Captain Scarlet

OMG what an amazing series of sessions! I'm extremely envious. I know where to get my next list for the next Moon-down cycle. Is that little step-ladder in the background comfortable to use? How do you brace yourself to be able to keep still at the eyepiece? I have my 12" on an alt-az mount and put a finger on the top of the mount when I'm on a step for that 3rd point of contact.

Cheers, Magnus

PS compelling read!

After a couple of days of howling wind and driving rain, and more forecast for the next few days, tonight's clear skies and sudden drop in wind forced me to set up my 300mm and look at the Moon amongst others. Seeing pretty terrible so I just played. After strolling up and down the very wobbly terminator I went to Polaris and used the Nexus DSC "what's around here" feature to manage to see some surprising mag 12-13 galaxies (with 45% Moon obviously _not_ washing everything out). Galaxies Arp 25 and Arp 114 were quite readily noticed, as well as open cluster NGC 188 / Caldwell 1. A few doubles as well, Izar, Meissa, Almach (lovely blue/gold), Rigel. I spent a little time experimenting, by deliberately moving the primary collimation knobs into miscollimation to see how much difference it made. Quite a lot of difference, even through bad seeing. And holding a long spirit-level across the front of the tube to see how changing its thickness affected the extra diffraction spike produced. Again, quite noticeable effects. Actually a nice "guerrilla" session.

Magnus

CADAS @Stu? Did it exist before you arrived? (I won’t tell WAG if you don’t 😀)

Did the van pass? 🤞

One silver lining is that it does seem that people in dark places aren’t completely indifferent to the quality of their skies! Also with the big increases in energy costs headed  our way even LEDs’ energy consumption will become noticeable and worthy of reduction.

M

Very nice to read Kon. I too have intended to look at Markarian’s Chain a couple of times recently and forgotten to! I’ve only ever been there once, a couple of years ago. I recall an endless field of fuzzy patches. Thanks for the reminder.

Magnus

6 hours ago, MalcolmM said:

Thanks @Nik271, that's all very reassuring to know. I have a UHS filter (read somewhere that OIII really needed 6+ inches) so I'll give that a go with the Owl. Have you used an OIII successfully with the 102ED?

Malcolm

I saw the owl for the first time fairly recently and I must say my oiii didn’t make a difference to how noticeable it was. But I am in very dark skies, it was easy without the filter anyway.

Nice read btw.

M

13 minutes ago, Stu said:

Nice one Magnus! A good read and a great catch. You wonder whether a 2” filter is worth investing in, to get a large exit pupil with the 31 nag?

You took the words out of my mouth … next on my shopping list!

The forecast was for 3 clear nights in a row from 3rd March. The first night, Thursday, I was too tired to get a proper scope out and gambled on the next few nights staying clear. So far, so good. This spell is the last chance this year getting a good look at and around Orion before the Moon spoils things, and next lunar cycle Orion will be too low and too close over Baltimore harbour.

I was goaded into action by @Ships and Stars’ recent account of seeing Barnard 33, the Horsehead Nebula through his SW 300 flextube. His dark sky site is not dissimilar to mine.

I only had about an hour to play with, properly dark from 8:30 until harbour and tree-obscuration around 9:30. I had my 300mm Helmerichs newt. After a nightmare 5 goes at trying to align the mount I was almost ready to give up when it finally started behaving. Nexus DSC and AZ-EQ6 going berserk slewing to the 2nd alignment star for some reason. I’ve a feeling my jack-in power connection to my battery might be loose and the mount is receiving millisecond power outages. Placing the battery on the ground rather than the tripod tray seemed to sort it.

Anyway, I first went to M42 and immediately noticed Trapezium E and F just sitting there plain as day at 141x with the Ethos 13, so the seeing was obviously good. I quickly nipped to Sirius just to see if the Pup was available, and while Sirius wasn’t wobbling around too much I didn’t want to waste too much more time, and eventually didn’t get it. No bother, the point of the session was Barnard 33.

I’d previously noted the local neighbourhood so I could be sure of looking in the right place and also fine-tuned the alignment with nearby objects. With the E13 I stared and stared but nothing. I put in the Nagler 31 to give a much bigger field (1.6 degrees) and immediately noticed the Flame Nebula next to Alnitak much, much better than I’ve ever seen it before. So the omens (transparency) were good, at least. I moved Alnitak out of the way and stared and stared again just where HH ought to be. Nothing.

Then, in a head-smacking moment I realized I had an H-b filter, specifically for this purpose, and I wasn’t using it! Duh! It’s a 1.25” filter so I had to move up to my Panoptic 24mm (66x 1.0 degrees), and, YES, there was an indistinct curtain-edge of nebulosity with a definite “bite” out of it! I tried lots of tricks to persuade myself it was my imagination. I tried to imagine the darker patch was elsewhere, slewing away and back, but it was definitely there every time, just where it was supposed to be. It was most evident during the actual slewing, and scope-tapping worked nearly as well to get it noticed.

I have to say, it was pretty indistinct and certainly not horsehead-shaped with the view I got, just a patch of nothing in a larger patch of almost nothing, to paraphrase a description @Stu quoted. And definitely there exactly where it was supposed to be. And I agree with @jetstream that as a visual object it's underwhelming, in my 12" at least. Obviously it'll be better in a big scope. But a real challenge. Funnily enough, when I put the Ethos 13 back in, with the filter, I could not see it at all. Back with the Pan24, there it was again.

I’d needed all the advantages: 12” aperture, nice transparent night (mag 21.7 measured), H-b filter, no prior alcohol, movement in the field of view (slewing, tapping), 40 minutes to adapt.

Extremely happy, I’ve ticked off both the Pup and HH this Orion-season. Flame was a very nice view too.

Cheers, Magnus

In addition to having seen the Horsehead, I've just got around to downloading the sunset/earthshine pics taken earlier in the evening. The best earthshine I can recall having seen actually, everything came together.

36 minutes ago, Stu said:

I had a decent little session, if a little unexpected but you take what you can get. FC100DC on the AZ75, so it was a bit of a test session too. All worked perfectly (once I had entered the right number into the encoder steps setting!

First up was the crescent Moon, really beautiful phase with bright Earthshine.

I then did a hop around various targets, testing the push to functionality. Highlights for me were M46 and 47, beautiful open clusters which I don’t recall seeing before although I may have done. Another one I enjoyed was Theta Aurigae which I haven’t viewed for a long time. In the Vixen 3.4 HR it was particularly nice, nice bright primary with clean diffraction ring, and a beautiful faint secondary.

I too noticed the Moon and Earthshine were especially beautiful this evening. Lovely shots.

Clippety-Clop Clippety-Clop! Giddy-Up Giddy-Up! Hi-Ho Silver! Neeeiiigghhh!

No prizes for guessing what I finally bagged tonight!

1 hour ago, PeterW said:

… Our luck, we get solid cloud and @Captain Scarlet gets clear skies!

Peter

WelL it seems I have a bit of a clear-sky no-moon surplus going on at the moment 😄. So much so that tonight I’m too tired I just CBA 🤣

Brendan Hi Ithink I can also help you here. Some time ago I wrote myself a spreadsheet-based Planisphere which I now use to plan all my sessions and see what the sky is doing. I can easily use it to generate the data you need. I've appended a spreadsheet screengrab below which shows what I can produce. I'll happily send you a file of the data you need, but I need a couple of things from you first:

- PM me the coordinates you want me to use;

- What time do you want the Moonphase calculated for? In the example below I've assumed 7pm;

- Similarly for RA and Dec, I've assumed 7pm local;

- Do you want me to adjust for daylight saving or leave the times as non-daylight-saving? Say I send you 10 years' data, the rules for daylight saving might change in the future so I think "non" is probably best, then you can make your own adjustment;

Cheers, Magnus

If that's what it is, there's nothing you can do in terms of DIY adjustments. It's a straight edge on the mirrored face itself. The only way around it is to, say, upgrade the secondary to one which is silvered all the way to its edge. I reckon that would cost you in the region of £100 for a 1/10 secondary. I actually did that for my 70mm SW mirror and had to wait a long time for it to arrive.

The "silvering" on skywatcher secondaries typically have a flat edge on one side where a tool has been used to grip the glass slab during the aluminizing process, leading to a small part of the edge of the mirror missing its aluminization. Ideally of course the edge of the secondary is elliptically-curved all the way around. The ones I've seen have had that flat edge aligned with the long axis of the mirror. That single straight edge will produce its own spike. It most often manifests as a slightly fainter "fifth spike" at a slight angle to a main spider-spike. In your case, it seems that it's exactly aligned with a main spike, augmenting it. If that is case, it suggests your state of collimation is pretty good!

Cheers, Magnus

Well I have a decent Hb filter, and the next 2-3 nights' forecast may be clear enough to offer an opportunity just after astro-dark/Moonset before Orion has got too far round West. It'll probably be my last chance for HH this year. My house is basically 21.8 so no darkness excuses!

13 hours ago, cajen2 said:

Magnus, it never ceases to amaze me how much you manage to cram into one session. I'm normally punching air if I observe three new doubles (etc) in one night!😄

I've learnt that even a cursory amount of pre-planning makes all the difference. I had too many sessions when I'd done no planning, and simply cycled through what I could remember, which turned out to be the same things every time. So I'll make a quick list of what's about where I want to look, and I also keep an informal literally back-of-an-envelope dynamic list based on what I've seen in reports on here. Also I've just learned how to use the Nexus DSC "what's near me within x degrees" function in the field, which contributed to some of the more obscure galaxies this time around. The combination of those have transformed my sessions into being far more productive.

Cheers, M

Yes it is an awkward shape, all the more so with eyepiece and illuminator attached! I considered using a fitted case for mine, I do have an old outgrown eyepiece case, but even that would involve "flattening out" the finder's diagonal and illuminator, and then re-confguring it when setting up a scope. Far too much bother.

So for all my reasonably robust accessories I keep them in a deluxe shopping bag, with each item in its suitably-sized own food bag. Yes they're piled in there higgledy-piggledy, but there's no metal-on-metal contact, at least two layers of plastic separate everything. It started off as an interim solution to the problem, but I've found it works very well for me. Most of my adapters, cables, chargers and finders live in there when they're not attached to scopes. (Diagonals eyepieces and filters do have their separate more robust foam-filled waterproof case of course).

Sounds like a not-dissimilar session to mine a couple of nights ago, also with a 12”. Though Orion from now is too low in my worst direction (over Baltimore harbour) for any chance of the HH, which I still haven’t seen.

Nice to have you back, I’m going up steal the face mask trick I think. I have a few cloth/silk ones that’ll do very nicely.

Magnus

On 27/02/2022 at 00:26, badhex said:

After much deliberation, I finally picked up a TS Optics 50mm finder (which I'm almost 100% certain is the same as the William Optics one, but not in jazzy colours). Annoyingly one of the holes for the adjustment screws on the rings is not tapped, but have at least been able to test by shimming the gap with some soft plastic. 

Also got an SCT finder base for my C5 and a carry handle for my TS102 F7 ED. 

 

Very nice. I have the APM version of the same, very up-market finders!

just an off-chance suggestion … could it be that the untapped hole is for one of those sprung bolts such as Skywatcher use in their brackets? If so it might be floating around in the packaging somewhere?

After a fortnight of either howling winds or heavy cloud and rain, or both, the weather conspired last night to be clear and not too windy. So I set up my OO/Helmerichs 12” Newt in the South-East facing area behind my house, intending to scour The Plough of Messier objects and move West from there through Canes Venatici, Coma Berenices to Virgo and Leo. My immediate topology precludes Orion from now on unfortunately, unless I hoik my stuff (5-6 awkward-load trips) an extra 50 metres further up the boreen.

In the end, if you caught my brief “what did you see tonight” report, you’ll have seen that I collected quite a big haul, in fact the biggest bag I can recall from any session so far, so I was very well pleased. It may appear that I simply raced through a list going “tick! tick! tick!”, it wasn’t like that at all. I was actually doing quite a lot of staring.

My last dark-sky-Moon-down 12” session 3-4 weeks ago started off similarly, “doing” Ursa Major and the Leo Triplet amongst others. This time I built on that and filled in some gaps, although the transparency wasn’t quite as good as then, I think. My SQM-L gave me 21.76 at the end of the session, but there was a slight milky sheen to everything which seemed to extinguish anything fuzzy below about mag 12-13. Certainly M108 and 109 for example were still obvious, but not quite as stark as I recall before. Beggars and choosers, though.

Anyway, what did I see? Until towards the end, I, once again, couldn’t move beyond my Ethos 13 giving me 141x and 0.71 degrees (with Paracorr2). At the end, I revisited some objects with the Nagler 31 for 1.4 degrees FoV, but no other eyepieces or filters were harmed during this shoot.

M51 was first up, and this was the exception of the evening. If anything, I could see MORE detail than my best-ever-by-miles view three weeks ago. Not only could I see spiral detail, but I fancied I could catch the “linking arm” between the cores as well. I can’t find the superlatives. When I finally get around to dobbing-up my currently unhitched 20” mirror, I can only imagine what M51 will look like.

M101 was next, and although it was obvious when it came into view, it wasn’t as surprisingly bright as I recalled from last time. Tick and move on. M102 was a galaxy I’d never looked for before, or seen. It was a small tight and bright streak, very nice. Apparently M102’s identity is controversial. What I looked at was in fact NGC 5866 which it seems the majority think is what Messier observed as M102. It has a highly-defined sharp dust lane, which I’ll have to look out for next time with more magnification.

I moved across to M63, which as a nearly face-on was a bright patch, much the same as I saw before.

M94, though, was startlingly bright and very round! Last time I think I ticked it off and moved on, but it’s worth a stare. I looked it up and noticed it’s called the “Croc’s Eye Galaxy”. Although I couldn’t make out any “rings”, it is nonetheless strikingly circularly symmetric (i.e. round 😉 )

Whilst in the close neighborhood I quickly took in Cor Caroli, a lovely double.

My next target should have been M106, also not seen before by me, but for some reason I overlooked it and selected instead M109: a face-on smudge. Tick. M108 next, not quite as mottled as I remember before but still obvious. M97 Owl nebula very nearby seemed also actually to be a better view than before: I could just make out the owl-eyes.

Finally in that Ursa Major/Canes Venatici region I selected NGC 4036, a quite bright galaxy just “above” the open top of Uma’s saucepan, right where the steam would be if there were baked beans cooking. I should also have gone for NGC 4041 quite close by, but next time. I also skipped M81/82 as they were too high up for me to risk tripod-strike with the back of my tube.

Time for Leo: I started off with the Leo triplet, again all very clear and bright. M65 and M66 I could get in the same field in the Ethos 13 but I had to pan away a little to find NGC 3628. Later I returned to them with the Nagler 31 and the Triplet all together in the same field at 59x magnification and 5mm exit pupil (my max) was something else!

The “Other Leo Triplet”, M105, M95 and M96 were next: new I think, to me. Dimmer and a bit wider-spaced than the bigger cousin but none the less entrancing, especially in the Nagler 31.

My plan was next to start at M98, a bright galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, and head South-East picking off galaxies and looking them up as I went along. I soon got lost of course, but managed to identify (using Nexus DSC’s “what’s here?” facility) NGC 4216: Silver Streak Galaxy, a rather bright, er, streak; NGC 4212 a dim mag 12 blob not very distinct; NGC 4237 not dissimilar to 4212; NGC 4262 even dimmer (12.5 lenticular). I saw others but didn’t try to look them up. They were being swallowed up by a background milkiness more than I was expecting and more than I’ve seen before in better transparency (in Markarian’s Chain for example where I recall multiple light patches on a dark background). I think there was a thin sheen of high cloud. Nonetheless, I was pleased.

I shifted West now, with the Nagler 31, and quickly took in Auriga’s M36, M37 and M38. All lovely of course. Bright red star right at the centre of M38. A few times I’ve mentioned M38 one of you good readers (can’t recall who now, sorry! But thanks) has suggested I also look for a small but very cute oc quite close to M38 called NGC 1907. This time I remembered, and it was worth it! Very nice small collection of stars, at the scale I was viewing almost like a glob. I’ll have a look next time with more magnification.

To finish off, I looked at one of our commonest targets of all but one which for some reason I almost always think “ach next time”. The Double Cluster. What a beauty. Obviously I have observed it many times but almost always through binoculars. Now, at 59x with the wide wide N31 and getting both clusters in the FoV, at this level of darkness it was simply exquisite. I shall return to it. What have I been missing?

And finally to finish finish finish off, I looked at a rather nondescript yellowish star called Mebsuta, for a strange reason. I have a group of (Donegal and Northern Irish) friends who for a bit of a laugh (or whatever) will occasionally announce “don’t kick me in the Mebs!” or “I need to go and wash my Mebs” or similar, you get the picture. I leave to your imagination what “Mebs” refer to. These people are in their 50s and 60s, I feel I need to add. Naturally, I and others often ask where the term originates, but nobody has the slightest clue, they just know what Mebs are. Well I was perusing a star chart recently and came across this:

Problem solved! Perhaps. They’re convinced and impressed, anyway. It would’ve been the crowning glory if Mebsuta had been an equal-brightness double star 😊 😊, alas no.

Anyway, Thanks for reading,

Cheers, Magnus.

Just back in from a hugely satisfying session with my 12". I used only my Ethos 13 (141x) and later on the Nagler 31 (59x). Just about everything went right for a change and no dew to speak of. I'll write it up for a proper report tomorrow, but I saw (again) all the main galaxies in or near the main Ursa Major asterism: M51, M101, M102 (first time), M63, M94, M1109, M108, M97neb, NGC 4036. Dammit going through my list I realized I missed out M106 (not viewed before) - next time, hopefully later this week.

In Leo: the Triplet all very prominent: M65, M66, NGC 3628, also framed in one view later on with my Nagler 31. Similarly another triplet-lookalike nearby: M105, M95, M96 again also later framed beautifully together in the N31. Also M98.

I then found myself trawling the Virgo Cluster (in Coma?), and managed to identify NGC 4216, 4212, 4237 and 4262, plus several others that I didn't look up.

With the Nagler 31 in, I moved to Auriga where of course I saw M36, M37 M38 and finally remembered to look for the lovely little cluster NGC 1907 near M38.

I finished off with the Double Cluster which for some reason I take for granted and never view. In the 12" with 1.6 degs FoV I actually gasped, what an amazing sight.

Fantastic night.

50 minutes ago, RobertI said:

The best view I have had of M33 was  at a dark site with 10x50 binoculars. I couldn’t believe how bright it seemed, given that from my back garden it’s a struggle at best and on poor nights, it’s just plain invisible. 

I was going to say I’ve always found the easiest way to find M33 is with binoculars. Pan around the general area and suddenly you’ll ask yourself “ooh what’s that?” a faint bleary patch and there you are

52 minutes ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

Does anyone else have a feeling of guilt when on a clear evening one doesn’t go outside and set up ? I’ve got that tonight and actually trying to justify it by acknowledging  the wind being a bit strong ! Clear nights are at a premium … luckily I will definitely be out tomorrow night ! Promise 

Oh yes. Especially after a long break from observing, getting set up seems like such a huge effort. But if you set up say the day before, you realize it isn’t so much faff after all.

M