RobertI

Finding myself under a beautiful transparent sky with a 4” Apo, I had to decide my plan for the next couple hours. On a whim I got out the 38mm 2” Panaview to get some super-wide views of my favourite object, the Veil nebula. Surprisingly I couldn’t find it but when I applied the 2” UHC filter it popped into view, the East and West easily seen with Pickering’s wisp area also visible. On another whim I thought I would try my new 32mm Plossl with the OIII filter - the improvement was very noticeable with both sides of the nebula just shining brightly - the extra contrast provided by the OIII and extra magnification to darken the sky really paid dividends. The 32mm is not a particularly comfortable eyepiece to use so I put in the 17mm Morpheus with the OIII and got a much more comfortable and immersive experience, and although the nebula became a ghostly grey, the tendrils of the Eastern Veil were easier to see. Under a really dark sky, this would be my choice of eyepiece for the Veil with this scope I think. Impressed with the performance of the 32mm Plossl and OIII filter at brightening the Veil, I thought I’d have a go at my nemesis, the Crescent Nebula, a target whose full shape has so far eluded me. I quickly found the faint glow of the nebula in star-field I now know so well, and over the course of the next half hour I got closer to seeing what seems like an oval cloud, but I could never see anything that resembled a Crescent. I feel under a really dark sky, I could crack this one using the 32mm Plossl and an OIII, potentially even with the C8 - hopefully I will find out at Kelling in a few weeks. Scanning up through the Milky Way with the 32mm and OIII still in, past Sadir, revealed a strange world of light a dark clouds suffused with thousands of stars. Up past Deneb and I came upon the North America nebula and, oh boy, what a sight! I have never seen the Gulf of Mexico so clear and well defined and scanning around the huge nebula it was easy to see the shape of much of it, but the Gulf of Mexico was a standout and should be a target object in its own right. Definitely my best ever view of this object. Finally, I remembered I had bought an Hb filter last year and the California nebula in Perseus is a good target, an object I have never seen before. So switching the filter wheel to the Hb, staying with the 32mm Plossl I slewed across. A well defined glow was immediately apparent, sausage shaped and slightly larger than the field of view. The top portion (west?) was very easy to see and scanning down the length the edges were still easy to see but not quite so obvious. No detail or structure was visible, but this was a very pleasing catch and a first. I switched to the OIII and UHC (the manual filter wheel makes this easy to do) but the nebula was completely invisible. So the Hb does work - highly recommended. So a great evening. The 32mm Plossl was very good at revealing dim objects but I do not find it terribly comfortable to use - perhaps a 2” eyepiece at this focal length might be something to consider, but that would mean getting a 2” OIII as well!

Great results Peter, I particularly like the dark nebulae.

I’d love to see a good structured comparison between a 3”, 4” and 5” class refractors, particularly on DSOs. I often hear comments like “a 4 inch refractor is the sweet spot” and “the jump from 3 inch to 4 inch is more noticeable than the jump from 4 to 5” (and also the opposite!). But I often wonder whether this might be due to the nature of the showpiece objects which are commonly used to compare, ie: those objects just happen to seem better at the 3 to 4 jump, and less at the 4 to 5 jump. For more challenging objects, perhaps that’s less true. Or perhaps it’s bang for the buck, or bang for the weight. I’m probably rambling now, so I’ll let us get back on topic. 🙂

Finally booked my pitch - there were quite a few pitches left but when checking satellite view I realized why; they are the ones where sky is partially obscured by trees. I chose the best one I could, but it’s not that important as my setup is very portable so I can find a good spot to observe, and tbh, it will be nice to just wander around the site sharing views and chatting with other fellow enthusiasts. 🙂

One thing potentially in favour of Haw Wood that they already do an astronomy / dark sky week for astronomers in November, so are familiar with the needs of astronomers and clearly supportive of what we do.

Well done! I’m just about to book a tent pitch at the same event, currently deciding which is the best spot. I’ve limited experience at star parties, but from what I’ve seen, blacking out is not to be underestimated - in the pitch black of the night any tiny gap of light can seem blinding and really upset people, so a test run is a good idea. On cars there’s a Christmas tree of lights every time it’s locked/unlocked or opened, so literally everything has to be covered if you need to get in or out of your car, but I guess you won’t have one of those though. Hope to see you there. 🙂

Thanks Vlaiv.

Thanks Vlaiv. I have often thought about shortening the tube, I would be prepared to do it as the scope isn’t worth much, but probably will never find the time! Could always try your solution for straight through viewing! 🙂

Superb Stu. Your inspiring me to try something with my iPad.

Thanks for that Vlaiv. I have a 4” F10 Tal which I find a very “un-versatile” scope because it will not quite come to focus with 2” diagonals so can only use 1.25” diagonals and eyepieces, limiting the FOV to around 1.6 degrees I think which is not much better than my C8! I’m guessing that there is not enough in focus in the Tal to use your solution?

Thanks Paul, there’s already been some discussion on that towards the end of this thread if you’re interested….

Superb rendition Mike, I like how you’ve shown how the visibility of the Cassini division varies round the ring, the subtle shadows and subtle shading on the inside of the ring.. 👍

Lovely description Mike.

Hope no one minds, here are a few popular DSOs to demonstrate the FOV of the SeeStar 50 (red box - ignore the fact the FOV label says ASI290), hopefully I’ve got the calcs right but feel free to correct me.

The answer for me is no. BUT, I was doing some EAA a few years back, and captured a few galaxies in one night. A supernova was discovered in one of those galaxies soon after, and it turns out I had captured it before the official discovery date, but obviously never reported it as I didn’t know it was there at the time! So now I check all my EAA galaxy images for supernovae - science of a sort!

Yes you’re right I’ve had a play in SkySafari and it is a slightly smaller field of view than I thought, and frames a lot of objects well. Big enough to fit in largish objects like M33, M42 (just) and the Pacman neb, but small enough to resolve globulars. And not too zoomed in to make tracking a problem for shortish exposures.

This is a really good video, and a glowing endorsement of the product. The results from the middle of Tokyo are pretty impressive, so from a dark site should be excellent. I think the image scale will be better for larger objects like emission nebulae, larger open clusters, galaxies and Milky Way. Plenty of objects to see for the price. I note he said he has not tried other products from Unistellar and Vaonis, only the Dwarf which is a slightly different proposition, so would be good to see him compare them at some point.

Result!

I had a friend once who was obsessed by cranes (the construction kind, not the feathered kind), and was very knowledgeable about them. I asked him what fascinated him about cranes, and his response was “Rob, if you need to ask, you’ll never understand”. I can’t help feeling that visual astronomy, and the art of observing faint fuzzies, is very similar!

I shall watch this John, looks fascinating. I didn’t realise Terry Pratchett was a keen astronomer.

Well I’m going to be positive here and say the future of visual astronomy is looking very bright. Technology like Starsense is making visual astronomy easier and more attractive, solar scopes are adding a new dimension to the visual hobby, there is a huge array of good quality equipment available, and in my opinion, imaging can never beat the experience of seeing the moon, Saturn, Jupiter and the brighter clusters and colourful doubles with your own eyes. And for those few that are smitten by the visual bug, it becomes a way of life. Personally I think all this evolving new EAA type tech is fantastic, be it phone apps or Seestar/Dwarf/Evscope type products. I love my homebrew black and white EAA setup, it shows me the myriad springtime galaxies that are a barely perceptible smudges through my C8 - that said I get little time to set it up, but it’s nice to know I have it!

I was interested to see the Askar 103 triplet on the FLO website - it seems to have a removable section of the ota which I assume will allow bino-viewers to be used without a glass path corrector or Barlow. With my William Optics BV and 20mm eyepieces this would give 35x magnification and nearly two degrees FOV which is pretty wide field for binoviewers. It’s also £998, which seems to make it a good alternative to the Starfield 102ED, especially if you like binoviewing. Anyone use one of these for low power bino-viewing? https://www.firstlightoptics.com/askar-telescopes/askar-103-apo-triplet-refractor.html

One of the things I love about astronomy is that once armed with the right equipment, the hobby can be enjoyed for zero cost. Yes I know the many of us keep spending to find that perfect setup, but equally many folk get a nice refractor or dob (or two!) and some decent eyepieces and have all they need for years. It’s also nice to know that when your equipment can’t be used due to a bout of poor weather or whatever, it isn’t costing you MOT (ministry of telescopes), sky tax, insurance (usually) or annual servicing. 🙂

Welcome, and YES to binoculars for that first step into astronomy. 👍 Get some good ones though, there’s a lot of rubbish out there. Just a point to note, in older eyes (like mine!) the pupil may not dilate enough to make use of the full light gathering power of 7x50, so 8x42 might be a better bet for low power binos.

It’s a tough one to get right. The advice was always to start with binoculars, but more recently even this advice has been questioned by some. Whenever anyone asks me now, I simply lend them my Heritage 130P and I generally find out what they are REALLY are interested in. The most recent time I did this with a friend who expressed an interest, it turned out all he wanted to do was take a snap of the moon. The concept of looking for faint fuzzies was not something he was aware of… or interested in.