josefk

Interesting (for me) addendum following some reading yesterday - NGC 7026 and BUP 9010 was mistakenly catalogued as a 4 element multiple star system by SW Burnham (not Robert Jr) in 1879 so my observation at the eyepiece wasn't complete nonsense. The PN NGC 7026 is listed as the primary. There are two other components to go back for! 🙂

I was trying out a new O-III filter last night on small PN in Cygnus. A longer report here: Amongst the overall "haul" it was very satisfying to find three very small (and one of these very faint) PN using a mixture of techniques and tools. NGC 6881 / PK 074+02.1 very tiny and dim indeed. Great fun.

The postman brought an Astronomik O-III Nebular filter yesterday so this was a "getting to know you" session deliberately looking for small and possibly marginal Planetary Nebula to see what it added. I thought PN with a filter would be a not too bad way of using an evening where the moon was up and very bright being nearly full. The location was Fineshade woods Northamptonshire. Notionally Bortle 4 not that that meant anything last night. I thought seeing was "ok" - when i had a quick look at Mars and Jupiter to end the session there was glare in the damp air and some light boiling. The scope used was my 7.3" Cassegrain. First up - not PN. I had a few "September" Herschel objects to catch up; four in fact. I managed three; H VII-51, H VI-32, and H VI-40. All three are Open Clusters in Cygnus and pretty faint against this moonlit night. Only H VI-32 (NGC 7086) really appeared as a cluster (Mag 8/12') - my notes "a light dusting of castor sugar with a few grains of granular sugar". The other two are Mag 8 or 9 and 4' or 5'. I couldn't see nearby NGC 7044 so that remains to be found another night. This was all at 80x/1 degree/2.4 exit pupil. My kit was cooled now so on to the Planetary's. The grand plan with the new O-III was to use it on one side of a binoviewer and "wink" rather than "blink" the unfiltered side in and out to try and identify/isolate any small PN in it's respective star field. mmmmh. The jury is still out after one moonlit night but i think the jury will return a split decision. I hadn't really found any success stories/positive experiences of using a filter like this - only plans and proposals to try it. i think now i know why. I found the ergonomics a bit tricky - maybe its just me - but when closing one eye at the Binoviewer i was finding the open eye left with the O-III under it was seeing either nothing or EP reflections (a hood helped). A very slight move of my head or eye then "re-found" the now dimmed star field but only a second or two later. For a "big" PN like NGC 7027 (0.3' x 0.2') the slight delay didn't matter - the big PN was clear and definite in the O-III side and therefore obvious one or both eyes open. The snag is that NGC 7027 doesn't need to be blinked to find it - it's big. :-). For a small PN like NGC 6884 or NGC 6881 (each 0.1') the technique (at these exit pupils) didn't work - the ergonomics got in the way but much more significantly at Mag 11 and Mag 13.6 respectively for these small PN using the BV was just giving away too much light (in the one eyed view) and i didn't faff about trying to get a bigger exit pupil than through the BV than the 1.2mm i was set up for - i just switched to mono. Using 2x TV Panoptic 24mm eye pieces, one fitted with with an O-III filter and one not and using them alternately in a regular cyclops diagonal at nearer 2mm exit pupil was much more successful and will be very useful in this kind of session for me with one massive caveat. Being still pretty inexperienced i expected the O-III to work like welding goggles - blocking everything except O-III. It doesn't; bright stars get through and quite strongly. They also glow a little bit - just like a small PN!!!. Basically it means for me with the very small PN identifying their position visible or not from the field stars in the FOV is critical - only then does the O-III help in confirming the observation. it would be very easy for me to make an ID mistake on a bright star beating the O-III. So with the process tuned last night i observed these Planetary Nebula in Cygnus: NGC 7027 (Mag 8.5/0.3' x 0.2') Easy with O-III but also didn't need it. Nice at an unfiltered 200x with a hint of blue showing at this magnification. NGC 6833 (Mag 12.1/0.0') Identified by location. O-III helped confirmation but could be seen without. NGC 6884 (Mag 11/0.1') Identified by location. O-III helped confirmation but more magnification (unfiltered 200x) equally helpful to "fatten the PN up" and increase contrast. NGC 6881 (Mag 13.6/0.1') Identified only by precise location. Not visible without O-III. Even with O-III needed averted vision but when it appeared it could be held and position was precise every time. This was a needle fine micro dot - possibly the most marginal observation this year so perversely very satisfying. NGC 7026 (Mag 10.89/0.5' x 0.2'). Could be seen with averted vision without O-III by looking at nearby f2 Cygni. Once it popped in it could be held for a short while. With O-III it could be seen easily with direct vision and looked like a fat double with the star BUP 9010 just a few arc-seconds away. IC 5117 / Aro 112 (Mag 11.5 / 0.0'). Very tricky. Confirmed with O-III but again only when already sure of location. ...and that was that. Lessons learned. Food for thought. etc. A very satisfying session overall and a good start to the weekend. Mars still horrible to finish with big diffraction beams - my DIY off aperture mask wasn't successful :-(. Jupiter with maybe 5 or 6 bands but a bit soft and it's moons a bit soft too. Have good weekends all. Joe

Morphi’s law?

I may live to regret getting this O-III filter as a 1.25" - time will tell. Rationale for the 1.25" is to try and use this in one side of a binoviewer to "wink" small star like PN. Searching here and Cloudy Nights i see a few posts where this way to "blink" a nebula filter is proposed but i haven't really found any success stories from actually doing it. I didn't want to get into a filter slide and i don't want to hold a filter in my hand so we'll see. If its too dim in one side of a BV i can use it mono at 1.55 degrees and 3mm exit pupil later this year so will get two goes at getting use from it.

This link posted by Dan Pensack in another thread on here has a group review of 10mm wide angles including the Tak UW. It may mitigate disappointment at their (i think) non availability in the UK @MalcolmM https://web.archive.org/web/20130829052725/http://www.cieletespace.fr:80/files/InstrumentTest/201306__6_oculaires_10mm.pdf Cheers Joe

if i just add my two pence to this @Mart29 - from personal experience it's quite expensive not answering these questions properly! :-). I love the added insight into detail in the NEB/SEB of Jupiter and the face of Saturn i get with with my 7" Cassegrain (over a 95mm short fl refractor i used before) but i HATE diffraction spikes on planets and can hardly look at Mars as these artefacts are so bright - there is no aesthetic appreciation of the planetary body travelling through space. My eye is always aware i am looking through a telescope. You will know whether this bothers you already from the kit you have. Cheers

It looks like i have SkySafari 7 Pro and TBH its the only one i've used - i used Stallarium (free browser version) before that so can't compare SSP 6 and 7. I think SSP 6 does allow list creation etc but beyond that i think you may need a user on here to comment. I wholeheartedly recommend SSP7. It get's better and better for me the more i use it. 👍

...then after making the list - toggle it to "highlight objects in the sky chart" then in the sky chart hit the "show list in galaxy view". Voila.

oh fab - i'm glad i wasn't barking up the wrong tree. You can make and import lists on any device you have the app running on - this is from my phone just now in 3 screenshots 1 step after the other...:

zoomed in on our back yard relatively speaking and with an object label showing... The bigger the device display you use for SSP the more interesting this feature is.

It's possibly not exactly what you're looking for @Orange Smartie but in Sky Safari Pro you can view any list in "Galaxy View" and move around it and zoom into etc. A screenshot looks like this (for the Messier catalogue in this case fully zoomed out):

Nice one Rob. i've had maybe 4hrs 30 mins in Cassiopeia over the last week in three sessions and finding it very instructive to concentrate and keep returning to a small defined area. In one month i will have forgotten everything so for my self i would say "i have temporarily learned a lot" 🙂. M103 vs NGC 663 is a strange one isn't it? It's even in the same FOV at binocular and low mag viewing and like you say considerably more prominent. Enjoy the other sixteen.

A nice relaxed couple of hours last night in the park. Jupiter and Saturn of course. Juipiter boiling and loads of ADC early (19:30 ish) but steady and relatively detailed (respective the limits of my kit) at 21:30. NEB/SEB/GRS and some hazy features below the SEB. Two new Herschels for me; NGC 752 (H VII-32) in Andromeda - mopping up an uncertain ID last week and NGC 381 (H VIII-64) in Cassiopeia. Both open clusters and the latter very very faint with the scope i was using and needed really careful field star ID to be sure. Otherwise a few of the usual suspects around Cassiopeia and a two random wide aesthetic doubles; SAO 11842 / SAO 11844 near M103 and HD 11749 (56 Andromedae)/ HD 11727 at the edge of NGC 752. This latter split at 200" is not the tighter (19") big mag difference split for 56 Andromedae that is listed in the Cambridge Double Star Atlas so i will have to go back for that one. This is how relaxed the session was - Holiday "grab 'n' go" kit including a difficult to aim angled spotting scope doing double duty here in the dark.

Thanks @westmarch for the tip earlier in this thread for the “Libby” app. I didn’t know about that at all and it’s great. Just spent a happy hour reading a back issue of “astronomy”. I can see the app getting some use now I’ve installed it. Great. 👍

Sounds pretty sorted to me 👍

i always loved the idea of this scope - great quality, great size, great reputation. I "ummed and ached" for so long over it about two years ago that in the meanwhile the last one at the Widescreen center was sold and that was that (out of production - no new stock) - back to the drawing board.

That is a great pic. Really “sells” the hobby.

Really nice sketch too!

It looks from your signature that you're assembling or have assembled three really cool EP sets. “Minimal glass” ortho’s, high end “best of both worlds” Vixens and now “ultra wide” Nirvanas. Was that always the plan? You’ll never be short of the right tool for the job.

Sounds great Rob and an interesting comparison of the two approaches.

Another short binocular session in Burghley Park last night. I wanted to confirm NGC 7789 Caroline's Rose from the night or the 27/09 and indeed it was correct. It is quite a bit bigger in bino's than i was originally looking for but also very much fainter. A hazy fingerprint in an oblique parallelogram arrangement of four stars to the west of Caph. I also took a look at NGC663, NGC 654 and M103. All open clusters in Cassiopeia and all three sit in the same binocular FOV. NGC 663 is the brightest and prettiest at this scale. For me NGC 654 could be missed if it weren't colocated with the others. I finished on M34. Found by panning west from Mirfak. I couldn't definitively identify NGC 752 a few degrees even further west but its highly probable the next distinctive group of stars in that westwards pan is NGC 752. This is my "grab 'n' go" in the lovely dark park. Jupiter showing above.

I may need that quality when the time comes. This case is hidden in my home office. if i mis-time "being seen in public with it" i risk getting locked in it. 🤣

i can @badhex and i will but i just know even then it will look like a dog ate the cavity part out and not like the "laser cut" "custom fit" perfection my OCD demands! i did an eyepiece case in shadow foam last week and that required only small cuts in a firm foam and it still looks like mice did it 🤣. Good job these things get used in the dark.

no i'm afraid not - its layered but layered in slabs not pick 'n' pluck...i can practise in the lower hidden layers at least 🙂