josefk

I feel like i missed out on Jupiter last night reading on here - cloud brought me in at 00:00 while Jupiter was still only rising but maybe a coffee and a nap and a second session later would have paid dividends. Damn.

Anyway i very happily clocked up my hundredth 1st time observation made in this calender year - NGC 6811 an Open Cluster in Cygnus had the honour. This is a subtle little cluster easily overshadowed by a brighter group of stars that isn't in fact "anything" just to its west. The brighter group does include at least one Struve double but i suspect with better planning there would be more doubles in the immediate vicinity to have a look at. 

NGC 6819 observed just prior as my 99th "new discovery" in this year was even nicer - it would be very easy to look at this location and mistake several bright diamond and triangle asterisms as the OC but in fact the actual NGC OC is a super subtle but super rewarding dusting of stars that only revealed themselves (at least to me and with 85mm aperture) after waiting a few moments for them to appear. The OC is mag. 7.3 and 13' across - i saw it as a rectangular group elongated NS (more or less). Quite beguiling actually, they would disappear if my eye went to the brighter stars, very pretty and recommended.

A super peaceful evening out enjoying the moonlight rather than cursing it and no dew! Yay!

…and I’ve only been here for 15-mins. I do like a good book rummage 😉

That’s exactly what captured my imagination last year @John  - just incredible to imagine this to be somebody else’s “Orion”. 😎

I think this may only be my second (maybe first with 100% certainty) extragalactic object within another extragalactic object. 

Onwards and upwards (outwards) with the bigger scope for these type of targets this winter I hope!

It was my first time out after the "summer break" 😂 with a larger scope last night and rather excellent it was too until i lost my objective to dew at 02:00 or so.

I am a bit short of planned lists for September (at least lists with new stuff on them) but the tour included:

• M76 The Little Dumbbell (2nd visit in a fortnight),
• NGC 278 (a new m10 spiral galaxy in Cassiopeia),
• NGC 185 (a new elliptical galaxy in Cassiopeia, it's m9 but quite big so the surface brightness is very low and this one has an asterix against it for now)
• NGC 7789 Caroline's Rose (lovely),
• NGC 7217 (another new m10 spiral galaxy but in Pegasus),
• NGC 404 Mirach's Ghost (cool),
• M33 for NGC 604, 

With the face on spiral galaxies on the list last night, and using only a 130mm scope, i was paying particular attention to dark adaptation and screened my observing eye 100% of the time away from the EP - only taking screening away once under a hood at the EP. It seemed to make a considerable difference. Caroline's Rose was wonderful with a really dark adapted eye. Unfortunately using a hood was also splaying havoc keeping my ep free of condensation. Grrrr.

Here's a sketch of M76. Even this morning i can't exactly tell what orientation of the PNe i've seen. I'm relatively sure i've only seen the bright central bar and not the extended lobes i.e "my rectangle" of light oriented SW is really the narrow axis of the PNe and the bigger dimension that would be oriented NW was not seen. The central bar wasn't evenly bright. it was definitely brightest and a tad rounder on the SW "end" with a bright knot in that end or a star in front of it. The bar did have some glow around it. I found magnification with UHC to be better than a slightly larger exit pupil with O-III last night.

Here's sketch of NGC 604 within M33, M33 is bigger than this whole EP field of view so only the brightest central part of M33 is being seen here and making it look like NGC 604 is off to the side:

This highlights NGC 604 and the "hourglass" asterism is great for zeroing in on it:

It was strangely "easy" to see once i'd seen it which i found bemusing because i spent hours trying to see it last year in the darker nights of November.

It was cold out - damp paper and cold fingers are back!

Clear skies.

Any single one of those is incredible but as a coherent time series they are just fantastic!!! Kudos to you. 👍

1 minute ago, John said:

I may have glimpsed NGC 604 a couple of times last night with my 85mm refractor. Nothing for sure though. I was thinking that 100mm would have shown it last night but I had resolved to stick with the 85 so that's what I did.

Once I had fully dark adapted I could see some contrast variations across the face of M33. Nothing I'd call "spiral structure" but more than just a vague patch of faint fuzziness.

 

 

M110 was quite large for me last night as a "pre-M33"  benchmark (it wasn't on any night last year when i was trying this) so maybe last night it may have gone in 85mm too. It wasn't dark exactly where i am (SQM 20.35 by this point in the night) but transparency felt superb i could see all 7 stars of UMi and could see the double cluster naked eye.

I can sometimes not tell if its the sky or my eye when i see the kind of patchiness you describe - i'm sure it is the sky most times. Last night for me M33 was quite "smooth" I'm afraid.

I bet you're loving that TV85mm. I love the friendly "manageableness" of my 85mm.

it isn't totally in the spirit of the friendly challenge @Nik271 threw down here last year: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/415229-extragallactic-nebula-ngc-604-with-small-scopes/#comment-4428656 but finally nearly one year later i successfully observed NGC 604 in M33 last night. This was with a "medium sized" 130mm refractor. Last year i couldn't do it on repeated attempts with 85mm and 95mm. i could see it well enough last night for a sketch too! 🙂 

Like cycling "it never gets easier, you just ride faster" i immediately started looking for NGC 595, 592 and 588 (without research i assume these are the next brightest regions in M33). No joy but i was already chuffed with 604. Very surprisingly once i'd seen it i wondered how i had not before and sometimes it was the first non stellar smudge  in the EP when i put my eye to it - detected before the main haze of M33 caught the eye.

Because they had been mentioned on here in recent days NGC 404 Mirach's Ghost, NGC 7789 Caroline's Rose and M76 The Little Dumbell Nebula were also on the tour. All fabulous. With Caroline's Rose i observed the strange effect that looking through the EP itself was degrading my dark adaptation. I was screening my observing eye 100% of the time so when i uncovered at the EP the whole 50' FOV was dense with castor sugar stars but in 15 to 20s the sparkling view "dissolved" leaving only the brightest stars behind. Still a glorious sight for those initial seconds.

It would have been an all nighter and "damn the office" this morning but i lost my objective to dew about 2am through not running a dew band hard enough 💦.

20 minutes ago, SwiMatt said:

That surface brightness sounds a bit too low 😅 Stellarium reports 24 mag/arcsec^2! 

I think SB values can be all over the place in different sources due a little bit to discrepancies in the basic visual magnitude being used but more importantly due a lot to discrepancies in the object size used in the calculation.

I'm a bit fussy about references so in my own notes i have elected to use Uranometria DSFG as THE reference source (rightly or wrongly). It is know to be wrong in places but i like the singularity of it as a source. I sleep well at night 🤣

BTW 12.9 in DSFG would be MSAM and 12.9 + 8.89 = 21.79 MPSAS (brighter than the 24 MPSAS in Stellarium in fact). Though i quoted MSAM I actually use MPSAS myself because it is meaningful (to me) as a value you can compare to a sky reading without mental arithmetic... 

...and a fabulous object due to it's magical location! IMHO.

Uranometria has it with a visual magnitude of 10.3 and a surface brightness of 12.9.

Cheers

Hah. Both of these DSO were in a session for me at the very end of August. M76 successfully and M74 unsuccessfully. 

My skies were a measured 20.25 MPSAS but judging by the stars in UMi transparency was good to very good and M110 was a bit "easier" than usual. 

In these skies M76 was "easy" i.e immediately visible in the EP at the end of the star hop but even after spending some time on it i only observed it as an oval "ish" smudge or rounded rectangle. No bow tie or apple core effect on this viewing i'm afraid so i can't claim the two "independent" NGC. This was with 85mm of aperture, a 1mm exit pupil and UHC. I could see it at higher magnification and O-III but less well than at the 1mm exit pupil. I didn't try a larger exit pupil on this visit. I probably should have as i had a little bit of scale to play with - i could have lowered the magnification.

M74 on the other hand was a "no show" despite trying exit pupils between 5.8mm (skies way too grey) down to 1.5mm over nearly an hour of intense dark adapted waiting-looking-waiting (deep breathing, scope tapping, slow sweeping, etc...). I've seen M74 from this exact location and similar skies before in a larger 185mm scope (so i kind of know what to expect and know it's tricky to detect and shape or edge contrast). On this occasion i was consciously trying (unsuccessfully) to observe it after a star hop and in small gear. I think M74 will be my nemesis in an attempt to find all the Messier with 85mm or 95mm from Sth Lincs, at least it feels like the most difficult one i have observed so far using any scope in my location. 

Cheers

Cool stuff @SwiMatt - I would consider that an investment in future pleasure (re-reading that in the future) not only a capture of the moment and the pleasure in the past. 👍🏼

1 minute ago, Zermelo said:

You need to click on the "show more" just under the Magnitude filter.

doh!. Fabulous - i don't recall ever opening that lot. 🤣. The sky is now indeed my oyster. It's an app that just keeps on giving - seriously.

I use the planner @Zermelo but never for double stars and i've just learn't something from you there re. nominating the catalogue (and a quick test with Burnham just worked a treat). A quick Q if i may - I see how to filter by magnitude but how do you filter by separation? This would be great to create a super targeted (i.e realistic for a given scope) set of observing lists.

Just now, Zermelo said:

Position angles are included in the "components" section of each object. It might be a feature of the Pro version.

indeed so at least in SSPro:

I can imagine that is a pretty satisfying exercise in its own right @Mr Spock - the preparation part i mean. Cool process.

53 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

I think doing it manually over a course of time and taking the time to enjoy each object would be a lot of fun

I haven't even completed the Messier list with "push-to" but in parallel i am also doing it "manually" with a small 85mm or 95mm scope - i think it is ideally suited to the relaxed approach with low key gear and enjoying them all and their context as you go. Further, and in parallel to that i am trying to sketch the full list. There's no hurry 🙂 

i would also add one's own dark adaptation to the mix of variables to be aware of and to manage - i like to sketch and use a dim red light to do so - many DSO and especially extended ones disappear even after only a few seconds of red light and take a minute or two sometimes to come back into detectability then a bit longer still till "good" visibility. I wouldn't have been quite so switched on to how sensitive (degraded) the eye is to even what i consider a very small dose of red light  if it wasn't for the sketching. The same goes for any mapping SW on a red lit dim screen - it still seems to degrade those last few important percentage points of sensitivity.

On 14/08/2024 at 23:05, dobbyisbest said:

You can rest assured that you can see way more than one galaxy through a six inch scope, and your expectations are definitely not too high.Interestingly enough, you’ve mentioned two of the most difficult objects to find/see if one doesn’t know what to look for (M101 and Neptune), the other being M33. You also mention that “

 other deep sky objects like nebulae or galaxies could apply too”. So I have to ask, have you managed to see any other galaxies or nebulae with your scope in your skies?

If not, I would definitely recommend starting with easier objects to train your eye with and get a feel for what to look for.

For nebulae, currently, M27 and M57 are easy to see, and come December, M42.

For galaxies, look next to the M31 core for M32 and slightly further away for M110. You should just be able to fit all three into the FOV with your 25mm eyepiece in your scope. And then, at Ursa Major, look for M81 and M82 - small but bright visible galaxies that will also fit into your FOV.

Once you are familiar with those and can confidently find them each time you try, try M51 on the other side of Ursa Major. Much easier than M101, but a step-up in difficulty compared to the others. That’s where you really start to appreciate what sort of “whisp” and fuzziness you’re dealing with when looking for faint objects like M101 and M33. If M51 cannot be easily identified on any particular night, it’s not even worth trying for M101, in my view, because then the conditions are definitely too bad for it.

If you struggle with the easier objects listed above, I would seriously question the accuracy of scope alignment or the goto mechanics. An easy test that would leave no doubt is letting it find Vega or M13.

If you are in the UK, it is also worth noting that conditions haven’t been great over the last 2 years, and my second night with a really good sky this year was earlier this week and the other one on the 1st of April. Similar to what another poster said, suboptimal conditions can eliminate the benefits of Bortle 4 skies when it comes to DSOs. Patience, perseverance, practice and research are essential 🙂

As for Neptune, it was the most difficult of the outer planets for me to find and see initially (in larger scopes), and it just took a moment of good seeing whilst looking at a seemingly random star for a period to give me that ‘aha’ moment, but it definitely tests my patience. DSOs and the other planets are much more worthwhile and satisfying.

Packed with excellent advise - most particularly having a few reference objects per season to assess the quality and viability of the night (or site) before going after tougher targets. Well worth making an ingrained practise (i wish i remembered to 🤣).

Interesting. I don't have two dioptrx to compare but i've mused on trying this myself (going a bit stronger than my prescription). I guess with your experience it is about the larger exit pupil benefiting from the stronger prescription and maybe at the smaller exit pupil the match is more spot on (closer to the conditions of your eye exam that determines the prescription in the first place).

I have an eye test this week and i will try and remember to ask my optician about if and how the astigmatism part of my prescription could or would be be expected to change when dark adapted. i forgot to ask last time.

I reckon a rental or library service for Dioptrx would make sense (for us users) as i fear like glasses they will always be a moving train. 👀

That is wonderful! Brilliant.

On 30/08/2024 at 15:01, Jim Franklin said:

Here is my drawing of Jupiter - in my defence

1. I was left unsupervised

2. It was dark

3. It was on my knee

4. I am shiite at drawing

5. It was only a HD pencil

I think it's a vivid and realistic rendering of what Jupiter looks and feels like at the EP TBH and i would be very happy with it! 👍

Sounds great @SwiMatt - you can't beat a nice productive longer session under the stars and a dozen Messier or more is certainly productive! Fabulous 👍

On 30/08/2024 at 20:10, Saganite said:

Love it Joe , a case within a case, I did exactly the same....

you can't be too careful Steve - my packing up skills are not always at their best by dawn 😬🙂

I don't really like how pick 'n' pluck foam starts to come apart with wear and tear and so my main EP case uses shadow foam which works brilliantly once you've mastered the layout and the cut outs.

For this rejig of a spare case - being repurposed for 'optional' not always used bits - i thought i would also try the Peli Trekpak stuff. I'm not too impressed TBH. Hellish expensive for what it is and i still needed old foam off cuts to make a snug job of it.

9 hours ago, Sunshine said:

“ill use my less capable set of golf clubs today” or “today I will use my slowest car at the racetrack”

...on a side note BTW i have an older PRO tour level carbon fibre everything TT bike that cost me thousands and yet i ride nearly all my km on a simple converted track bike with a single fixed gear and electrical tape holding the tatty bar tape down! Sometimes the pleasure of something is hard to put into words 🙂