Ags

Bring on the dread, cold howling dark of Winter, I say!

I was wondering whether to do visual or imaging tonight, but decided on visual as the skies looked less than perfect. I waited til midnight for dark and when I went out I nearly gave up - the sky was still inky blue. I had an observing plan consusting of the northern Caldwells east of Polaris and I flew through C1, C2, C4, and C6 finding nothing. Went back to C4 and still nothing. Tried C6 again and bingo - a fuzzy star, a definite fuzzy star! Ironic I should finally find C6 with my C6 telescope! Time to up the magnification and do some observifying! I must be "well padded" as I felt absolutely nothing as I sat down to observe Caldwell 6 and utterly crushed my spectacles. C6, the Cat's Eye Nebula is a new one for me and I had no idea I could observe it at all. I think in my years of observing and hunting for planetaries I have only had definite observations of M27 and M57 (I might have spotted the Little Dumbell once), so to see C6 plain as day was a real thrill. It is really bright and looked a bit greenish to me. I could see no structure in it though so I had the idea to screw the lens unit of my Revelation barlow into my Explore Scientific 6.7 mm to get it down to about 4.5 mm. This was the point I reached for my glasses on the eyepiece tray and did not find them, then checked the chair with a sinking heart, and picked up all that was left of them - twisted, snapped wire! After a few minutes of staring futilely at the broken glasses, I got back to the important business of C6. I really like the ES 6.7 with the Rev barlow screwed in - it feels sharp and precise. C6 was bigger but no structure to be seen. I should have tried a full 2x barlowing, but somehow that did not occur to me. Perhaps a bit of context might be needed here - my SCT has a 0.63 reducer so the 6.7 mm eyepiece gives an exit pupil of about 1.1 mm and with the barlow 0.7 mm, so the magnifications aren't really extreme. I tried to have another go at C2 - the Bow Tie planetary. I did find something but not sure what - a magnitude 10 star with faint puffy nebulosity around it visible in averted vision. Not having Seen Mr Bow Tie, I don't know if I can chalk this one up. I had another go at C4 (Iris Nebula) but still nothing. Never seen this thing... Is it a hard one or do I just not have the Right Stuff? I have a suspicion that the faint fuzzy I found when looking for C2 was actually C4 and I had simply got confused when entering the coordinates! It would kind of sum up the evening i was having. Fireworks Galaxy - C12 - was the next target and another failure, but it did lead me to NGC 6939 nearby - a small star cluster, new for me. I paid a visit to M57 because I always do. It's actually much fainter than the Cat's Eye. Around this point I decided the skies were just too bright and went in to find my emergency spectacles. This was my first visual outing with the AZ GTi counterbalanced with 2 kgs for a total load of 6 kgs (but balanced). Not too sure it is an improvement - the counterweights introduce vibrations and maybe I will change my counterweight shaft from a longer threaded rod (which feels springy) to a shorter bolt which feels much more stiff but obviously provides less balance. Vibrations aside, tracking was much better with the counterweights. I spent the night switching between a Nirvana 16 mm and Explore Scientific 6.7 mm, and the Nirvana did not fare well in the comparison. Stars are just not sharp across the field in the Nirvana - a real problem when looking for fuzzy stars that might be planetaries. On some night I enjoy the Nirvana but on most nights the view feels poor, perhaps my eyes are more tired and can't adjust for field curvature. The apparent field of the Nirvana also seems smaller and harder to take in than that of the Explore Scientific 6.7 mm. All in all, a very unsuccessful evening with the awful disaster of my glasses, but still feels like a high because I got a good look at the Cat's Eye.

The Nagler 4.8mm is 82 degrees and has a tiny eye lens. That's simply because there is no eye relief - as your eyeball is right next to the eye lens it doesn't have to be big. The morpheus has something like 20 mm of eye relief so the lens has to be bigger.

Don't lick the eyepiece? A health warning on everything kind of loses the effect...

That's a Berlebach Report 112 Astro tripod. Very light and very strong, but very short! It's fine for me as I always observe sitting.

Here is the latest iteration of my AZ GTi setup. C6, 2kg counterweight, and light eyepieces or camera.

I'm sure the pictures it makes will be set to stun(ning)!

Er... Japanese now. Softbank bought ARM a couple of years ago.

The scope looks awesome by the way. I love the rounded details on the scope, very distinctive.

From the photo it looks like you are shaking with excitement 🙂

The cheapest 1kg counterweights in the world arrived today. My kingdom for a can of black paint! 😁

I didn't expect Belgium somehow - not too far from me!

I'd like to see a pic of your local observatory, it sounds like an interesting place!

Very nice! So compact and oordinated... I do think the asiair looks a bit spiderman though 😀

Buying that gear would make me happy!

Close but no banana. I'll give you another clue: it does not contain any glass.

My holiday compensation was a Dell G5 laptop! Six cores with hyperthreading! I should have a new astro item by this friday, and it's bright yellow 😀

Firstly I am scrupulously open with my partner about what I am buying and discuss all purchases before buying. If my partner says it's no it's no. I'm reluctant to spend anything over 100 euros and left to my own devices tend to buy cheap and then regret it. Actually most of my bigger purchases have been when my partner suggested out of the blue that I should get something really good. I am always thinking of the next purchase, but it is mostly to extend what I have not to replace items with "better" ones. I keep a list of stuff I am dreaming about, and it is humbling to see how this list morphs over time. It makes me more cautious about buying anything as I can look back at all the "must haves" that have been dropped from the list after lengthy consideration. I find a steady trickle of new bits keeps me excited about going out in the Winter cold or past midnight in the Summer months. So I try not to buy too frequently or too much at once, so I can enjoy each new item properly.

Microprose went bust? The name makes me think back to happy times with my 486...

It's been a saga, but my counterweight bolt arrived today. Now need to get a 2 kg weight for it. This is strictly for AZ mode, hopefully balancing the ALT gear will stop it slipping. Note the bolt is proper Astro black!

Well, actually investing £10 would be even better!

I am working on a little website for online science fiction role playing games, and have been trying to find a format for displaying the millions of star systems in my map. This is my effort so far, showing the Lava/Hot Zone (red), habitable Zone (Green), Cold Zone (where a small body like Titan can still have an atmosphere) and the Outer Zone. You can see rocky bodies, gas and ice giants, a habitable world and habitable moons, and asteroid and dust belts. This is just a screen capture, the original is coded in SVG and Javascript. Only habitable planets get proper names, Nimerigar is a gas giant with two habitable moons; the next planet out has a ring system. In the interactive online version (not deployed yet) you can click planets and moons for more details. The moon Nimerigar/0 is currently clicked in the screen capture.

But dreaming, shopping and buying is half the fun! Also, even if you somehow get it perfectly right and you have an ideal setup, it can't cover all the bases and you will inevitably need to do a bit more buying 😀

I know NASA has been doing some research on hibernation - not the same as suspended animation but along the same lines. If you can keep the astronaut still for the entire trip, then you can pack shielding around them. If they are awake and moving around, the mass of the shielding becomes prohibitive.

Came across this tonight, it is a very pretty image planner / photographic sky map. It uses a couple of publically available databases, but it is nicely done. http://www.blackwaterskies.co.uk/imaging-toolbox/