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Skipjack

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Everything posted by Skipjack

  1. Interesting post. Nice project! When you say tiniest star, I am assuming it's physical size. As someone mentioned white dwarfs and some red dwarfs should be the most common to observe for us amateurs. They are usually high proper motion stars to my knowledge, which makes them interesting over a period of a decade or two. I recall having observed Lalande 21185, Groombridge 1830, Barnads Star and 61 Cygni to mention a few. Which is the smallest of these I do not know. Edit: I now realize you specifically asking about the stars in the Double Cluster. Sorry.
  2. Hi. Searched for this galaxy, member of the Maffei 1 group, here on the forum - but only found some posts in the imaging part. Has anyone here logged this visually? I had a really hard time logging this from my Bortle 4 backyard with my 8" at 80x. Worked on it for a good while before it popped out extremely faint but still quite large, estimating it to 15-17 arcmins. Some sources has it to 20+ arcmins in apparent size. It "blinked" as many other very faint objects, and all of a sudden it was all gone and not found again. A fun galaxy to observe and a good challange if you have not tried it.
  3. Hi folks. Did reach my goal of 300 Herschels before the summer, and now in August I have logged 336 of them in total. My goal of 350 objects before the end of the year seems possible. Good feeling! Having a hard time with nebulae from my backyard though, and I am a bit too lazy to drive to a darker site, but I have no choice for the majority of what's left to log. How is your observing coming along?
  4. Hey, I find myself really enjoying observing galaxies near notable field stars (within <1º of each other) . It gives a nice depth to the observation. Worth mentioning of this kind is NGC 404 very near Mirach/BET AND and NGC 4448 near GAM COM. I would be happy to get more suggestions of these, if any, suitable for 8-10". Any ideas?
  5. Mark & Michael, good work! 320 and 397 of them is a big dent in the list for sure. Have had productive nights on the 1st of February and 2nd/3rd of February. Spent 5 hours from 11.pm on the 2nd to 4am on the 3rd. During these two sessions I revisited 24 Messiers and logged 28 new Herschel 400's as well as a couple of Caldewells at the same time. I should have passed 300+ Hershels by now. Working on the transcripts from recorder to logbook right now, it's quite the chore. From the 1st of febraury, logged some remaining objects in ORI & GEM: NGC 1788 (ORI). At the eyepiece I was pretty sure this was a galaxy! Got a bit of a surprise when doing the research afterwards. Noted about 20 white field stars, with an occasional yellowish at 80x (0.85 deg FOV). Got hints of slight elongation of object at the eyepiece, and I think this was what fooled me into believing it was a gxy. NGC 1980 (ORI). Much open cluster, a rough count of ten stars, perhaps a few more. One star is much brighter than the others, white to white blue, and some occasional white/yellow. NGC 1999 (ORI). Logged as "Nearly stellar in center/or nearly stellar slightly off center, with a little halo surrounding it". About 15 dim stars in FOV, with a couple of brighter ones in the outer edge of the field. (This object had me a bit confused, I estimated the size to abt 3-4' but Saguaro Astro where I got my H400-list from claims 16 x 12'...?) NGC 2022 (ORI). Very small. Easily found though, as the stars were pinpoints, and the nebula was not. One second I noted the color of the nebula to be whitish-yellowish, and the next second it was white blue. It shifted a few times like that. Nice optical illusion on this very evening. NGC 2024 (ORI). Visually pretty large! Tried O-iii, then it nearly disappeared. Shifted to UHC wich made the nebula pop out again and became quite large again. UHC seemed to be the best filter for this. NGC 2304 (GEM). This one I tried a few times before, but got lost in the very star populated field every time. Now I finally noticed a small pretty dim bunch, hidden well in between their brighter optical neighbours. No fan of open clusters, but this one was nice once found. NGC 2395 (GEM). Larger and brighter compared to NGC 2304. Very open, mainly white stars, with a couple of white-yellow. Guessing about 15' in size, not really knowing which stars belong to the cluster and which ones do not. //S
  6. A laminating machine/laminator is Gods gift to mankind! Just love them! We all had our share of damp and soggy papers in the field... Don't have a laminating machine, so my wife laminate for me at her work. I am dreaming of having my own though. Herschels... hope for some clear weather next new moon, will continue wrap up some constellations with a few sporadic objects here and there. Then armed and ready for spring and summer objects.
  7. What a cliffhanger Marvin 😂 Perhaps you bagged all of them without knowing it.
  8. That's excellent Joe! Good work! It turns out I have observed all of these too, and my own notes says; NGC 2186: Small but noticable. About 25-30 white stars, quite dim, apart from two or three brighter ones. NGC 2194: Getting an immediate feeling of a small fuzzy cloud or a touch of haze, which suggest many individual relatively faint stars. A handful of brighter stars in the same field of view NGC 2281: Nice open cluster, but still no wow-sensation. It's possbile to construct an asterism of a jumping salmon, but very sure nobody else would see this. Counting around 15-20 stars, fairly even in magnitude, not entirely sure which of them belongs to the cluster. Irregular in shape, white with a very slight yellowish color. NGC 1444: Not really remarkable. Very open. Small. Struve 446 in the field, made no attempts of splitting this. NGC 1513: Nice open cluster, sparse with some light signs of concentrated stars. Fairly bright. Can construct an asterism similar to that of an "S", or possibly an infinty sign. Counting 15-20 stars, white to possibly white/blue. After some time at the eyepiece the letter "S" asterism changes to the figure "30" or "38" in contrast to the "37"-cluster. Cool! It seems our notes are fairly similar. A good 100 objects is a nice start. Me too find open clusters a bit tedious and a bit boring, although there are exeptions of course.
  9. Marvin/Joe, hi! Lets get to it then! I passed 275 objects last week, but doing Messiers & Caldwells #1-67 at the same time (many of the Caldwells exists in H400 as you know, so really not that much of an effort). Been observing since 1989, so I have logged a majority of them before, but sadly never did much of recording - just a check in a box - and those papers are long gone. This time I will do it properly. I guess I would need a minimum of 15 years for H2500 so I will likely not be able to finish it. But while waiting for SGR, SCO and the others, I might as well go and make tiny little dent in H2500. I set my goals fairly low, want to pass 300 objects before the summer and roughly 350 by the end of the year. But you never know.
  10. Hi. Someone visually active with H400 out there? It would be nice to share and discuss success as well as non-success as we go. Have logged 223/400 right now, and last observation made two days ago. Going to hunt down Open Clusters this evening. Mainly using a 8" SCT (goto), but also have a 10" SCT (non-goto). Who is up for the job? //S
  11. Unbelievable Louis! Very nice indeed! A lot of money invested in your EP's. Favourites? I only have a few as I have used my 12 and 25 mm (or is it 26 mm, age is taking its toll on my memory) Meade 4000 early version Japanese made, for the past 25 years of observations. Have nothing else to compare with, but they have been more than satisfactory (I read somewhere that they are even considered on par with Masuyama's?) Then I fell for some well (mis-)directed marketing and bought the HD-60's... I should have gone for a good orthoscopic EP instead. Want one. What is your recommendation?
  12. Wow Louis! That's quite a big collection. Impressive! And tnx fr yr reply. Yeah, perhaps they down graded the quality of the rubber. Sad though, but they are practical at the same - as they may work as can openers.
  13. Hi folks. I bought the 25, 18 and 12 mm on a sale, but kind of regret this. The optics seem quite alright, but the rubber is really stiff even at room temperature. I don't even want to mention the way they feel in sub zero temperatures. It has to be really poor quality rubber. My gut tells me these will become quite brittle with time. I believe they have been on the market for a good period of time, how do they test out in the long run? Any long time owners here?
  14. Hi and welcome to a great hobby I'd go with the refractor, any day of the week - if it's one of those 400 mm focal length ones that is. It's more flexible and give you a wider field - which tends to trigger the interest even more. That is a welcome bonus. The short tube 80 (if it that is what you looking at) may easily also be used for terrestrial observations, should you lose interest in Astronomy. It fits in a backpack, and can follow you wherever you go, day or night.
  15. Thank you both. Yeah, I also prefer my eye to the EP rather than attaching a camera. I simply don't have the patience to turn knobs and pull levers in an image processing software. As my astro friend summarized it: "If I go Nepal to see Mt. Everest, I look at it with my eyes to truly experience the mountain. I don't stay at the hotel just buying postcards of it." True his words.
  16. Leonard Nimoy passed away 27th of february 2015, and this image is taken a few weeks after his passing, showing the stars of Spocks home world. I believe North is to the upper left. I am absolutely not a photographer, nor am I any image enhancer of sorts - so this image below does not have any quality to it what so ever. I just pointed and shot with a DSLR. The magnitudes are reported as 4.4, 9.5 and 11.2. Sissy Haas has separation 80" in the large gap A-BC, and 3" in the smaller gap B-C in her book. I did not measure anything at the time of the observation. I hope to be able to observe this system again now in early march to see if any movement is noticable. Have read that the orbital period of C in respect of A is 230 years, so theoretically a slight change of about 5 degrees would be possible to detect.
  17. Just came in from a run under the stars, Alpha Gem was my last observation. Had a go at Kappa Gem as well, but not entirely sure I had a clean split or not. Will leave it out of the log book for now. Very nice sketch, good job!
  18. Great way to keep logs! Isn't handwritten lists much more appealing than computer generated lists? Good work and clear skies.
  19. Ok, great Robin. Tnx! Came across the abbreviation in an Atel-circular which was Nova-related. Never heard it before.
  20. Hello. What does the abbr. PNV stand for? Figure "Possible Nova... something"? But the "V"?
  21. Great Helen! Will sure do. Have a few other projects to end before I give this a full go. Looking forward to it! Does BAA or any orher British association have any section for this? Really love the "forgotten" and often overlooked parts of this hobby. Seem like you all had a nice workshop there with the prof. Tnx and cheers from Scandinavia, Skip
  22. Perfect Helen! Just had a quick glance at it, seems to be what I am looking for. Better get back out there, my daughter is having a good time with her ETX 80 outside, don't want to miss out on that. Thanks! Appreciate it!
  23. Hi. Any suggestions to software for analysing lunar footage? It easily get tedious to manually scan through lots and lots of of material. Have heard of MIDAS, but haven't seen any download links. Fairly sure its a licensed software with a hefty price tag? Any freeware out there? Any recommendations? Many tnx. Happy star-hunting. //Skippy
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