's 31 Nagler, in single view. excellent and pretty bright. Tried it in on AT102ED. Lil tricky to point the APO for the overhead objects. You can not really get the red pointer directed. Have to get on the ground. Still pointed to it. Excellent view in Pan35.

NGC 4565 Coma Bernices Galaxy - Needle Galaxy: Excellent needle view through Jon's 16" scope. didn't see much details.. Too windy I guess. The location of the gal is easy to catch. Next to Mel 111 cluster.

NGC 4559 (New): Irregular one next to Needle: Can see irregular shape.. larger than Needle, but probably lil fainter (or almost same) than needle.. Also couple of stars on top of the galaxy.. probably there are in field of view. With current view, both are 2-8 o'clk pattern.

NGC 4494 (New): Elliptical one next to Needle: Jon found this one. smaller and fainter than both above gal.

I tried both needle and irregular 4559 gal from my AT102ED scope. Definitely, perfect catch in Pan35. Can't fit both of them in same view.. Both seem really tiny, but still bright.

Tried same from Jon's NP101.

Aparna also joined us to look at 4565-4559-4494.

M104 Sombrero Gal: To show some impressive stuff to Aparna, pointed to Sombrero. Excellent.. really bright view in Nag31 on 16". somehow keep on forgetting the location.

M3: Another master piece of spring night. Easy to track it from Mel-111 from Coma Bernices.

Continued...

Dark night kickoff in freezing cold - II

Continued..

Eskimo nebula: The middle star jumps right at you.. if seeing is better, probably can see more details. bluish disk..very bright in the center and fainter outside..

Double planetary - In Jon's 28mm UWAN ~75x, way too tiny to see this one..but definitely you can see it. The clear 8 shape visible.

M81-M82: location. I always miss the location of this one. Pick up first and 3rd star in square of UMa and draw the digonal line that points to 2-3 star cluster, just below SW of it is M81 and M82. You can defintely see the pattern/texture on the edge galaxy. The pair is clearly visible thru binocs, once you know the location.

M51 Whirlpool galaxy: Not the greatest view of whirlpool. bad seeing..

M next to the third UMa star (seems M109): in jon's 28mm UWAN, 3rd UMA star and M?? (M109) is visble in the same FoV.

M36-37-38: binocular browsing.. Jon mentioned about some ngc next to M37??

Leo triplet M65-66-3628: Jon pointed to it. 3628 fainter than other two. All 3 in same view (with uwan 28 75x ??). 3628 elongated and bigger in length than others ??

Jon's galaxy pair in UMA: Two faint galaxies in the view. If you continue the tail of UMa, same distance as 5th & 7th star along the tail. (UPDATE 03/10/2011: From the location, seems to be Hickson 68 in CVn)

M3: Jon pointed the location.. bit tricky.. visible thru binocs.. Outskirt stars are clearly resolvable. higher mag helps..

Sombrero Galaxy: Jon pointed the location.. lil tiny than what i was expecting. elongated.. but no sombrero structure visible.

Co-hosting 22" SDAA Observatory. II

Date: April 18th 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 2:00pm (7 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Weather is okay.. Transparency is good, but seeing is not good..
Instruments: SDAA Lipp Observatory 22" RC, f/7 (FL: ~4000mm),
Nagler 31T2 EP, 20T5 EP
31T2 => 129x
20T5 => 200x
Buddies: Jim and public.

Volunteered to co-host SDAA public star party with the observatory scope. First time, handled such a huge scope, on EQ fork mount. In the beginning had hard time due to huge mount, new type of mount, poor alignment and awkward finder. But After few hours got confotable with telerad-31T2 EP and normal star-hopping..

7pm: Some admin stuff to open observatory. Tried to align on Sirius. Didn't collimate (??)

M46 OC: Pretty nice. pinpoint stars. bright.. PN was also bright, blue in color. The middle star is visible and bright. not sure if the star is part of cluster or PN.

Orion 73 cluster (New): OC in orion, with asterism in shape of 73, but each digit inverted L-R.

Saturn: Bright. 4 moons visible. titan + 1 on left and other two on right. Other two were really close. rings and shadow of ring visible. higher mags didn't help. seeing was bad .. visited saturn 3-4 times throughout the night, but seeing never improved.

M97 Owl: Failed. digital setting circles not setup correctly.. too frustrating..

M81-82: Initially Failed. I was replying again on encoders. After few attempts, somebody (Pete) helped to point it. Can not fit both in same view.. was worried to move it because i may loose it again :).. The mottling on M81 clearly visible.. also vertical dark lane was visible. M82 was bright, but no details.

M51 whirlpool: Jim pointed to this one.. Spiral structure clearly visible. Bright spots inside M51 visible clearly. Probably thats what i saw other night with Jon. People were saying with averted vision connection betn both galaxies visible.

4965 Gal in Coma (New): Marvelous. Way better than M104, How the hell Messier missed it.. Huge, filled up complete eyepiece view. bigger than m104, edge-on, dust lane clearly visible and its thick.. core wasn't that bright.. the object was so impressive that i wasn;t sure if its really the object or the scope.. whatever.. unforgettable view.

M84 + Markarains Chain: all galaxies were huge..and chain clearly visible.. again lil skeptical of moving the scope, but shows so many galaxies in the view.. clearly 5 visible in the same view. Tried to realign encoders. Revisited again at the end of the session. See details below..

For re-alignment, moved to Arcturus. just too bright in this scope. Because of the brightness, hard to see where is the center of the view, so not a good star for realignment. Tried M51 again after realignment. DEC encoder is setup correctly, but RA is still off. but with DEC inline still helps to get the object in view, by moving thru RA.

A recticle-crosshair eyepiece is better/perfect way to get object in center. also whats the point in aligning on a DSO, considering its size ??

Eskimo nebula in Gem (New): Jim pointed to this one. Marvelous view. perfect round shape. outer disk is brighter, inner part is darker. no hint of star. probably same size as M57 (??)

After this, the scope was solely operated by me. Decided to just starhop with telerad. Perfect star hopping and very little help from the encoders. Overall reminded me how helpful it is to observe with Jon.

M104 Sombrero: Really nice view. better than Jon's 16.5" scope. magnification also adds up. still smaller than 4965 Coma galaxy.

M13 GC: Wow.. masterpiece.. All outskirt stars resolved. also, few stars at the core resolved. 20T5 EP also helps. Jim tried meade 14mm UWA, but stars weren't pinpoint.. both seeing as well as "meade-vs-nagler" to blame.

M92 GC: sort of naked eye. This one looks like "M13 in my 10" scope" :).. looks amazingly impressive. Almost all stars outskirts resolved and few at the core. This 22" scope makes every object beautiful :)

PN in Hercules: Easy Starhop after yesterday's session with Jon. Bright blue color disk.

Gal next to M13 (New): Yesterday Jon showed me this one, and today while pointing towards M13, I saw this. Tiny little fuzzy.

M65-M66-3628:

Corvus PN: Looks like a galaxy rather than PN. no bluish color, so easy to confuse with galaxy. bright star at the enter.. just too bright, looks like tiny core of the galaxy. Never seen like this before.

Corvus Antenna Galaxies: Awesome view. both galaxies clearly visible, but antennas not visible.. seeing matters. Still "merging" of two galaxies clearly visible.

Ghost of Jupiter: bright bluish disk. both disk and inside ring visible. middle star clearly visible. 20mm same image.. tried 14mm meade UWA EP, but extension tube trouble. wanted to try filter also, but skipped it.

M83 seashell: Easy catch. Huge object.Observed it yesterday for first time and already star-hopped to it today :). Bright core..

Omega Centauri GC: Little low on horizon. Ladder requirement. almost resolves every star. fills up ~40% of 31T2.

Centaurus A Gal (New): Easy catch. Perfect starhop (??). Was lil skeptical to observe something new on this huge scope without finder, but starhop was easy to catch this one. Bright, the middle dark lane is huge.. its like 3 or 4 times the size of 4965 galxy dust lane. Its perfect "hamburger" shape. both sides (buns) are bright. but consdering the size of dust lane, whole galaxy is not that huge. Need to read more abt this one (??)

Leo 2903 Gal: Perfect Edge-on easy catch. Don't remember much.

Leo Gama Gal doublets: Gamma was hard to split in 129x. surprising. bad seeing? Galaxies visible nicely. Again too small as comapred to any other galaxies i saw tonight. also i am impressed that my 10" scope shows this one clearly.

Leo 3521 Gal (New): Lil bit difficult star hop. Info says "spiral galaxy", but hard to see clearly.. surely face on.. probably same size as antenna galaxies.

M57 Ring Nebula: Apperture helps. huge ring. blue color discernible. middle star not visible..surprised..

M53: Failed: Picked up wrong Alpha coma star, also somehow encoders pointed it somewhere else..

Coma/Virgo Galactic cluster: spent more than 30mins in Coma and upper Virgo galactic cluster.
M98-M99
Markarains Chain with M88-M91
4371
M87--4478
M89

Overall, though started lil slow and with nervousness, finished with complete enthusiasm. till 2am I was going on-and-on without any food :)..

Marvelous experience because of:
- Able to handle such a Huge scope first time
- Handling new type EQ fork mount compared to my dob mount.
- Every object looks beautiful in this aperture. Was completely overwhelmed.
- Survived smoothly at the end, though started under huge peer pressure :)

Friday KC Dark Night - III

Continued..

Coma/Virgo browsing: Wanted to browse galaxies in Virgo and Coma. Started with Denebola and moved 6 Coma. Doing it for first time..

M98-M99-M100 chain (New):

M98: W of the 6coma. bright..
M99: SE of the 6coma. bright..
M100: Move way up..

From M98, Move down to 11 Coma star.

M85 (New): bright with faint NGC companions

Markarian's chain:

M84: Aligned with M99-M98 line.
NGC4388: Sort of edge-on + elliptical.
M86: Bright. Elliptical
The eyes - 4438-4435
NGC 4461-4473-4477:
Continue the chain for M88 and M91

In Jon's 16.5" scope, From Epsilon Virginis to Rho virgo. Either saw M60 or NGC4647 not sure.. Too many of them..Lost it.. wasn't sure if i saw siamise twins or not..

Once we removed UWAN from my scope, I din't want to look at virgo again without it :)

Tired of fuzzies so GC time..

Omega Centauri: perfected my location. light pollution. not great in resolving stars.. not crispy clear view.. Observed thru all 3 scopes including 120mm refractor..

M13 GC in Hercules: Few stars at core Resolvable at 76x.

M92 GC:definitely tiny as compared m13. Don't remember when i saw this one last time. with Jon's helps, perfected star hopping (??)

PN 6210 in Hercules (New): Tiny PN.. small scale ghost of jupiter.. bright blue color.. perfect star hopping (??).. nearby star group visible in finder..

M107 in Ophiuchus (New): Faint. similar to M92. Easy to star hop from the bright star of Oph (??)

M4: too close to horizon to see any details.. M80 near M4, Tried but didn't spend much time..

M53 Coma GC: Aplha star (??) and GC in almost same view. Visible in finder. Fought for nearby 5053 GC.. Hard to see in my scope. In Jon's scope.. its like really really faint.. instead of GC, seemed like an open cluster.. difference in M53-and this NGC is sort of similar to the difference between M46-47 fomr LP sky... bright star cluster vs almost invisible sparse star cluster.. Have to be really careful when we starhop.. there are indeed lot of faint objects from the dark location. Also, before hunting or objects, I should get a judgment on size and magnitude..

M104 Sombrero: Marvellous view.. Dark lane visible clearly.. Finder shows it too. In Jon's 16.5", looks much better.. bright and dark lane clearly visible.. the sombrero head structure with bright sphere is clearly visible..

M68 GC (New): Just next to the corvus star (?). Tried to find it from home, but was too difficult.. From dark place, hard to see in finder.. Both star and the GC are in the same 32mm view (38x).

Ghost of Jupiter: Bright blue disk.. higher mags didn't help on this to see any details.. Jon's 16.5" didn't help either.. I had better view of this from my home. Infact from Jon's home, have seen the middle bright star.. Here, seeing was probably getting worst.

M83 seashell Gal (New): Fun star hopping. showed the star hopping sequence to Jon :). Galaxy is really bright and huge.. clearly visible in refractor also just at 30x..

continued..

Late Night Outreach...

Date: 22nd March 2009, Sunday
Observation Time: 11pm to 12pm (1 hr)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing was fine. probably 3.5 of 5
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Buddies: Ashwin and Alankar

Total Objects: 3
New Objects: 2

Had nice observing session late night, after Imax-Watchmen. Considering the cloudless night, wanted to show "Crispy" Saturn to Ashwin and Alankar.

- Leo
Saturn: Image wasn't sharp, but better than previous observation. Saturn's rings were perfect-edge-on yesterday 21st March. Felt the same. Wasn't able to see the gap betn rings and the planet, so must be edge-on. 3 moons on western side, while 2 moons on eastern side.

- Corvus
Delta Corvi (New): In order to show some variety of objects in the sky, pointed to this double star in "Hasta"-corvus constellation. Didn't try for any mag-separation calculation. Primary is blue-white, while secondary is orange-red in color. Primary seems far brighter than secondary. In 38x secondary was visible, but not clear enough. Heigher mags resolved it better. Secondary position angle is probably 225deg.

http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~jkaler/sow/algorab.html

- Virgo
To show how galaxy looks like in a scope, I was looking for any nearby bright galaxies. Initial plan was to show Messier galactic zoo in Virgo, but becasue of limited viewing from my patio, skipped Virgo-cluster as well as Leo-cluster.

M104 Sombrero (New): M104 was promising one in the map, but I have never star-hopped to it before, so wasn't much confident.. but BAM...in first shot i got it. Around 110deg angle & ~1.5 times the distance of Delta-Gamma corvi line. In 38x you can see the fuzziness, but barely. Easy to miss this object, but there are 3 bright stars aligned straight to its "SW". Increasing the mags indeed helped in revealing more details. I am surprised with how-much higher mags this object supports in city light pollution also.. At 76x, the edge-on shape was clearly visible. Had a feeling of buldge in the middle, but not clearly. the galaxy itseef is aligned with two other bright stars on west. the edge-on shape probabaly makes 25deg angle with the star-alignment on SW. At 110x, bulge was improved.