Tenerife trip - Mars, Saturn and Summer nebulae

[GavStar]

Earlier this year I managed to persuade my girlfriend that we really should take a summer trip to tenerife to view Mars. (See this thread...)

This trip happened last weekend and it worked out extremely well.

First up was packing the kit up for the flight. The az gti with gitzo tripod went into the suitcase and everything else went into my think tank airport accelerator carry on backpack as follows:

This bag carried my televue tv85, 4mm delite, 24mm panoptic and my night vision monoculars with filters and 55mm plossl  for summer nebulae.

I went through customs fine and we checked into our hotel on the coast. Next day, I hired a car, packed my kit and drove up into the mountains to the highest village in Spain, Vilaflor at 1400m For my stargazer nights I was staying (on my tod) at Casa Zaguan who were very tolerant hosts for me.

The first night I joined the hotel stargazing tour higher up onto the slopes of Teide. We went to a lay-by at a height of 2200m. The hotel set up a 10 inch skywatcher dob and I had my trusty tv85. 

First up, the key reason for the trip, was Mars. Now as has been discussed a lot, Mars has been having a global storm raging so I wasn’t expecting much but, oh my, I got a lovely view that night. I tried my televue mars a filter for the first time and it brought out the south polar ice cap at 150x really clearly. Mars has always just been a red blob for me but here I had a very sharp orange circle with a white crescent to one side. The seeing was good and Mars remained very sharp. The tv85 beat the dob for crispness of view and all the other tour guests were very impressed with seeing the polar cap.

I studied the disk for longer and did get hints of darkness above the pole but nothing that stood out that much. However overall I was very happy.

Next up was Saturn - another planet I’ve never really got great views of in the past - the rings always seem a bit wavy. But not tonight! Lovely sharp views with Cassini division plain to see all round. I also some some bands on the planet itself. My best views of Saturn - this was going well.

We finished the tour with some DSOs including the lagoon nebula, M13 and the andromeda galaxy. I took an sqm measurement (the moon hadn’t risen yet) and it showed 21.35. The Milky Way was just so clear up above our heads. 

So back to the hotel and I went onto the hotel roof for more observing on my own. Not the greatest location but I didn’t fancy trekking up the mountain to a lay-by on my own. Sqm measurements were quite a bit worse here due to the village lights at around 20.4 but at least on the roof I had a lovely full sky to look at. There was a bit of calima (the wind from the Sahara that puts sand in the air) but it was low down and at the height I was it had no impact. The hotel was also above the clouds so I had a completely clear sky.

First up I went back to Mars. However viewing over buildings meant the views were not as good as up the mountains. I compared the televue mars a vs televue mars b and Baader contrast booster. My favourites were the televue with the b filter being darker but giving more contrast the the a filter. The contrast booster worked ok but I thought the televues gave better views with the polar cap standing out better.

So onto my second key objective - looking for nebulae targets in the southern skies that I can’t see from the UK. I went straight for the lobster and catspaw nebulae. They were clearly visible with the night vision monoculars and 55mm plossl but the skies were pretty murky at that relatively low altitude so I was a bit disappointed.

Here are some phone pics. Lobster first then catspaw.

To cheer myself up I went up to the lagoon, Triffid, swan and eagle nebulae which as they were higher up gave better views as follows.

Then the skies got noticeably brighter- I turned round and saw the moon had risen so packed up at around 1am.

Back to the coast the next day and I decided to stay there for a night and have a final ‘big’ night on my last night in tenerife. I was a bit disappointed with the moon impact so decided to wait until then when the moon would come up a fair bit later.

Back up the mountain on Sunday night and all set up by 9pm on the hotel roof. I could immediately tell the skies were going to be better do I waited until the sqm got to 20.4 and then started. The skies got darker through the evening until at about midnight the sqm meter showed 20.9 and the Milky Way was very obvious.

Back to the lobster and cats paw and the views were significantly better as shown below.

I went even lower down to the prawn nebula 

I then tried jetstream’s sharpness s91 challenge which is discussed in another thread.

I moved to the lagoon and triffid and the better skies showed again with much more extensive nebulae shown nearby the lagoon 

The eagle and swan were nice albeit a bit small...

I switched filters to the Baader long pass 685 and tried some galaxies. Night vision is not as good on galaxies as emission nebulae. But it’s still fun to have a look.  

The sculptor galaxy was small in the fov but very obvious.

The andromeda galaxy was very extensive and they were hints of dust lanes. M110 was pretty clear.

By now it was getting a bit late and the moon was due reasonably soon, so I went back to the Ha filter and some old favourites which were virtually at zenith - North America and Veil.

I then started packing up and reflected on a very success evening - one of my best stargazing nights and I’d achieved all the key objectives for this trip.

Once packed up I had one final naked eye look at the Milky Way arching straight over my head from one side to the other. Living in London, I don’t see the Milky Way very often - it is always a pleasure when I do see it.

Lovely.

(And I think the tv85 is a great travel scope - a good combo for planets and DSOs in a well built package. Too expensive new though ?)

 

 

[Sunshine]

Amazing report, lots of fun scrolling through the images!

[Stu]

Wow, cracking report Gavin! Mission accomplished!  

BTW I love the Prawn!  

One further question Yer Honour. Could you not take the NV up the mountain, sounds like it was much darker up there?

[alanjgreen]

Great report with some great images. Must have been a great trip!

[GavStar]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Wow, cracking report Gavin! Mission accomplished!  

BTW I love the Prawn!  

One further question Yer Honour. Could you not take the NV up the mountain, sounds like it was much darker up there?

Yes Stu, the NV did go up the mountain and it was very nice. The problem was the time was quite limited (as these tourist stargazing tours are) and we only had around an hour of observing and a fair bit was taken on mars and Saturn. Plus the other tour members all wanted to look through the tv85 since it was giving much easier to see viewing than the dob. 

Also the two days difference made a lot of difference to the skies. I imagine if I had gone up the mountain on my final night I would have had sqm 21.6-21.8 skies... maybe another time when I’ve got company. Although in the end I was very happy with the near 21 skies we had at the hotel and the southerly horizon was better at the hotel.

[GavStar]

7 minutes ago, alanjgreen said:

Great report with some great images. Must have been a great trip!

Thank you. Shows NV should be generally fine to travel in Europe (although I understand in France it’s illegal to have good quality NV so I won’t try it there).

[alanjgreen]

Just now, GavStar said:

Thank you. Shows NV should be generally fine to travel in Europe (although I understand in France it’s illegal to have good quality NV so I won’t try it there).

Did you carry it inside the actinblack case or wrap it in bubble wrap and carry it in the main bag with everything else?

[GavStar]

12 minutes ago, alanjgreen said:

Did you carry it inside the actinblack case or wrap it in bubble wrap and carry it in the main bag with everything else?

Just in bubble wrap in one of the think tank divider sections. As it was carry on I was not concerned.

[alanjgreen]

4 minutes ago, GavStar said:

Just in bubble wrap in one of the think tank divider sections. As it was carry on I was not concerned.

Yep, that's what I am going to do.

What capacity are those 2 lithium batteries?

[GavStar]

19 minutes ago, alanjgreen said:

Yep, that's what I am going to do.

What capacity are those 2 lithium batteries?

12v 8amp tracers (ie 96 wh) so just under the 100 limit. I think they are the biggest allowed for carry on. I use one for my dew shield and one for my mount and they didn’t need to be charged all trip.

[Eastman]

Really great report and nice pictures?

[Special K]

Great one @GavStar!!  Tenerife can be great up on the volcano though the Colima can be a pain. That’s a huge amount of observing done on your trip. If you ever take a car up there again across from the visitors center is a popular place amongst likeminded folk...many of them imagers.  I didn’t like the look of pulling over at a lay-by either but think it would have been fine. 

[jetstream]

Great report Gavin! It sounds like a super place to observe.

[Kn4fty]

Awesome report Gavin! I really enjoyed seeing the images! 

[MarsG76]

Great pictures.. great report... almost like I was looking through the EP.

 

[Size9Hex]

Cracking stuff Gavster. Thanks for taking the time to post it. Great to read about the experiences in more southerly and higher altitude parts of the world, even if they have their own local issues of blowing sand! Would be a real treat to visit such a special location.

Really like the side by side view of M31, which looks similar what I’ve seen in the 4" visually and the views of the nebulae which look absolutely astonishing compared to the eyepiece view, although maybe the difference on the Veil is less pronounced than the others. Is this the impact of the Ha filter in the night vision?

[GavStar]

38 minutes ago, Size9Hex said:

Really like the side by side view of M31, which looks similar what I’ve seen in the 4" visually and the views of the nebulae which look absolutely astonishing compared to the eyepiece view, although maybe the difference on the Veil is less pronounced than the others. Is this the impact of the Ha filter in the night vision?

I use a 685 long pass filter on stars and galaxies to remove the LP and/or background light you don’t want. With this filter it does allow you to see more of galaxies imo but the improvement is less compared to using the Ha filter on emission nebulae where the difference is night and day....

[DirkSteele]

Fab report.  That North American Nebula pic in particular is amazing.  Is that a good representation of how it appears visually when using the NV?  If so, I am going to need another go with it! ?

[GavStar]

8 hours ago, DirkSteele said:

Fab report.  That North American Nebula pic in particular is amazing.  Is that a good representation of how it appears visually when using the NV?  If so, I am going to need another go with it! ?

Matthew, my new Huawei p20 pro camera has definitely improved the quality of my photos. Much better than an iPhone! The ability to do up to 30 second exposure is key I think. 

The NAN is one of the very best objects for night vision and does give great views at the eyepiece. Dark skies (as I had here) do unfortunately make a difference as well. Having variable gain on the NV is essential imo to reduce the scintillation (speckling) you get. 

However, although the photos do give a good representation of the views through the eyepiece I think I would say that my photos are now giving better results than at the eyepiece. In particular the smaller details come out sharper in the phone pics.

[alanjgreen]

37 minutes ago, DirkSteele said:

Fab report.  That North American Nebula pic in particular is amazing.  Is that a good representation of how it appears visually when using the NV?  If so, I am going to need another go with it! ?

You want to see it in the 20" with the NVD! This image is about 75% of the image brightness in the dob and I can see all the details seen in this image no problem (& close-up too). But this can be an issue too as the sheer Scale of these objects - you cannot get it all in the FOV so do lose some of the overall "wowness" which is where the smaller frac is better - but then I cannot even get the NA & Pelican into the FOV of the 107FL either.

And if this gets you excited, then I can only imagine how you might react if you saw Gamma Cygni with night vision, its sheer 3D lushness and texture with the occasional jet black patch here and there is amazing. IC1396 is pretty great too. The Pelican becomes a "seen it, done it" object after a while (when I could hardly even see it before).

But these are just the "well known" nebulas, there is a world of sharpless objects out there that are currently beyond your reach entirely... (some of these are wonderful in their own right - many are just patches - but plenty have image quality detail to show...

If you have the money then NV is the way to go (IMHO).

Alan