THEME: Carbon stars and nebulae

[N3ptune]

Hi, I thought it would be nice to bring back the warm memories of my 2 last observations that took place lately.

2017-08-13 - CARBON STAR THEME

Sunday night, with limited time but a descent sky, I had to get the Newtonian (8") out for some carbon star hunting. The targets were "U" Lyr and "T Lyr" 

I find it very relaxing to hunt for carbon, looking at the atlas and at the eyepiece, star hopping, seeing new stars in the trip of going from a bright star to the carbon star, somewhat like reading a book with illustrations? It's the process of doing it that I like, has much has the final result, enjoying the views. The more I am gaining experience, the more I can locate faint things even in non ideal condition with light pollution.

I feel like an amateur astronomer truly these days, it's connecting with me at a higher level, a little effort will provide high happiness for low energy expenditure. 

My telescope has a new rotating ring attached to it and remains balanced all the time, it's an incredible relief which makes things so much easier with the equatorial mount. Super happy about it.

U Lyr: Deep rich red pulsating star inside some star triangle with the ruby star on top. It was an easy one to find from Vega. The power used to find the red star, 40x plus another exam at 80x and 143x. Boosting the power will sometime make it easier for my eyes to catch the colour. 143x provided optimal stability.

T Lyr: "Waaaaa" found at 40x again, low power, and it's popping out of many stars. The star field around T is denser then around U. T has an deep orange colour, less impressive then U but with it's higher magnitude, it's steadier to observe. An impressive one, really different from the rest of the stars around.

The Great Hercule Cluster: At the end of the observation a little candy (; even with light pollution, averted vision worked wonders to catch the foreground higher magnitude stars has well has the globular background ball of stars. At 80x to start with, then 143x OR-HD to examine the core. With the orthoscopic eyepiece the object was has large has the 42d field of view, impressive! (And I want to have my 80x with another orthoscopic eyepiece badly now)

OBSERVATION:

My left eye has higher capacity then my right eye at catching colors in the sky, It has a better resolution too BUT my right eye is stronger in averted vision. Funny heh?

THE END

2017-08-16 - NEBULAE THEME

Yeah, Nebulae, my favourite subject. My plan was to find small planetary from my parking with light pollution, I find these very attractive balls of light. The temperature last night was excellent, there were no insects, no wind, medium seeing (a bit of scintillation), good transparency.

Cygnus NGC 6811 a little cluster found close to Cygnus main star  δ (delta). Quite faint but it was actually a double cluster close to one another, a very faint one with many stars and a stronger one with less stars. I had to look at this unexpected friend for a few minutes, great part of the night for an unexpected guest along the way to the Blinking Planetary nebula. My 25mm eyepiece was better then my 32mm on that NGC, perhaps the smaller exit pupil making the background darker in pollution, especially for the faint cluster, no doubt 25mm was way better.

Cygnus Blinking Planetary: It took almost 10 minutes to locate it from the bright stars around it, the telescope will show much more stars then what the atlas shows. Then I see it!! (: it is in the form of a star with a blinking hallow at 40x. Then, it gets interesting at 80x with the narrow pass band filter, now the oval it's steadier but still blinking a bit, better results achieved with averted vision of course. It's greenish too, but not has much has Saturn's nebula. Very interesting little object.

Cygnus Cocoon Nebula: After I would say 6 attempts to locate it (in 6 different observations), finally I see it! It's so faint no wonder it was so hard to find. I had to pay good attention to the star while hopping, the double star atlas gave me good landmarks too. It took maybe 20 minutes to locate 2 faint stars surrounded with a faint haze, only visible with the help of narrow passband filter. I wasn't sure it was it during my observation but back inside the house, Stellarium confirmed it was it without a doubt.

--> it was the Cocoon, a great success story without synscan technology.

I hope you liked my report.

[alan potts]

Very nice report and yes I did like it. Never tried for any of the carbon stars, must change that. If only we could see the Cocoon like the picture with our scopes.

alan.

[Littleguy80]

Excellent report. Never heard of the Carbon stars before. Will have to look them up

[N3ptune]

12 hours ago, alan potts said:

Very nice report and yes I did like it. Never tried for any of the carbon stars, must change that. If only we could see the Cocoon like the picture with our scopes.

alan.

Yeah, but I wonder what it looks like with a larger dobson perhaps, with 8 inches there is not much to see except for 2 faint stars and some very faint mist around them.  But what about 12, 16, 18 inches?

@Littleguy80

If you want to look at some of them the astronomical league has a program at the following addresses, some targets are harder then others. I know there is an excel spreadsheet somewhere too to combine the stars by constellations, which is a mode I prefer. It's going to take an eternity  to find the 100 stars! So far their targets are very interesting.

https://www.astroleague.org/content/carbon-star-observing-club

And you have to produce some sketches with the field of stars including the carbon one, making the exercise even more interesting of course. You get a pin at the end of your life if you can find all of them

https://www.astroleague.org/files/obsclubs/CarbonStar/CarbonStarLog3.pdf

https://www.astroleague.org/files/obsclubs/CarbonStar/CarbonStarList3.pdf

[Littleguy80]

1 hour ago, N3ptune said:

And you have to produce some sketches with the field of stars including the carbon one, making the exercise even more interesting of course. You get a pin at the end of your life if you can find all of them

Thanks for the info. Sounds like a fun challenge!

[Dave In Vermont]

The Cocoon was my target with my 12" LX200 one night. I expected something rather faint. Untill it leapt out of my eyepiece!

It was anything but faint - it was amazing!

Great report, thank you!

Dave

[N3ptune]

4 hours ago, Littleguy80 said:

Thanks for the info. Sounds like a fun challenge!

Looking for a single star is another dynamic, I find it relaxing..?! why is a mystery. 

@Dave In Vermont Oh great, your 12" gave you a strong view of it, that's interesting, in what light pollution condition were you ? I know I should be able to improve my visual at least twice at a darker site. I'll have a 12" tube someday, I read the LX200 used to be a top seller from Meade for the serious astronomer nice.

 

 

[Dave In Vermont]

Not much LP around here. My city aims it's streetlights straight-down, and there are not many of them in the first place. They also switch-off automatically after a car passes by the sensors.

Vermont is a very pollution-conscious place. No billboards allowed on our highways either.

Dave

[alan potts]

12 hours ago, N3ptune said:

Yeah, but I wonder what it looks like with a larger dobson perhaps, with 8 inches there is not much to see except for 2 faint stars and some very faint mist around them.  But what about 12, 16, 18 inches?

@Littleguy80

If you want to look at some of them the astronomical league has a program at the following addresses, some targets are harder then others. I know there is an excel spreadsheet somewhere too to combine the stars by constellations, which is a mode I prefer. It's going to take an eternity  to find the 100 stars! So far their targets are very interesting.

https://www.astroleague.org/content/carbon-star-observing-club

And you have to produce some sketches with the field of stars including the carbon one, making the exercise even more interesting of course. You get a pin at the end of your life if you can find all of them

https://www.astroleague.org/files/obsclubs/CarbonStar/CarbonStarLog3.pdf

https://www.astroleague.org/files/obsclubs/CarbonStar/CarbonStarList3.pdf

I will have to get the 18 inch on to it, find it first though. My problem is I have too many scopes. It is very difficult here to sell a scope unless you almost give it away and I tend to try an use the ones I have almost in rotation. I have thought about putting a couple on site but no one really wants to risk a shipping of something like that from here to the UK. Only last week a courier managed to destroy an expensive and strong ironing board, Amazon were very understanding

[N3ptune]

11 hours ago, Dave In Vermont said:

Not much LP around here. My city aims it's streetlights straight-down, and there are not many of them in the first place. They also switch-off automatically after a car passes by the sensors.

Vermont is a very pollution-conscious place. No billboards allowed on our highways either.

Dave

Wow we have more and more giant tv on the sideways of the highway and we do not have the on/off technology for the street lights either. ):

@alan potts I understand, it's the same thing here for the second hand market we have to reduce the price has low has possible. The 18 is quite a large one, which scopes would you sell in your collection just for fun.  

[alan potts]

22 minutes ago, N3ptune said:

Wow we have more and more giant tv on the sideways of the highway and we do not have the on/off technology for the street lights either. ):

@alan potts I understand, it's the same thing here for the second hand market we have to reduce the price has low has possible. The 18 is quite a large one, which scopes would you sell in your collection just for fun.  

If I were going to sell one it would be the 180mm Mak, not that there is anything wrong with it. I bought it about 3 years ago as I wanted to buy a 6 inch APO,maybe the Espirit. I thought the extra bit of apperture would take away the want but it hasn't worked, there is something about a refractor that makes you want them. I like my 190mm Newt/mak very much, really good image, almost as good as an APO. I have a 130mm Lzos TBM in the barn which I could get at a good price and even this is not taking my want away, maybe because I have a 115mm, which doesn't see enough light.  Other than that I have the Meade 12 inch with 70mmED piggybacked which is in an observatory, my plan was always the buy an EQ8 and have all of them mountable in the one place, work in progress.

The 18 inch though is a superb scope with a stunning mirror quality from John Nichol in England.

alan 

[N3ptune]

That's many special telescope you have there, quite a collection, a different choice for a different mood. But I encourage you to sell the extras you feel like using much, I have a nice drum kit myself inside the original boxes, never using it.. it must be worth a couple of Televus. I know i should sell it and give it to a person that will play with it, or at least use it more then I do. (Which is never in my case)

Do you have an observatory at the top of your barn ?

 

[RobertI]

Very nice report and a good read, sounds like you had a great time and a productive night. Carbon stars are great and I've observed a few over the years. Its suprising how the colours differ, from light orange to deep red, and obviously this changes depending on the size and type of scope. The reddest carbon star I have ever seen is WZ Cassiopeiae, looked wonderful in the rich starfields of Cassiopeia.

[N3ptune]

9 hours ago, RobertI said:

Very nice report and a good read, sounds like you had a great time and a productive night. Carbon stars are great and I've observed a few over the years. Its suprising how the colours differ, from light orange to deep red, and obviously this changes depending on the size and type of scope. The reddest carbon star I have ever seen is WZ Cassiopeiae, looked wonderful in the rich starfields of Cassiopeia.

Thanks (; I notice that too, the color is not the same from one carbon star to another and depending of the eyepiece too. my 32mm against my 25mm won't show the exact same temperature. I don't have a log for WZ Cas bit I should get to it eventually to enjoy it's red color!  Thanks for the suggestion.!

 

[Hyperion76]

Thankyou for this report I took it upon myself to search for them tonight and managed to bag 8 of these tonight and yes they all have various hues of red and orange but also have a kind of artificial neon feel to their colour which seperates them from other stars I feel . http://www.nckas.org/carbonstars/#Lyr. This link acts as a nice introduction to these carbon stars.