Mike JW

Hi Achim, Such wonderful work, both this post and Walther Crater. I find them inspirational. I sometimes dabble in chalk but have yet to reach your standard but it has encouraged me to explore this medium further. I shall post my latest chalk attempt a bit later. Have fun. Mike

Hi folks, I am having a great time with this run of clear skies coinciding with lunar targets on my lunar 100 list. Last night is was Apollo 15 landing site/Hadley Rille. No way was I going to make sufficient notes, sketches at the eyepiece for this complex area. I prepared a quick outline of the area traced off an image to get the key features in the right place. At the eyepiece I marked up the big bold shadows, the various rilles and the rough outline of the key mountains and raised areas. Today - 5 hours, I have pulled it all together whilst having a photograph of the area by my side. I have often visited this area but with last night and today's efforts I feel I am much better acquainted with the area. When I scanned the original it lost some of the detail so I have used photoshop to draw them back in. Mike

Hi Achim, They had been on my list for a long time. I had tried for them several times but failed. They need excellent conditions to pick them up and a good map. Once you know where they are they are easier. I had sketched parts of the area on various occasions so it was fun to sketch the whole area. Mike

Thanks everyone for your comments. Mike.

The idea was to identify where Apollo 11 landed and then locate the tiny craters Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin but I got carried away. I went back to this area two nights running and decided to sketch a big area. Two rimae, clear cut boundary between the dark mare region and the lighter material of the highlands, Sabine and Ritter have very rough floors with hints of terracing and circular cracks, wrinkle ridges abound, dark and light regions in the mare, sharp pointed shadows, the lighter slopes rising up from the dark flat mare, partially flooded crater (Ariadaeus E.) at the end of R. Ariadaeus, which at the far right cuts through the Silberschlag Ridge. So much going on. Mike

Hi all, I could not resist another look at Palomar 5, despite being low down. This time with the C11/ultrasrar. I decided to let it run for 10 minutes. I am not convinced there is significant improvement after 10 minutes. Actually the improvement in the view after about 5 minutes seems minimal. Below is the latest shot, orientated to match the Pretty Deep Sky Map, SER 3414. The fov of the set up is not quite big enough to match the circle on the chart. There are faint galaxies that I have identified down to about mag 19. Also included is the Aladin view of the area. Mike

Hi Martin. Nice one. Always enjoy a 'two for one' As is often the case, the capture shows the 'power' of the EEVA technique - that is a result to enjoy/observe/ponder in as close to 'live' viewing as possible. It would have taken maybe 20 minutes or more to ID these objects visually in a big dob, which of course would have a much smaller fov. What a bargain you got - all achieved in one minute. Like the idea of including the reference chart. To me the SHK group is an arrow pointing down with a chunky arrow head and a slightly curved shaft. Mike

I have just read the above articles so here is a summary. Palomar 5 is a globular cluster (mag 11.8) about 76,000 lyrs away in Serpens and is approximately 176 lyrs across. It is being gradually broken up due to the gravitational forces of the Milky Way and also internal forces such as binary stars interacting. As it dissipates (spread out) there is a trailing tidal stream and a leading tidal star stream. These tails are long and thin and extend at least 10kpc. The leading tail is truncated compared to the trailing tail. A reason for this is not known but it could be due to the gravitational forces of the galaxy's bar. The structure of Pal 5 and its tails have been deduced from measuring the proper motion of the stars. It would appear that Pal 5 has been breaking up gradually over several billion years. Sky Map, Sky Safari and Sky Tools 4 all give a slightly different boundary for Pal 5. Below is an approximation of the Pal 5 boundary with a reference star labelled. Mike

We need to rush out and get fully motorised 20" Dobs and give that a go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mike

Hi Martin and Bill, I took a look at this area the other night. NGC 5466 is a lovely sight. The image below shows 5466 offset to enable a closer look at the area where Quasar (z=3.89) is - centre and near the top. Mike The image below is close up and rotated to more nearly match Aladin. I have located the triangle of stars and have labelled approx mag data for two of them. Unable to find data on the third star. No sign of the z=3.89 (in fact I could not find the Z data for this object - SDSS J140508.77+282621.1 (mag 22.4 (g) or mag 22.06 (r) ). It looks like from my site, using the 15" Dob I can at a push get down to around mag 20 but not fainter. Also too easy to imagine conveniently placed bits of noise as a star/DSO. Fun trying to see how deep I could go.

Hi Bill, I never knew a galaxy could have stars orbiting in two directions. Very much enjoyed the video - very well explained. Mike

SHKs are quite a challenge to locate if the alignment/GOTO is not spot on but fun. I tend not to have Pretty Deep Maps running so I can never be sure I have located these guys until I check next day. My shots are with the 15 and for 4 minutes -ish so a brighter image. Without Pretty Deep Maps I do not know where I would go to check them out. I too have been on Lodestar/Ultrastar for similar length of time. I like the 1.25 format of these cameras - makes them ideal for visual Newtonians to enable reaching focus. To me the perfect EEVA camera would be the Ultrastar but with the bigger pixels of the Lodestar (and maybe a slightly bigger chip). Look forward to seeing your latest SHKs. Mike

A short-ish session but some interesting objects. Pal 4 - such a faint, small Globular - 410,000 lyrs away. SHK 63 - where is it was my first thought, look to the right of the shot. It took me awhile to locate it by which time I had done the subs and could not face re-doing it with it in the center of the fov. I was getting tired. The tiny fuzz above the fuzz pairing on the right is mag 19.1. SHK 122 - start with the obvious galaxy to the left of centre near the bottom and imagine a thumbs up sign (left thumb) - love it - follow the curve up and then loop down. At the top of the loop is a fairly bright galaxy and now as you go down the next fuzz is actually J11430+5718 - just a mere mag 19.4! SHK 123 - this little beauty wins the award tonight for shape. It is the shape of Corona Borealis but then look to the right, there is a "space ship" approaching - the bright fuzz with one either side. The two outriders are mag 18.5 ish. All this achieved in these considerably less polluted skies during lock down and of course here in GB, it is no longer getting astro dark. The power of EEVA - superb. Mike

Great to see your results. Enjoyed the extra information. Mike

Hi Martin, good to see another globular posting. This one has the 3D effect. Flat universe - is what it says. Flat and nice square edges Open Universe - is curved in such a way that it would never meet up on itself (I think they call it negative curvature). A curved and positive ends up as a sphere and is known as closed model. As if I know or understand relativity............Most folk go for flat or open curve but a paper in 2019 raised the idea of the closed model again based on some latest data analysis but doubted by others.......Majority opinion is for a flat universe based on current data. Z values do my head in!!!! There is the light travel time (distance), let's say 6 billion lyrs away. So the light took 6 biilion lyrs to reach us but shifted to the red end because the universe is expanding. Thus if we could instantly go the spot the galaxy would not be there. It would now be further away - its actual distance (not sure what term is given to this) However because the universe is expanding at an increasing rate just to add confusion then the true distance will be even more......... I disclaim all knowledge of the subject!!!!!!!!! Not sure the above is totally correct but hopefully gives a feel for the distance lark. It was all so much easier a few centuries ago when everything circled the earth!!!! Mike

Thanks Martin, I can possibly get down to -26 Dec, which gives me 82 targets - very tempted to go for them. Makes a change to chasing faint galaxies. Mike

As you know from a recent previous post I visited M13 a little while ago. A few nights ago I decided to go Globular Hunting in Oph, Ser, Sct, Sco, Aql. Below is a Globular Montage from this fun tour.. M9 , M10, M12, M14, M107, NGC 6235, 6287, 6401, 6356, 6342, are all in Ophiuchus. M5, NGC 6539, Pal 5 are all in Serpens. NGC 6712 is in Scutum. NGC 6760 is in Aquila. M80 and M4 are in Scorpios. I added M13 at the end. This tour shows the beauty and variety of these celestial gems. With each crop I have retained the same image scale. Might be fun to do a complete tour of the northern globular clusters, including the elusive Palomar ones. Hope you enjoy. Mike PS Bill kindly pointed out I had miss-labelled NGC 6235 as NGC 6285. Thanks Bill, much appreciated. Now corrected as of 20th May 2020.

Hi Martin Agree that short sub is best for globulars, especially bright ones. I suspect my black background adds to the 3D effect. Also my shot was done using the 15" so I will get a brighter image easily. I have a pile of globular shots to deal with next, some in SLL and some in Jocular so I too plan to experiment with settings in Jocular. Have fun, Mike

I just happen to see these two on a chart and thought I might just get them in the same shot. I had no idea what they would look like. What a great pair they are. A classic elliptical (E) and a barred spiral (SBb). The shot is a bit noisy to enable me to pick up the spiral arms. Mike

ARP 155. You get a lot for your money with this Arp and surrounds. Two galaxies have collided forming this mess, with a clearly visible, somewhat large dust lane. It looks like a spiral but it is possibly an irregular lenticular galaxy which may have a ring structure (caused by the collision). What fascinated me about this shot is the other galaxies I imaged - see cropped image. The numbers are in billions light years. Mike

These DSOs need no introduction and I only ever visit them on exceptional nights as they are low down here in GB. Currently I am using Starlight Live and Martin's Jocular software. M16 is a SLL image. M17 and M104 are Jocular processed images. I used my C11 @ f6.3 to capture these DSOs. Mike

Hi, NGC 3190 is Arp 316, also Hickson 44 and also VV 307 - so you did a three in one. Mike

NGC 4216 is a wonderful galaxy to view. See the link below for more detail. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101127.html Looks like two dust lanes in the shot. It is given the SABb classification = tight spiral with a bar. I find it hard to see a bar. The small circular galaxy to the right of the upper end is a lenticular galaxy. Just below it is a fuzz spot - distant galaxy at about 600 million lyrs away. From the lenticular go down at about 7 o clock is a elongated fuzz - 900 million lyrs away. NGC 4305 and NGC 4306 A delightful contrasting pair in Virgo. NGC 4305 (on the right) is a classic tight spiral (Sa) and NGC 4306 is a lenticular (SO or possibly SBO - evidence of a bar). The view is a zoomed in shot. NGC 4273 group (the spiral in the middle - SBc). Seven obvious galaxies in view but others lurk in the image. This group are on the edge of Abell 1516 cluster. Mike

Jocular is a software written by Martin Meredith who regularly posts in this section. It is free. I like the versatility of it and Martin continues to develop it. I find it very straight forward to use. I am sure Martin will advise you and answer questions. I am not very computer savvy so Martin and Bill (who also uses it) guided me through the download and installation process. Mike

Well done, a good first outing. I have never been able to get on with Sharpcap - seems way too complicated to me. So I use Starlight live with my Ultrastar but gradually going over to Jocular which I enjoy using. Mike