Nik271

During the past two days the Moon has been passing really close in this part of Leo, it is hard to see even 5-th magnitude stars with my finder. Should be better in a couple more days. Let's hope the clear sky continues!

I'm very happy to say that last night (27 Feb) I finally managed to see the Pup! I'm so thrilled by it 🙂 I spent nearly 2 hours observing from 7:30 to 9:30pm and managed to see it both with or without diagonal and with both 10mm and 6mm eyepieces giving 270x and 450x respectively. As other have said the position of the Pup is at 4o'clock without diagonal (Dob view) and at 2 o'clock with a diagonal (refractor or Mak view). At these magnifications the separation is not the issue but the glare from the main star. I came to realize that my EP have too much light scatter around Sirius A which hides the Pup very well. So here is my method, I repeated this many times and it always produced the Pup. Once I saw it I was able to follow it as it drifted across the FoV. I'm using a manual EQ5 so my view drifts to the west. With GoTo this might be easier as you can put Sirius A anywhere in the FOV you like and it will stay there. The idea is to hide Sirius A at the south or southwest edge of the FoV. The Pup is ENE of Sirius A so it should 'pop out' as soon as your eye adapts to the darker background. Once you get the angle correct you should have 2-3 seconds in manual mode to observe it as it drifts west. I made a small diagram: Its important to use a EP without any vignetting or edge distortion. I managed this first with the 6mm red line Svbony EPs but in retrospect could have just used a good Plossl. It worked also at 270x with the 10mm EP but it was trickier as the separation between the main star and the Pup is then visually smaller. For tonight I will make an occulting bar at the fieldstop, orient it NW-SE and put Sirius A under it. Should give me more time to enjoy the view Good luck, everybody! Nik

I tried last night but the stars were twinkling even near the zenith. Sirius was dancing all over the place. Shame though because the air seemed still and transparency was good. DSO watching was ruined by the Moon so I just stayed out with binoculars checking carbon stars. La Superba was lovely and so was R Leporis. UK is supposed to get a spell of high pressure which usually indicates good seeing. I will keep trying for the Pup over the weekend. Thinking of making an occulting bar at the fieldstop of my 10mm EP to block the main star. Good luck to everybody who is chasing the Pup!

Nice report! Indeed the three 'reds' in the western sky are very prominent. I was using just binoculars and they looked very much alike even in my 20x80. What you describe as V1030 Orionis is more famously known as Sigma Orionis, it is visually a quadriple system as you observed. Physically there are 6 stars but two of them are too close together to distinguish visually : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Orionis

For fun I made this animation from three images taken on 18, 22 and 25 February. I was not able to align them perfectly, but the motion of Vesta is easy to see.

M81 will be far easier than M33, actually I've never tried M33 with a telescope because it's so big and spread out. By the way you can also try to hunt down Vesta, it's quite bright now, nearly mag 6 and tomorrow (25 Feb) should make an almost equilateral triangle with two stars of similar magnitute: 81 Leonis and 85 Leonis. I've been observing Vesta over the past 2 weeks and it moves noticeably from day to day crossing Leo. Nearby Iota Leonis is also a double star, separation is a little over 2'' so just within the reach of the 127 Mak.

I can suggest Iota Cassiopeiae, it's a triple star with separation 2.8'' and 7'' so within the Mak capabilities. It should still be high in the sky in early evening and far away from the Moon to make star hopping easier.

Here is a comparison of the the positions of Vesta on 18 Feb: And on 22 February:

I also spent an enjoyable hour at 8pm watching the Moon. The seeing was poor, so I stayed below 100x with Mak 180 with binoviewers and a pair of 32mm Plossls. One extra bonus of the binoviewers: they cut the glare of the Moon by half 😎 I particularly liked the shadow that promontory Laplace was casting from the tip of Montes Jura on Sinus Iridum. I think I can even see it in the image by @paulastro above Then I hunted down Hagrid's dragon NGC 2301 in Monoceros. Hadn't seen it until now, at 100x it was framed very nicely, and despite the moonlight looked very good indeed with big spread 'wings'. And then the clouds arrived around 9pm

Actually I did not use a mount at all, just a basic tripod. The key is to use a fast lens and take multiple exposures which are then stacked in a program called Deep Sky Stacker (DSS). You can find tutorials about it in the imaging section. But actually you don't even need to use DSS to show the stars up to 7-8 magnitude, DSS is needed to reduce the noise and show up faint nebulosity which otherwise will be lost to the noise. The particular detail of the above photos are: Canon EOS 250d camera with 50mm F1.8 lens. I took 9 exposures of 4 seconds each at F1.8 and ISO 400 and stacked them. Then I played with curves and levels in GIMP to improve the contrast. For the duration of the exposures I follow a very conservative '200' rule: 200 divided by the focal length of the lens. It used to be '500' rule in the age of film but modern cameras have small pixels which show the star blur too much and I found '200/focal length' works for my camera most of the time. By the way this video goes in depth about the most accurate rule: Of course if you have motorised tracking mount you can do much longer exposures with accurate polar alignment. I just believe that for wide angle shots you can get good results without tracking. It certainly saves time setting up when taking night photos especially if you need to move the gear somewhere out of the way in the dark. There is a a ton of knowledge about imaging in the other sections and it rapidly gets very technical and the gear very expensive. For me - I stick to brighter objects and try to keep it simple. Clear skies! Nik

Any observing session is better than a cloudy night. 520x on Moon is very impressive! I have never gone beyond 450x in my Mak but a 12 inch scope should be capable of this and more. Must be a beast on the planets. Last night I stayed below 180x as there was some high cloud and only the Moon was punching through it. It was still worth it - Copernicus looked lovely near the terminator. This evening seems more promising ... 🙏

Indeed, there is something magical about watching the sky, an image just does not convey the 'here now' moment for me. I can compare it to a listening a recorded piece and going to a live concert. The recorded music is usually better quality but the concert has an extra dimension to it which is very difficult to describe. Same with visual astronomy, it has a connection to the cosmos I just can't get from images.

Just to give illustration of the dramatic difference the altitude of the target makes, compare these two photos. I was trying to photograph Vesta in Leo yesterday and spot its movement. First photo is at 8pm and the second is at 10:20pm. Sadly Vesta did not move visibly but compare the level of detail visible. In the 10pm photo I can even spot the faint Leo triplet. At 8pm: and at 10pm:

I was looking at M94 and M97 at 10pm. The moon was lower and behind a tree which helped. My biggest difficulty with DSO is actually not so much the sky but the ambient light around me which makes dark adaptations almost impossible. Its so bright that I can read a large atlas in the ambient light So I use a thick towel draped over my head, which helps quite a bit

An update from 18 February. Vesta is moving North -West still close to 88 Leonis. This is an image with 50mm F/1.8 on Canon 250D, stacked 18x 4s exposures. The time was 10pm on 18 Feb. The bright star in the lower left is Denebola.

Yes, they should be visible. Last night was very clear here. I saw M94 and even the Owl nebula M97 which had eluded me until now. I used an 7 inch Mak, which is not really a DSO instrument, a 6 inch Newtonian will be ideal.

I found that the Seyfert galaxies are easier to spot from light polluted skies with a 5 inch scope. These galaxies have a very bright core, which makes them easier to see as opposed to more diffused galaxies. From the Messier list M51, M66, M77, M81 and M88 are Seyfert galaxies.

Last spring I observed M94 on multiple occasions with a 5 inch Mak. I agree it is relatively bright and stands some light pollution. My skies are Bortle 5 bordering on Bortle 6. It's a nice target indeed! While you are in the area check out M63, another relatively bright galaxy close to Cor Caroli. It makes a right angled triangle with M94 and Cor Caroli:

Don't underestimate the effect of atmospheric extinction especially in light polluted skies. You should try to discover in which direction you have darkest sky and look for galaxies there. South will be best of course. To illustrate I was looking at Vesta in Leo last night around 10 pm. Right now it is at magnitude 6. I saw it in 20x80 binoculars and I could see the mag 6 stars around it, but not much else. The bins should be able show me stars up to mag 10 and even the Leo triplet which was nearby but I didn't see even a hint of it. Had I waited until midnight when the Leo triplet passes the meridian my chances would have been much better.

I managed to observe Vesta yesterday with 20x80 binoculars at 10pm. It is just over 6-th magnitude and was roughly halfway between Denebola and Chertan (Theta Leonis), close to the 6-th magnitude star 88 Leonis. Here is a sketch: I'll try to follow it over the next month whenever weather allows, it should get even brighter in a couple of weeks.

Well done, this is an excellent set up. The 127 Mak is very versatile and portable. Almost any eyepiece will perform well with it because at F12 the light rays converge very slowly and don't demand expensive corrective optics. My advice is to get something with as wide field of view as you can at your budget. For example the 15mm StellaLyra has 68 degrees FoV and is well priced by FLO. I often use a 10mm aspheric Svbony (63deg FoV) with my Maks which performs surprisingly well.Can be found for under £15 on eBay. Just stay away from the 6mm EP from that line , it's not good.

I would say that the camera sensor is the least important issue, people get good results even with 10 year old DSLRs. The key is for improving deep sky image is to get enough light on the sensor. You either need to expose it for longer (so you need a tracking mount like the EQ5 or the Star Adventurer) or you can use a very fast lens, for example I have used 50mm F1.8 Yongnuo lens to get reasonably good images of extended objects e.g. the Pleiades, or whole constellations. With 50mm you can achieve 5-6 second exposures on a fixed tripod without star trails which at F/1.8 means 10 times more light that at F/5.6 with the Tamron. But at some stage if you are serious about photographing DSO a tracking mount is unavoidable, otherwise there is no way you will get a minute long exposure without star trailing. The faint DSO definitely require long exposures especially if you use filters to cut light pollution.

I had a similar experience as @Waddensky last night with 180 SW Mak: The disc size of Sirius was well controlled most of the time and a couple of times I thought I saw a fleeting pinpoint north-east but it did not reoccur regularly enough to be sure. I believe 250-300x is the right magnification to use in my scope: Sirius B is almost 9-th magnitude and being low in the sky atmospheric extinction will make it even dimmer. And magnification larger than 300 will make it just too dim. Magnification 250x should make 11'' separation appear as 44' in the eyepiece, so hopefully wide enough to separate from the glare. I'm still waiting for the perfect night to see the Pup🤞

I often use my Mak with the 32mm Panaview, again giving 70 degree FoV. Haven't noticed vignetting. I know there must be some because of the field stop is larger than the visual back opening, but the vignetting is not noticeable to me in dark background.

You won't see more than the 4 stars, but it's worth revisiting again to check the nearby Struve 761, you will notice a pair of close stars and then a third star nearby in the same field of view as Sigma Orionis, as @Jiggy 67 suggested. This is another gravitationally bound pair but they haven't moved very much since they were first observed.