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Saturn in the morning

After last night's test I left the entire scope setup. The forecast was clear for the next two days so I wasn't worried at all about rain. I put the eyepieces away, took the diagonal off, covered the objective and went to bed, setting the alarm for 5:20AM, which was just went Saturn should be up above the horizon. I hoped it would be up above the trees!

I woke up several hours later with the idea that something was wrong. The sprinkers! I hadn't turned them off. I jumped out of bed and ran outside in barefeet and a robe. My eyes were fully dark adapted and I expected the wonders of the heavens. Uh oh, a thin haze had come in. This is not at all uncommon where I live, surrounded by the sea. So I went back to bed and waited for the alarm.

When it went off I dressed quickly and was outside. I knew I had very little time before the sun rose. Indeed, the sky was light already. I had hibernated the scope the night before so I didn't need to re-align. A slew to Saturn put it in the trees. Drat. But still, I could look between the leaves but still, nothing. I couldn't even focus, there was nothing to focus on. So I manually slewed to Procyon (I could see that star along with Sirius, all of the main Orion stars, and many whose names I didn't know) focused and aligned.

I then slewed back to Saturn. Got her!

I took the 30mm Paragon out and put the 9mm Planetary in. Nothing. Drat, she wasn't centered. I looked around but couldn't find her. So I put the 30mm back in, centered and aligned on Saturn. Then the 9mm was back in.

Trees.

She had risen from the branches into the full leaves. It looked like I had about 15 minutes before she would clear the tree tops. Well, I guess I'd gave a full daylight Saturn test then. I went in to make some tea and wait it out.

When the eyepiece show blue again, well, the trees were gone but so was Saturn.

(I later learned in a Cloudy Nights forum that daytime Saturn sights are difficult and were not favored right now.)

A few hours later during a diet coke break from work I went out and slewed to Sirius, just so say I could. She pointed to the ground. I tried M42, same thing.

There was either a power glitch or the heat of the sun had warmed the electronics enough to cause the GoTo to fail. This was a work day so I couldn't play anymore. I put the Burgess in its case, put the eye pieces away, and left it all outside for that night's observing.

30mm TMB/Burgess Paragon

I just recieved my 30mm TMB Paragon from Burgess Optical and I was anxious to give it a try. I didn't need to buy it. I've been very happy, quite happy, with my Siebert Optical 34mm Observatory, but a poster in the Burgess Yahoo groups said, and I quote:

I'm not going to bore everyone with excrusiating details about what I saw, how many I saw and all that jazz. I'm going to cut right to the chase: I brought my very recently purchased $99 30MM Paragon along with me. I used it as my primary wide field EP, either specificly to look at an object, or to locate an object for closer viewing. To say that it delivered would be a gross understatement; indeed, an insult to the eyepiece! The beauty of this EP was that it was THE PERFECT MATCH for the 1278! It delivered on almost every object and brought out the very best of this scope. While it was out- standing on virtually every object viewed, it it was devastating on the larger objects in the sky, like The Double Cluster, M31, The Plieades and M8.

But it saved the best for last, so to speak. It presented the most spectacular views of M42 that I believe an achromat could produce. It had admirers of scope costing several thousand more than the humble 1278. The M42 almost matched the routinely "perfect" views produced by a TV 101 three tents down. An owner of a 12" Meade dob (with the OLD premium mirror) couldn't believe a 5 inch refractor matched his view of it. But the most amazing compliment it recieved was from the owner of a 14" Celestron CGE SCT next to me:

The owner was SOOOOO impressed with MY views, especially of M42, the next afternoon, he went and bought a..., get this, Bill,...a TV 41MM Panoptic, just to match the view HE saw in MY scope! Retail value of his purchase? Beyond $600!!! Now THAT'S got to be the ultimate compliment! It doesn't get any better n' that!!! Wow! pparently, the secret seems to be that the Paragon's FOV, coupled with the almost-by-accident 5" size, the right magnification, and perhaps the multi-coatings, produces an absolutely PERFECT picture view, framing those larger objects as "not-too-big, not-too-small" in the EP. "Perfect fits", that most sought-after of viewing experiences. Needless to say, I had a fantastic time, with other eyepieces in supporting roles, viewing as many objects as I could find, staying up 'till dawn three nights consectutively....

The upshot of all this, and the reason for writing here, is to urge all the 1278 owners who haven't done so, to BUY YOUR PARAGON BEFORE THEY RUN OUT!!!!! IT IS THE PERFECT EYEPIECE FOR THIS SCOPE!

IT'S ONLY $99! DO IT NOW. YOU WON'T REGRET IT!!!

Now, that was kinda hard to ignore, so I called up Bill and yakked for awhile then Tammy took my order. It arrived a few days later.

Well, the eyepiece was everything that the quoted poster made it out to be. Except, it wasn't filling a hole in my eyepiece case. My much loved Siebert was there also, perfectly matched with the 22.5mm Siebert.

So I started the night on my usual favorite, the Double Cluster. Then went to M31, the North America Nebula and then over to M8 before it set. I then went back to the Double Cluster for the bulk of the testing.

Based on the published specifications, the Siebert should have given a slightly larger field of view, but really, 2.1 vs 2.4 degrees? That's pretty close. 29x vs 33x. Again, very close. So it would come down to contrast and sharpness plus other ease of use factors.

Sharpness was a toss up. Both were as perfect as I can tell in the center (I have some uncorrected astigmatism in my eyes, so far I live with it.) and both seemed to soften up a bit at the edges. At times I thought that the Paragon had blacker backgrounds, I guess this is to be expected since the magnification is higher. But at other times I wasn't so sure. I didn't detect any color difference between the eyepices at all.

The Siebert are famous for having no pincushion and I'm sad to say I forgot to compare the two eyepieces!

Now onto comfort. Well, the two eyepieces are about as different as I can imagine in that area, but there isn't a winner! The Siebert is great when I wear my eyeglasses. I was able to find the sweet spot with ease with only the slightess bit of blackouts. I normally prefer viewing with my eyeglasses so I've never actually looked through the Siebert without them.

The Paragon, on the other hand, has a wonderful, absolutely wonderful eyecup. (This is just like the wonderful eyecup on my 9mm TMB/Burgess Planetary.) It is comfortable and holds the eye exactly where it needs to be. Blackouts? Impossible since the eye is correctly position at all times. However, when I folded it down, and tried to use the lens without my eyeglasses, twice I had it pop back up, once striking me around the eyes! I'm not sure what I did wrong, but this is an eyepiece that wants to be used with the eyecup up. And guess what, I didn't mind at all! (This might be an issue if my glasses actually did a good job of correcting my astigmatism since I would need to wear them.) Could I learn to fold the eyecup down correctly? I'll bet I could.

The observing session was cut short. It was the first cold evening of the fall and I really hadn't prepared for it. I had a hat and gloves but I was still chilled to the bone and had to go in. I declared the Paragon the winner but it wasn't a landslide at all, it could certainly have gone to the Siebert and I would not unhappy with that. Indeed, 4 days later when I'm writing up this blog entry I'm now second guessing my decision. I'll have to head out again, or maybe wait for M42 to get high in the sky. Oh, I'll sell one of them, I just don't know which one right now.

But, chilled to the bone I screwed a Lumicon UHC into the Paragon and slewed to the Veil. Ah, just beautiful. I couldn't stay long but I knew I'd be back on this object. And actually, I'm now convinced that earlier this month, with my binoculars, that I had grabbed the Veil. What I was seeing through the refractor exactly matched in shape what I had seen in the Canons. I can only guess that I had read the star charts wrong. Well, there's another observation to repeat then.

Public Observing at CCAS

The Cape Cod Astronomy Society holds weekly summer star parties during the summer. (Check their web site for details, but alas, they are done for 2008.) I've managed to miss all of them so far this summer so I was quite pleased to find myself able to attend tonight's.

Unlike the public observing from the New Hampshire Astronomy Society, it seems that CCAS members rarely bring their scopes. This isn't to say that either club is right or wrong. With the big dome and the big scope available for the public, CCAS chooses to use the exceptional facilities. NHAS tends to have mobile star parties, so of course they need to bring out the 'scopes!

But, nothing was stopping me from bringing mine and I just love showing the skies to people. So I packed up the Burgess 1278 and drove off to Dennis Yarmouth High School.

Of course the Clear Sky clock showed a gorgeous forecast and as soon as it got towards dusk, the clouds came, along with the great sunsets. Yes, this is an actual photo from that night.

But the dome was open and I sat down with Mike and Peter and listened as they planned out the night's objects for the guests. Now that is impressive! I went and set up the Burgess and the skies got worse and worse.

Fortunately, holes appeared and we were able to show Jupiter a lot. That was about all we could show at first. Bands were quite visible and everyone was extremely impressed with the Burgess, which really pleased me especially considering that I forgot to bring the Baader Semi-APO filter!

I was especially honored to have Werner Schmidt himself both look my my telescope and be impressed by it. I'll remember that for a long time.

After almost everyone left we pointed the 16" at M13 again just for me, that was very nice. (It was featured all night long for the guests.) And then we tried for Neptune and Uranus. I never did see Neptune but the others were able to discern that it wasn't stellar as you turned it in and out of focus.

We tried the same in Burgess. Uranus was lovely, quite a distinct disk. Same thing as before for Neptune however, others could see it non-stellar but I couldn't.

Next time for sure!

Astronomy 101

Last week or so I gave a talk to a standing room only house, 46 people, at the Truro Library on Astronomy. The title of the talk was called "Astronomy 101: What I Can See in the Sky Tonight."

I talked about the Milky Way, Constellations, Moon, Jupiter the Perseids and Light Pollution. I tried to give some detail but not too much, didn't want to overwhelm anyone, nor bore anyone. The crowed listen attentively, asking questions both during the talk and after the talk.

Afterwards, I set up the Burgess 5" refractor for a look at the Moon and Jupiter. Clouds were very much threatening but they stayed clear and all who wanted to were able to see both them. I had a little patter going on, talking about the terminator on the moon and central peaks, and then talking about the moons of Jupiter and the cloud bands.

I'd really like to thank both Dave Martin who had been the scheduled speaker and Sharon Sullivan of the library for making it all happen.

Come See the Moon!

"Come see the Moon!"

Ok, I really didn't say that. I'm not sure why, that's what one is supposed to say, right? Last Saturday night I set up my 5" refractor, a Burgess 1278, on MacMillan Wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts to do some sidewalk astronomy. I was still setting up when I had my first pair of "customers."

I had originally put the Garret Optical 30mm Wide Angle eyepice in, but I when I saw how some folks had problems getting the sweet spot, I pulled it and used a Celestron 30mm Plossl. Both eyepieces were in a 2x Barlow. This yields 67x with a FOV of about 0.8 degrees. 67x is great because you can see much of the moon yet still make out craters and ever see the central peak in some of them.

You could see the entire waxing gibbous moon plus some to spare. This was good because I set up right at dusk and Polaris was no where to be seen. I had a pretty good guess at North (from looking at the high tide seaweed mark in Google Maps!). The ASGT does not track well at all if your north is off but it turns out I was good enough. I only had to hit the Down button bout every 15 minutes.

But enough of the tech stuff, what about the people? I met Russian, French and German tourist. Couples, singles. Families. The usual response was "Wow" accompanied with a big smile.

Some people were initially distrustful, but when I assured them that it was completely free they came over and put their eye to the eyepiece.

And of course, some were not interested at all.

I should two bicycle police officers who loved it. Later on I showed 2 other officers with a car, whose observations were cut short by a nearby drug transaction!

Many people couldn't believe that I was doing this for free. Some wanted to tip me. I, of course, refused. I told them to donate to a school but that seems lame, I need a better line to handle those situations. I kept telling the story of John Dobson over and over again, talking of his commitment to sidewalk astronomy.

I was setup for about 2 1/2 hours, thin clouds came and put a haze on the moon but nobody really minded. Late in the evening I tried showing Jupiter but the high winds really made it pretty wobbly.

I'll certainly be back to do this again and I encourage all of you to bring your telescopes to the street and share the sky.

Oh, and what did I say instead of "Come see the moon?" My line was "Would you like to see the moon?" I'm not sure why I changed it, I just did.

Burgess 1278 First and Second Light report

I've had the Burgess 1278 for well over a month now. The first month was spent waiting, waiting for clear skies at a time I would be home to enjoy them. I watched the ClearSkyClock almost obsessively, and illogically believed the 10 day forecasts at weather.com. So a little more than a week ago, I was quite pleased to see that the skies would be clear and I would be home, but barely. I was working in Cambridge that day and would not be home until about 9:30 or 10pm that night. Given how long I waited, I didn’t care. I was especially interested in seeing Jupiter. I had viewed it with the 8” SCT a few weeks before and it was impressive, my best Jupiter ever. I wanted to see how the Burgess compared. I had looked at the Great Red Spot calculator from SkyAndTelescope.com and was pleased to see that it was at the meridian at 10:53pm.

Once I got home, I quickly hauled all the equipment from basement. I didn’t bother with the light pollution screens since I was only planning on viewing Jupiter. The neighbors were interested, as usual, and once I was fully setup, around 11pm, I quickly centered Jupiter and then let the kids look.

Then I pulled up my chair and sat down and looked myself. There it was, the Great Red Spot! As others have noted, it is more of a Great Tan Spot these days but still, I was happy. I’ve been interested in astronomy since I was a kid and the GRS had always been on my life list. I guess I wish I had seen it when it was red, not tan, but still, impressive none-the-less. It was so easy to see that I wondered if I was seeing what I wanted to see. Averted Imagination. I sat and observed for perhaps 20 minutes, waiting for a crystal clear moment. That moment really never came. The skies were just good all along. There were the 4 Galileans visible, no shadows. I stared at the GRS, stared at the bands, it was real, no doubt. I was actually seeing it! I tried to see an detail in the bands, or the Little Red Spot and that third one whose name I can’t remember, no luck, but I was still happy.

I also immediately realized that my carefully planned eyepiece collection was a bit limited. A 2000mm f10 scope does not use the same same set of eyepieces that a scope with a focal length of 1000mm uses somewhat different eyepieces than a 2000mm focal length scope! My normal “max power” eyepiece, a 9mm University Optics HD Abbe Orthoscopic was only giving 111x in this scope, my 7mm only gives 143x. I used the 7mm, which was pretty much the first time I had ever used it, that was the “miracle skies” eyepiece for the SCT. I found the eye relief bare acceptable. (I wear glasses.) I tried barlowing the 9mm with a 2x University barlow and the results were unacceptable, which is to be expected since that exceeds the Dawes’ limit rule of 40x per inch of aperture.

Pumped by my success, I decided to do some other viewing. I’ve been using Sue French’s book, Celestial Sampler, to plan my viewing sessions and I had not planned anything for tonight so I just went along ad hoc. First up was my long time favorite, the M81 and M82 pair. They were beautifully framed by the 34mm Siebert Observatory eyepiece. I was starting to see why some astronomers love wide field eyepieces. Unlike with my SCT, there was plenty of room around the two galaxies. It was quite pleasant to see.

I then went to M51, but alas, I still wasn’t able to see any detail in the arms. I’ve always wanted to see that, haven’t yet. I could, of course, see the second galaxy, but I expected to see that!

I can’t recall many of the other objects I saw. I was did try M57 at stupid power, which was, of course, stupid. It was much better with the 7mm. And I was able to split both of the double doubles. I had never been able to do that before, but then again, I hadn’t tried all that much before either!

By now it was getting close to 1AM so I went back to Jupiter. Yup, the GRS was gone, as expected, this only confirmed that I had seen it, not imagined it. M31 had now risen above the house so I went over there. Oh, very nice! I could easily see 32 and 110 in their proper spots. I had seen them in the SCT but the field of view was much narrower so once couldn’t grasp the whole picture.

I waited another half hour or so. I wanted to see the Double Cluster and it had not yet risen from behind the house. While doing so, I just looked at random star fields in the Milky Way. I was a bit dismayed to see that the 34mm Siebert was giving me unacceptable star blurring along the outer quarter or so of the field of view. I was quite upset, this has been my favorite eyepiece! (Note to those who’ve found this by googling, read on to the second light report, the 34mm Siebert is fine...)

I did a GOTO the Double Cluster and pretty much watched the edge of the roof disappear. That was actually a bit of fun, you could get a sense of slow motion of the skies. Once they both cleared I had a tremendous view. Again, like with M81/82 one could fully frame the objects against the background stars, things weren’t as crammed together.

I sadly packed up, happy with the new telescope.

I purchased a Chesire on astromart and set up the scope in the kitchen. It was very easy to collimate it. It didn’t seem to be out of collimation at all so I uncollimated it and then re-collimated it. At least I half collimated it! You, once I put the diagonal in, it was out of collimation again. So I tried another diagonal, it was also out of collimation by the same amount. I may need to shim the focuser (or something, pretty much whatever Steve Forbes of Trapezium Telescopes suggests) to get that centered. I don’t think the diagonal is out of collimation since I saw the same error with 2 different diagonals.

8 days later I was able to try the skies again. There was a first quarter moon so I decided to do lunar and Jupiter observing. From my last session I knew that the cars were annoying even though I was looking at bright objects, so I put up the screens. (Side note, I still have tons more design work to do on the screens, they are effective, but not as easy to install as possible and the tolerances are too tight, the tarps are stretching and I’ve pulled out some grommets already.)

Once everything was setup I still had some time to kill, so I pointed at the moon. This was the signal for the clouds to roll in. You could see the moon, but just as a bright blob. I tried again as the evening wore on. Eventually the skies were clearing with a sharp line coming from the north west. I could see the glow of Arturus so I use that as an alignment star. (Polaris wasn’t visible but I have true north marked on my lawn with 3 sections of PVC embedded in the ground.) I was slewing towards Mizar when it disappeared, so I just “accepted” its coordinates. Then I grabbed Vega for a calibration star. The moon was completely socked in so I went back to Mizar, which was now visible, grabbed it and then to M51. It was an exceptionally dim spot. The moon was really messing with the viewing. I tried for a few more dim things in that area but gave up and just waited out the moon.

I used the Siebert 22.5mm Ultra, both barlowed and not at 44x and 89x, and the 9mm straight @ 111x. I tried the 9mm barlowed (222x) but the skies didn’t permit it. I looked at it for about 45 minutes I think. I particularly like see the long shadow from the central peak in the Alphonsus crater. (I used Astronomist on my Palm PDA for the crater map.) I tried so hard to see the shadow move, never did. There was as a pair of mountain peaks over by where Plato is, perhaps they were from the rim of Plato. They were stick up into the sunlight. The skies were boiling. I sat and and watched and sat and watch and the atmospheric motion never stopped. Like the shadow in Alphonsus, I really wanted to see the sun move down the slopes of these mountains.

The clouds had cleaned up by now so I headed over to Jupiter. A quick look showed that the skies were still active. I only saw 3 moons. I whipped out Astromist and sure enough, Ganymede was occulted and then eclipsed. I never did look up to see if the GRS was visible, the skies didn’t permit it anyhow. I could recall how nice Jupiter looked the previous time, this wasn’t even close.

I next headed up to M27, it was easy to find but I could not make out the lobed appearance. I had seen that before with the SCT using a UHC filter. I tried that and it didn’t help. I’m guessing the moon brightness was still messing with what I could see. I had a nice star field here so I started playing the the two Siebert eyepieces and the University Optics 55mm Plossl. I was trying to learn three things: 1) how bad was the blurring in the 34mm Observatory, 2) did the 22.5mm Ultra have the blurring, and 3) would I use the 55mm Plossl ever?

The first question was easy to answer. I’m not sure what I was seeing before but the 34mm did not sure any of the blurring I saw before. I was quite pleased by this. The same was true of the 22.5mm Siebert, the views were great.

When I put the 55mm in it seemed that the views were sharper than with the 2 Sieberts, but the magnification was so low that I’m not sure I found the view better. I wasn’t able to evaluate the eyepiece for contrast. I also didn’t like the huge eye relief nor do I like the blackouts. I’m still thinking of selling this eyepiece but I’m not sure. I sometimes wonder if I’m not experienced enough to use it.

I looked at some DSO in Sagitarius, trying to work my way over to M8 and M20, but they both required a meridian flip so I put off those slews. There wasn’t anything to write home about so I did do the flip.

I visited the moon again, it was just about to set into the trees, so I wanted to check out that shadow and the 2 mountains again. They had not changed at all. So I guess this means that over an hour or two one cannot see changes on the Moon. Well, I’ll keep on trying. I know I’ve seen changes on a crater rim with binoculars, but I don’t know how much time had passed between sightings.

I next go to M8, the Lagoon Nebula. It wasn’t impressive until I put the UHC in. Wow! Not as nice as M42, of course, but this was delightful. I do think it was dimmer, but only by a bit, than the view in the SCT.

M20 was a disappointment, it was dim and featureless. I can’t recall what it has looked like in the SCT so I’ll have to wait for another time to make that comparison.

I next went down to M7, one of my favorite clusters, and just enjoyed it for a bit. I did try the 3 eyepieces but basically just looked and enjoyed.

Before shutting down for the night, I de-clutched everything and went back to Jupiter. (I didn’t want another meridian flip, it just takes too long.) Hey Ganymede was back! That was nice to see. Like Rags, I also saw a fifth “moon” now but I’m pretty sure that that was a star. I did a bit of reading after seeing the fifth one and seeing Rags’ report. I don’t see any evidence that we should have been able to see a moon. (But it would have been cool if we did!)

Overall I’m quite pleased with the Burgess, to the point I’m thinking of selling the SCT. The only thing it gives me over the Burges is aperture and some will argue that with the central obstruction of the SCT subtracting, the Burgess doesn’t lose all that much. I must say I was disappointed by M20. I’m looking forward to see it with an 8” SCT at the same time as I see it with the Burgess. Selling the SCT has some big financial advantages, not only would the OTA but sold but the Crayford, the 2” diagonal, and the dew controller and strips. Shoot, I could even sell the Telrad since I don’t need two of them.

And of course, that could fund a bigger refractor.... :- )

Messier Marathon practice

In preparation for the Messier Marathon at Larry's house, I wanted to run a practice one, too see what setup is like, to see how long it takes to get align from when the first stars come out until you get your first slew.

I setup on the 3rd floor deck at the apartment in Provincetown. I knew it would be wobbly and I knew I'd have light pollution problems but I figured I'd give it a try, why not? I had a black fleece to use as a hood if I needed it.

Sirius was the first star out, of course, and then I think Procyon and soon I had several. Sadly, I did not have Polaris! I eventually found it binoculars and this let me see it naked eye. I moved the tripod and stood behind it, eyeballing Polaris. I never did it through the bore, I was in a hurry, I knew that some dusk objects would be difficult, I was especially worried about M77.

So althought that wasn't the first object on my list, I used McNish's site to print out my lists, using the Phil Harrington, Astronomy 2002 sequence.

The horizon was still in twilight when I slewed to M77. Now I knew my Goto could be off, especially my first one of the evening, but I couldn't even seen Menkar, so I knew it would be bad. For some reason I put the hood on, then I pulled up my chair and waited. I probably spent about 15-20 minutes looking for M77. Sometimes I'd stay in the same spot, sometimes I'd nudge the hand controller to move the scope a bit. When I could see the power lines through the finder scope I knew I should give up. The sky still wasn't dark yet so I moved on.

M42 and M43 were the first objects. Well, M45 was but I wanted to bag at least one naked eye so I knew I'd have to wait for that one. For almost all objects I was using my Garrett Optical 30mm wide angle 2" eyepiece. This give about 1.2 degreess field of view. I wasn't using the Siebert, I'm not sure why. Maybe I wanted to use an eyepice that I was quite familiar with? I dunno. Anyhow, did us the 22.5mm Siebert to pull in M43.

Then the fun start. I slew to the next object, check it off, repeat. If I knew I could grab an object with binoculars, I would. Why not, it was both fun and probably faster than slewing.

Look up an object, slew, check it off. I know, I know. MM purist will say it wasn't a real marathon. You know what? I don't care, I'll still buy you a beer some day. That's ok. I was enjoying myself for the most part.

Why "for the most part?" Well, this was too easy! MM is supposed to be a challenge and this wasn't a challenge at all. Slew, view, check off, repeat. It was like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel!

I'm not going to recount all of the objects, but here are some of the ones I made notes on:

• M76 - hard!
• M48 - impressive. This was with the scope. I had had this as a binocular goal object this fall but I was foolishly feeling time pressure so I just slewed to it instead. I must revisit this one!
• M81 - Meridian flip.

I didn't note the time of the meridian flip but it seemed pretty early for me. I now need to use a hood for more of my objects. There were so many street lights I was getting reflections on my glasses!

• M82 - hard. This surprised me, but I guess it had to do with the conditions. Lots of light and I was essentially never dark adapted because of that. M82 should not be a hard object.
• M108 - hard. Needed the hood and averted vision. Since I was so far away from the alignment stars, I realigned on Mizar.
• M97 - easy with the hood
• M109 - hood and averted
• M40 - failed to split with the binoculars

Arghhhh, I was moving my chair and I kicked the tripod, moving it! Oh, Rags will be laughing now. But, I didn't panic, I just realign on one star and the gotos weren't all that bad.

• M63 - a fishing boat started up in the harbor, I'm now getting a very strong diesel smell. Normally, I'd hate that but it fits in with observing from a fishing village.
• M51 - Saw both parts. Feeling less time pressure now I gave this a good 10 minutes looking for more detail with the 22.5mm Siebert. No detail was visible.

M95. Ok, here it goes. The dim spirals. I didn't have anything centered in the eyepiece but I could see something nearby. But that's isn't enough to confirm it for me. My paper chart from TUMOL was useless since I wasn't star hopping. I went inside and fired up Stellarium, that was useless also. I download Carte des Ciel and that didn't help. I was in a bit of bind. You could say that Goto was letting me down. But, Goto is a just a tool like a Telrad or paper chart. I needed to use my tools better. I could see Leo in the sky with Saturn added. Realign! I replaced my alignment stars with Saturn and Denebola. Slew to M95. Dead center, as expected.

• M105 - 2 objects in the eyepiece. The McNish charts say I'll see two, but TUMOL shows 3, but one is dim. Eventually, with averted I saw the third so I confirmed M105.

The Virgo objects were an easy blur. Everyone was dead nuts centered in the eyepiece. I have no problems claiming a find for them. Did I star hop? Nope. Did I learn how dense Virgo/Leo were? Yup. Clearly this wolud be a fun area to explore from a dark site!

• M3 - Hey, it is back. Very nice.
• M83 - I hear church bells. 11pm? Very hard, tried averted and the hood. The tube is almost horizontal but with essentially only the hills and the dunes of Truro I have perfect horizon here. Sadly, I didn't nab it. In retropspect, I may have tried too early, it could have risen some more! Yup, that's it. I just simulated it in Stellarium, I had 2 more hours until it was high.

At this point I considered giving up. I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. But, I scanned ahead in the list M13 and M92 were coming up. So I kept on going.

• M12 in Ophicchius. It was below the horizon! So were all the Oph objects.

Time for bed.

Well, actually not. The seeing had been great so I put the 9mm in and did some Saturn viewing. Sadly, the 3rd floor deck just didn't work out for this. I was bummed. This was the best seeing I had ever seen for Saturn, oh well, it will still be there later.

I hibernated the scope and left it all outside.

Next morning, I woke it up. Took the Telrad off and put the solar filter on. 2 sunspots!

Totals:

Found with telescope: 55
Found with binoculars: 7
Found with naked eye: 1
Did not find: 3
Obstructed view: 4

Total found: 63

The missed objects were 83, 33 and 77. If I had waited about 10 minutes, 33 would have been an obstructed, not a missed. But there was no way to get it in the twilight.

I was done by quarter after 11.

I'm looking forward to the real one next week. It will be better with friends. Goto will give me the time to observe. Clearly, I was ahead of schedule most of the night. I didn't like the TUMOL printouts, the McNish printout is better for Goto, the descriptions are better.

Wide Field imaging and MM practice

So, the Messier Marathon was supposed to happen this weekend but we were clouded out both Friday and Saturday. Sunday night was clear and moonless so I figured I get some MM practice time in, as well as shoot some widefield shots of constellations. So off to YFOS I went.

I was, of course, running late, but this was part of the MM practice. How much time does it take from when I get to the site until I am fully set up and aligned?

It turns out that that is 45 minutes, seem pathetically slow but I'll just have to take that into account. Then again, it will be much easier to get to Larry's by dusk for a DST MM in April. I wish I had measured how much time it took until I was aligning, because that initial setup time can happen while it is still light, but does it really matter? As a test, I only used 2 calibration stars for speed. That cuts some time off. (I choose two only because after I did the first one, the GoTo to the second one was pretty darn close.)

I check out M42, but the transparency seems pretty poor, not much detail could be seen. This was also true of looking up at the stars themselves, there didn't seem to be all that many.

So I took my Canon A610 and attached it with a bracket to my counter weight bar. This is something I got on Astromart months ago. Tonight would be the first time I was using it. I took some shots of the Orion Constellation, then the bottom part of the constellation, and then a shot with the Pleiades in it. The A610 can take 15 second frames with 15 second dark frames. I set it to take 10 of these in continuous mode. A manually focused on infinity. I did play around with the ISO setting but sadly the EXIF data does not record that! This is a real shame because one of the shots I took was rather nice and I have no idea what settings I used. I forgot how to set aperture on so I just used whatever the camera was set to.

Just as I was in the middle of shooting, Gardner and Rich showed up for MM marathon of their own. I was glad, I really don't like being at YFOS alone.

Here's a full frame shot of the bottom of Orion. (Click the image to see the full size one.)

Now here is a 100% crop of the sword.

I also tried using Registax to see what it could do with 10 frames. Here it is:


To me this is odd, it didn't do much at all. I was a little disappointed with this. But anyways, it was fun. Here's the shot that turned out best of all.

You can see the Pleiades in the middle upper left, the Hyades Cluster of Taurus in the upper left, Aldebaran showing its orange color. Mirfak and the Alpha Persei Cluster are in the center right, and bright Capella owns the upper right. (You really need to click this one to see anything...)

I do wish there were more stars. This was the best shot of the evening and I don't know how I made it. I know I'll being trying this again and I appreciate any advice.

The haze was getting worse and we all retired to the warming hut to chat a bit. We probably stayed about 15-20 minutes and we checked the sky again and it was getting better.

Gardner was really fighting dew with his binoculars but Rich seemed to be doing wel with his Pronto. Just as I was about to pack it up, he called out that he got M1. Now I've tried for this before with binoculars from Manchester and failed everytime, I wanted to see it. So I punched it into the hand controller and hey, there it was! I was tired so I didn't look much.

I tried for a quick succession of M objects that I knew were in the sky. Bang, they all were there, must have gotten half a dozen in about 2 minutes. It does seem like a Goto scope, once it is setup, really makes short work of a Messier Marathon! ("And yes, I realize that this isn't necessarily the point, just let me enjoy what I do, ok?," he said a bit testily...)

I had to be at work the next day so I reluctantly started tearing down the equipment. By the time I was done the haze had cleared and the skies were gorgeous.

Of course...

YFOS Report, Orion Sampler

I arrived at YFOS around 5:45pm, maybe a little later. The skies were perfectly clear but the moon, a few days before full, was extremely bright. I knew the moon would interfere with the seeing but after Monday's disappointing visit I just didn't care. It had been so long since I had been out that I was going to set up and see what I could see.

I had prepared last Sunday night for the Monday trip by picking the 2 Orion chapters from Sue French's wonderful book, "Celestial Sampler." I usually observe with some plan, but it had always been a plan that I had put together, thinking about what I wanted, and trying to put together some kind of list. Usually I spent the entire night slewing across the sky, hoping to glean some knowledge from my newbie tour. So this night would be different, I'd have an expert guide along.

I was also anxious to try out some new equipment, first was my replacement parka, for some odd reason, my 20 year old Cabela's down pants no longer fit. They must have shrunk, that's all I can say. You know, they just don't make them like they used to! I chose the Snowy Range Suit, again by Cabela's, primarily because it was one of the cheaper ones that the sold. I also liked the reinforced knees, I didn't want to wear through a pair of parka pants.

Also being tested was the new Astro Chair. from buyastrostuff.com. As you know, Rags and I have been building Denver chairs. They are quite nice but mine is just too heavy. I live on the third floor and it is a real chore to bring it up and down the stairs.

And finally, on the equipment list, a Seibert 34mm Observatory Series eyepiece, a gift from Jeannette.

Ok, enough of the stuff, I don't usually come out with all this new stuff at once but it just sortof all built up. Having clouds for months seems to do that.

Oh wait, one more bit of stuff. Celestron recently released new firmware for their Goto scope. I bought the cable I needed (if anyone wants to borrow it, just give me a call an bring Bass Ale.) and spend about 2 1/2 hours trying to get the new firmware in the scope. I'm pretty sure that fault was in the USB-serial adaptor that I needed to use. I only have USB and the scope's cable is PC-serial to RJ-11 telephone cable. I had many Blue Screens of Death and countless comm failures. What was really nervewracking was that after a failure, the scope was essentially a GEM mount scope w/o even a clock drive, not scrap but certainly not what I was used to. I eventually succeeded.

So, back to YFOS...

I unloaded everything and got it all set up. Time for the new parka. Hey, this is nice. Legs are warm now.

Now time for the GoTo alignment procedure. The problem is that I don't know the winter Western stars! The hand controller kept on suggesting ones I had never heard of. I knew Caph so I kept on scrolling until I had that, except Cassiopeia was now upside and sideways and whatever. I pulled out my palm pilot and looked up star charts, and eventually figured it out. Hmmm, need another star, I scrolled for awhile and eventually realized that I was lost. I might as well pick one and look it up. Hamal!

Ok, now for the 4 calibration stars. This was new to me, the old firmware (I had old firmware, only accepted 1 calibration star. But the good news is that all these would be from the west.; Betelgeuse, Procyon, Sirius and Rigel.

As soon as my alignments were done, Herb showed up and started setting up. Good, I really don't like being alone in the dark. I knew this would be a good evening.

First Goto was of course to M42, Orion Nebula. I didn't need to use Goto, I can find that one myself, but hey, why not you know? Odd, it was off by about a degree. That's not good. I did an alignment on it and found that I could replace either calibration stars or the alignment stars. This is good! The old firmware would only let you replace the alignment stars. (Which means if you messed up the calibration star, you were pretty much out of luck and would have to start over.) I replaced Procyon since that was furthest from M42. I spent about 10 minutes just looking at M42 and looking around it. I had hoped to be able to see the dimmer part of the nebula. I've seen the arms reaching out encircling it, but alas, the moon was so bright nothing really could be seen. I tried my UHC filter and that really didn't help. That moon was bright!

I pulled out the book and with my mitten on my left and and a bare right hand turned to my first section, A Starry Mist. NGC2024 was up first. (Odd, I expected M42 but maybe that is too obvious.) I spent a good 15 minutes looking for it. I never found it. I placed Alnitak in the center and around the edges of the eyepiece, using the Seibert 34mm, which gave me 59x and 1.19 degrees TFOV. I tried the UHC and still nothing. Man, it was clearly bright. I forgot to try and resolve Alnitak. This is one problem with the cold. I was already getting uncomfortable and found I wanted to hurry a bit. So much for my new parka! I had a sweater on under it, but long underwear is certainly in my future.

I similarly failed on M78 and NGC2071. This was getting frustrating but in retrospect, the skies probably just didn't permit it.

I didn't even try to see Barnard Loop's yeah, right and I forgot to look for NGC2112.

I had wonderful success with NGC 2169, known as the 37 Cluster. Click the link, it is a good asterism. My problem was that I couldn't make out the horizontal part of the 7! I looked and looked, just not there. Now my view is of course different from the picture, I was rotated at least. It was until I realized that I was upside and mirror image did I see that I was looking at the wrong part of the 7. Once I saw my mistake the missing dim start jumped right out. I didn't not observe any color in the 7 but then again, I wasn't looking for it. Newbie mistake, the second of many for the night.

I failed to find NGC 2194 and NGC 2175, even with the UHC. Just too bright I guess.

So now I turn the page to get to the next lesson. Lepus? I don't remember reading about Lepus. I was too cold to mess about with the book so I figured I'd just go off plan.

The previous night, from Manchester, I found M41 and M47 with binoculars and failed to find M46, M48, and M50. I wanted to see if I could grab any of these. M41 was easy, as was M47. But M46 proved elusive. I knew it was right next to M47 so I scanned the area and wow, there it was. Very dim, very washed out. No wonder binoculars from Manchester couldn't do it!

I honestly can't remember if I found M48 or M50. I think not but I can't remember. I've started keeping a paper log but it was too cold to open it so I just don't know.

Now off to Saturn! Too low, the skies were boiling.

It was about 8:30 and I was pretty cold. The reusable hand warmers were going a good job of keeping the hand controller working and keeping my left hand warm but my rigth was freezing and my back was cold. The feet were beyond cold. But, 8:30 is too early! So it was moon time!

I put the 22.5mm Seibert Ultra in and barlow that 2x, giving me 178x power. Maybe a little high, there was some motion in the view but it wasn't horrible. (I was too cold to barlow the 34, I was staying put.) I tired to identify some craters on the terminator but it just wasn't happening. My moon atlas on my palm showed the terminator but I just couldn't match anything up. Oh well, I still could enjoy what I was seeing. I watched on crater for about 10 minutes, trying too see solar motion down the edge of the ridge as the sun rose there. Nothing. Maybe I needed more time.

During this Herb and I heard sirens, lots of them, and fire trucks with the horns really blaring.

Around 9pm Ken showed up. First thing he wondered about was why the warming hut wasn't open. It was snowed in and I didn't bring a shovel. He pointed out the shovel right by the door and started in it on it.

I was done with the moon and poked around the Big Dipper some. M51 was a failure but I did grab M82, very, very hard to see.

Then I went in to warm up. (Thanks Ken!)

I brought the Sue French book in with me. Doh! I see my mistake, I did my second section first! The one I meant to do was before it. (Now, in my defense, I actually checked this, but when I turned forwards in the book, my gloved hands slipped and turned 2 pages, which put me in Taurus.)

This looked like a good lesson, 2 degrees of the sword, but I really needed to warm up some. Ken came in and we chatted some but not too long, he needed to get out and start setting up. He just got his CPC11 that day or the day before and was anxious to check it out. I should have stayed inside more but I also wanted to finish up the lesson.

I could only get 4 stars of the Trapezium. Herb got 6 with his Starmaster but I couldn't see them even with his scope, I could only see the 5. I tried the 22.5mm on mine but that didn't help. I didn't think to try the barlow.

I could see M43 but only dimly, I couldn't make out the comma shape.

I could see the stars of NGC1977 but not the nebulosity.

NGC 1981 was an easy find, quite pretty actually.

I put the UHC in and tried NGC 1977 again, so such luck. I confirmed I was in the correct area by comparing the star pattern against the photo in the book, but no luck.

With the filter still in, I went down to Iota Orionis. I was looking for Struve 747 and Struve 745. Iota had a dramatic red/green split to it. I took the filter out since I didn't want it. I found Stuve 747 easily antd 745 almost as easily. It wasn't until I was typing this that I realized that the UHC let me see 2 of the 3 Iota stars! If I had been paying more attention to the book I would have tried to split the triple but I was concentrating on the Struves.

Back to Saturn now, it was higher in the sky. I tried the 9mm University Optics but the seeing just wasn't good enough for that, 222x. So I barlow the 22.5m again, giving 178 power. This was a good place to be. I could see one band which curiously lined up with one part of the ring, giving the illusion that ring passed in front of Saturn twice. It was hard to shack that feeling. I could occasionally see a glimpse of a ring shadow but it was difficult. 2 or 3 moons were visible. I didn't bother pulling out the Palm to see what the were.

It was 11:30pm. I was done. Cold to bone, but very happy. I had had a wonderful evening. I heartily recommend the Sue French book, Celestial Sampler for any beginner, and I'll bet it is good for some non-beginners also. The chair rocks also, very light and easy to move around the tripod, easy to adjust also. A++ on that.

I chatted some with Ken and then Herb and I started packing up. When I hit Route 9 there were 2 police cars, 2 1/2 hours after the original sirens. They had a car stopped and were talking with the driver. It looked like a road block of some sort. I asked if it was ok to proceed and they waved me on.

All in all it was a great evening.