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jonathan

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Blog Entries posted by jonathan

  1. jonathan
    More precisely, NGC869 and NGC 884. An excellent target for my ST80, and the best thing I managed to observe tonight.
    I started off by continuing to work my way through Turn Left At Orion for the Autumn season, there seemed to be quite a few clusters and double stars that required either dark skies or a bigger telescope than the ST80, I attempted a couple of the double stars but could not see them, possibly hampered by atmospheric conditions (high haze?)
    M34 was my first real success, an open cluster in Perseus, though a little underwhelming in the ST80 tonight. The next page was The Double Cluster, a really easy one to find, just visible with the naked eye even with all the light pollution coming from the neighbour's spotlights. I saw it beautifully through my 8x42 binoculars, and again in sharp detail through the ST80 and 25mm eyepiece. It really made the night worth while!
    Also had quick peeks at Jupiter (four moons visible in a line around the planet) and Pleiades (my favourite cluster).
  2. jonathan
    I put my ST80 out without any real plans of what to see, as I'm in the middle of sorting out a good battery for my NEQ6 / Celestron mounts (current battery is dead).
    I viewed a few things that I'd seen before, pleiades is always a favourite of mine, tried to see NGC6826, The Blinking Planetary, but no luck.
    Scouting along the Milky Way I spotted what looked like an open cluster that I hadn't seen before, I easily located it using the finder scope by keeping both eyes open and focusing my attention on the naked eye rather than finder scope view, while paying attention to the finder scope cross-hairs (quite a task in concentration for me!). I checked on Star Walk on my iPad to see if it was actually anything, and there it was - M39.
    Another target for my 8SE, when I finally get my battery woes sorted. Currently looking at a 20Ah AGM battery, hopefully one that will be a direct replacement for the cheap one in my Maplins 5-in-1 power tank.
  3. jonathan
    Clear skies were forecast for most of the night so I decided to give the 150P a go at the telescope targets (which I failed to get anywhere with using the ST80, that was mostly due to a bad night though).
    Found the first target, the Crab Nebula (M1), something I had not seen before. Not brilliant seeing conditions, on a better night may even be able to make out some structure, but tonight it just looked like a grey blob.
    Other highlights of the night include my first sighting of the Great Red Spot - evident as a pale gap in the upper cloud belt (as seen in the telescope). It was at the correct time for the spot to be visible so I assumed this was it, as it is not red at the moment.
    Also managed to get decent views of the Orion Nebular, the Fish's Mouth and Trapezium stars, although could not focus fully using the 5mm due to seeing conditions.
    Tried for the Owl cluster but the clouds were already rolling in and seeing conditions had taken a dive. Jupiter had a big halo around it and my optics were dewing up (even my glasses).
  4. jonathan
    Forecast was for sunny and clear skies yesterday evening and this morning, well they were almost right - the clouds didn't really clear last night but this morning there were just a few fluffy clouds about. I took the opportunity to have a quick look at the sun through my Lunt LS60.
    What an interesting sun today, there seemed to be filaments and prominences galore. One very large filament in the lower left quadrant seemed to be coming out at me, like something from a 3D film. There was a solar flare yesterday or the day before, I think I could just see the remnants of that. Also there were several pairs of sun spots scattered across the entire disc of the sun.
    This is possibly the most activity I have observed so far, perhaps not the most impressive prominences but certainly the most interesting in a single view. Hoping to see more of this kind of activity during the solar maximum this year and next.
    Once again, the CG-4 performed brilliantly, very easy to set up and align (I don't think I had to adjust DEC at all once I had located the sun), finding the sun in the Sol Finder was quick too. I am getting used to assembling the Vixen Synta dovetail bar to the clamshell using the three bolts, it only takes me five minutes to put it all together (along with the Sol Finder) and have it balanced on the CG-4 mount. It is all part of the fun really, there is certainly something satisfying about assembling things while sitting outdoors on a sunny day.
    A mass of clouds has come over now, there will be sunny gaps, I'm sure, but I've seen the best of the sunshine today, I think.
  5. jonathan
    I decided to have a crack at this from Turn Left at Orion using my Startravel 80, it looked simple enough - a couple of stars right next to Vega, how could I not find that? Except, that is, for the massive cloud bank that had appeared across virtually the whole sky since I put my telescope out.
    He waits, that's what he does. Tick follows tock follows tick. You get the picture. :clouds1:
    Eventually I could see a gap forming on the horizon, and about twenty minutes later it arrived at Vega and I knew that now was the time, I had already seen the next cloud bank coming along sharp on the gap's heels.
    From Vega I could see the two 'stars' that made up an equal triangle, and through the 25mm eyepiece I could clearly see that each 'star' was actually two stars each (one pair was wider than the other), I switched to the 10mm for a closer look at each pair but for the life of me I just could not split the double-double as described in the book! I guess the Startravel 80 just isn't up to it, and there may have been slightly poor seeing too. I thought for a moment that I did see double stars through averted vision, maybe I did or maybe it was just my blurry vision.
    One for the 8SE I think!
  6. jonathan

    The Moon

    By jonathan,

    I had admired the moon yesterday as it was a new crescent, with Venus and Jupiter still close by from the recent near-miss conjunction (from my location), I decided to have a go with the telescope tonight.
    I had the telescope set up before sunset, the moon and Venus were clearly visible, as the sun set but it was still light I also noticed Jupiter and Mars so I had a look at both - Jupiter was looking very nice, several bands visible and four moons in a long line (still only just dusk, daylight practically); Venus was in half-phase but still amazingly bright in the daylight. The moon looked good too, just the crescent was visible at this time, stunning to see the whole moon in the 38mm. I decided to turn the NEQ6 off and come back outside after dark.
    I switched my attention to the earth-shine lit shadowed portion of the moon, it was visible with the naked eye and through the scope was a dim mystery, the usual dark areas and major craters just visible through a purple-ish haze.
    Had a bit of a random scout around, looked at one or two star clusters but the seeing just wasn't up to par for regular stars. There were a couple of funky light shows from the brighter stars close to the horizon as their light played like a multi-coloured disco ball through the earth's atmosphere, it looked crazy!
    I was hoping that Saturn would make an appearance before 10pm but it didn't, blocked by buildings and hedges no doubt. With the seeing not brilliant it would not have been as good a view as the one I had of Saturn recently anyway.
    With the moon all ready to set I decided to pack away, there had been hardly any dew to speak of but I sense it was just beginning to come on as I was packing up, my filter case top was covered in it.
  8. jonathan
    When SGL changed to a new server / forum system several years ago I could no longer find my blog, all those entries just seemed to be gone, so I gave up on it rather disappointed.  I don't know whether it was just due to the dramatic change in user interface or that the blog system was genuinely not up and running for a while, either way I just (rather bitterly) put it out of my mind and got on with observing and using the forum.  Until today...
    Just now I was thinking about how there used to be a blog system and wondered if, somehow, they'd actually had it working all this time and that I'd just not been able to find it.  Didn't take me long to find it.  Ah, but then would all of my old blog entries be there?  Actually, they were.  It looks like my last blog entries were from around 2012.
    While I've developed a mistrust of hosts and websites that I don't control myself (in terms of adding content to them), I might start to update my blog topics here on SGL but will mirror the content over on my personal Wordpress blog, which is on a host that I control (that is, I pay for my own hosting and have a Wordpress blog on it).  We shall see how it goes.
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