Ultrastar GX Tour of Peg / Ari / And /Psc

[aparker]

Last night I had only my third real chance to get the Ultrastar out under the stars.  Work and weather have conspired to minimize my weeknight astronomy opportunities since I got the thing.  

One of my LONG term projects is to try and recapitulate the Herculean observational feat of Sir William by someday eyeballing (either through eyepiece or screen) all of the Herschel objects.  Last night I was determined to at least finish off a few of the northern constellations that I had made good progress on visually already.  So cruised around Pegasus, Pisces, Andromeda, and Aries mostly looking at faint fuzzies (one Mag 13 elliptical galaxy looks much like the next).  But, you don't really know what you're going to see until you look - that's why it's fun.  Below are a few of the neat things I encountered on the way.

First spiral GX NGC128, where you can see some subtle tidal distortion caused by the smaller adjacent 127, 126, 130 and then more distant NGC125.

M74 just because it was nearby...

NGC266 in Pisces - really nice classical barred spiral

NGC470 - an amazingly bright starburst spiral GX, also in Pisces, next to the huge but vaporous giant elliptical NGC474 that it is tidally disrupting (pair is Arp 227).  You can just barely make out the shell of material surrounding the core of  474 as two faint partial arcs above and below.  This one is worth looking up a research telescope image of on line.  Also cool is the clear resolution of multiple (huge) star forming regions in 470  at 100 MLY distance.

Irregular GX NGC520 - you can just see the tidal stream of stars arcing off to the right.

NGC972 is a "ring" form galaxy - potentially a disrupted spiral.  You can just see a hint of structure here.

[aparker]

Also some visible structure in NGC1134 in Aries, with the edge-on IC267 off to the right and a couple small PGC's above

And the night's non-GX object, bright nebula NGC7538 in Cephus

Overall I am very pleased with the Ultrastar upgrade from Lodestar.   The resolution is markedly improved (check out the tiny stars on that last image) and the slightly lower sensitivity from the smaller pixels is not really an issue for me where my sensitivity is limited by urban sky brightness more than anything.

Thanks for looking.

[Martin Meredith]

Great shots Alex. Thanks for sharing your Herschelian tour with us. NGC 520 is a really interesting-looking object. I agree with you 100% that part of the fun is not knowing what you're going to see. Charts plot a bland elliptical shape but the reality is often much more exciting!

Martin

[laudropb]

Very interesting set of images of your Grand Tour. Thanks for posting.

[Paul81]

Superb grand tour session Alex! 

[Astrojedi]

Great captures Alex. Some subtle detail in NGC7538. When I see that image I feel like I looking through a large scope. Almost like a sketch. One of Rob's templates would complete the look.

[Chris]

Looks like lots of fun, and very interesting captures

[HiloDon]

Nice tour, Alex.

Looks like you are using a focal reduction of .5. What reducer are you using?

Don

[aparker]

Nice tour, Alex.

Looks like you are using a focal reduction of .5. What reducer are you using?

Don

Don,

I am using a generic $30 2" 0.5X FR from Antares (doubtless GSO manufacture).  It works OK but even with extensive tweaking of the positioning there's still noticeable coma around the edges of the field, as you can see.  I'm thinking about getting the Optec 0.62X that's specifically designed for the EdgeHD scopes.  It's expensive, but I think that Optec quality may be worth it.  Certainly if I go to an even larger format sensor in the future I'll have to do something to get a larger flat field (or just go back to the native 2000mm FL of the scope).

Alex

[HiloDon]

Alex,

I have the Optec .33x and I just tried it on my 8" Meade SCT with an Ultrastar C I'm testing.  At .33x the vignetting and edge coma were pretty bad.  At .45x it was acceptable.  I would suspect the Optec .62x should work well with the Ultrastar 11mm diagonal.

Don

[RobertI]

Very interesting set of objects Alex, some great detail in those captures.