-A Most Excellent night’s imaging and observing. (6th February 2013)

[RobH]

Wednesday night was due to be that rarest of beasts, a clear night with only light breezes and no moon until very late, and the air was clean due to all of the rain...an astronomer’s dream.

We’d invited a new neighbour round for a look through the 12 inch dob (she has a Nexstar 4SE ), so I got the scope out in the afternoon, and used my newly acquired Hutech laser collimator to set it up (Marvellous device...I should have bought one years ago!).

Our guest, Mel, turned up bearing steaming hot chocolate a bit before 9, and we had a great view of M42, Jupiter, the Double cluster and M35 using a Celestron 24mm and Ethos 13mm. She’d never seen the cloud belts in detail on Jupiter, and was amazed how bright it was compared to her scope. M42 was superb...you could really tell that the trapezium stars were sitting in a vast dust cloud, glittering like perfect diamonds. Amanda has seen M42 a good few times, but said that she’d never seen it looking like the photos.

Mel was quite shocked at the size of the dob and asked what I had in the observatory. When she looked in she nearly fell over as over the last few days I’ve cleared the clutter so there’s now a clear room with a big Ritchey Chretien on a huge mount all on its own looming over you as you go up the stairs.

It may have cost me my soul, but it looks cool

Our guest left a couple of hours later as happy astronomer with her interest rekindled I think.

By this stage, it was about 10pm. I’d had the RC imaging the Bubble nebula shooting 15 minute subs in OIII for about 3 hours, but it was getting very low and about to dip behind the observatory roof so I switched targets. My main target for the rest of the evening was going to be M101, which I needed some RGB data for, but it wouldn’t clear the trees and be at a decent altitude for a while. I have an almost finished M82, but haven’t posted it because I always wanted to get a bit more on the Ha jets. I’d not tried really long subs at 1600mm focal length, but if you can do 15 minutes, then there should be no problem so I set off a run of 30 minute Ha subs.

2 hours later M101 was at a decent height, and the 30 minute subs had all come in clean with nice tight stars, so I changed target to M101, refocused and started my RGB run shooting 3 and 4 minute subs. Once in a while I’d go and check on the rig, but all ran well after a bit of a play with the guide settings, as the seeing had changed a bit and the guide software (PHD) was starting to chase the seeing and getting into an oscillation. I cured this by dropping the aggressiveness of my guide commands down to about 15%, and increased the minimum movement needed before a guide command was issued to 0.3 pixels, rather than the 0.15 that was working earlier. The graph looked wobbly, but the guide star was staying steady, so that’s the key thing.

While the imaging rig was doing what imaging rigs do, I alternated with warming up in the house, and observing with the dob. The streetlights in our area now switch off at midnight, and once the last few houses have gone to bed, it gets really quite dark in our back garden, so observing was a lot of fun.

The evening finished at about 04.30, when high clouds rolled in, which was a shame as I’d hoped to go until dawn, but the way I feel today, it’s probably a good thing they did!

It was a great night’s astronomy.

Over 3 hours of OIII data for the Bubble nebula, 2 hours of Ha to add to M82, and an hour or so each of RGB for M101, plus, visually, Jupiter, Saturn, M13, M42, M35 and NGC2158, The Ring Nebula, M81 & 82, The Leo Triplet, M94, the Owl Nebula, M101, 108 &109 NGC 2903, some unidentified galaxies in Virgo, The Cocoon galaxy, M51, The Double cluster, and the beautiful ‘Caroline’s Rose’ cluster.

I’ve imaged all of these objects at some time, but I also really enjoy finding them with no assistance from technology...just a pushabout scope and a star atlas. They may just look like fuzzy blobs for the most part, but there’s something quite amazing about collecting those ancient photons with your own eyes directly.

Oh....and the entire night was free from the technical problems that have been bugging me for the last couple of years....everything worked!!

I sometimes think that one day, I might just sell all of my imaging kit and by a truly BIG dob

Cheers.

[John]

Great report Rob

It's nice to be with someone getting their 1st views through a large aperture scope - their amazement and enthusiasm seems to be contagious !

Last night was a cracking night here too, I'm glad to say

[Ulysses]

Sounded like a really busy night! Fantastic images on your site by the way! Paul

[foundaplanet]

Nice write up

Sounds like the kind of night that leaves you with a big grin which lasts for a few days. It's more than just good isn't it when you walk back indoors knowing it doesn't really get much better than that.

The truly BIG dob sounds like a plan.

[ollypenrice]

That makes an inspiring read. You did mighty well on the data front, a hell of a harvest! I've been havng a rekindled interest in visual recently as well, partly because we've had some visual guests, partly because I haven't got a CCD at the moment (don't ask!!) and partly because it's been clear but too windy for Yves' focal length. I like all the apertures, from 8x42 bins, via the TEC140 to the big Dob.

Good news about the turning off of the lights.

Olly

[RobH]

I forgot to mention M1 and the Eskimo nebula too!!

One day I'll get myself down to your place Olly, get some imaging going and then enjoy your big dob :-)

[Psychobilly]

Sounds like a great night all round Rob....

Sent from my GT-P7300 using Tapatalk HD

[SteveNickolls]

Great report. It was very good here too-lovely crisp views and Orion was marvellous through 10x50 and 15x70 binoculars. Such a night as that really recharges the soul.

Cheers,

Steve