A trip to Tenerife with a Tak FSQ-85 and Night Vision Monoculars

[GavStar]

My family enjoy summer holidays in the Canary Islands, great food, sun and lots of swimming. I add to that fantastic skies for astronomy and on our most recent trip, I was able to stay two nights in the Teide national park hotel, Parador de las Cañadas del Teide. This hotel is situated at about 2100m high and is the only place to stay in the national park itself so has very good dark skies.

Attached is a daytime photo I took of my observing location.Given luggage constraints, I decided to take my recently acquired Tak FSQ-85 together with my night vision monoculars and various eyepieces for afocal use. Also attached is a photo of my setup in use at Teide. Apart from a quick test session at home, this was my first chance to try the Tak and I was eager to see what the fast side flat field views would be like with Night Vision under a dark sky. I wasn’t disappointed:)

The Tak worked brilliantly with my skywatcher az gti and once I’d done the initial alignment I didn’t have to update it for the rest of the session.

Night 1

Lovely clear skies on arrival at the hotel at about 8pm. I had a beer in the hotel for refreshment after a day in the sun and then headed out once it got dark at about 10pm. I took a number of sqm measurements through the night and the best was 21.58. First up I decided to just have a scan of the Milky Way with my night vision monoculars. The centre of the Milky Way was pretty high (certainly compared to the UK!) and the dark rifts were as clear as I’ve seen.

I took a short phone video of the views which gives some indication of what was visible.

 

Then the Tak was setup. I did a star test and this showed the optics were top notch.

First up with the Tak was some planetary viewing (not with nv!) of Jupiter and Saturn which are much better placed in Tenerife than the UK. I was using my 3.5mm Pentax Xw giving around 130x. The GRS really popped out and around 6 cloud bands were visible. The seeing was very good and I got very sharp views. Saturn showed the Cassini division very clearly plus some cloud handing on the actual planet. A great start!

Next up I used my night vision in afocal mode to get my first proper view of m22. I used an 18mm delite to get 25x mag and got nice mass of stars resolved in the centre. 

I was keen to see what the Tak could deliver for widefield vision views so changed to my 55mm plossl in afocal mode (with ha filter for viewing emission nebulae) which would give an effective speed of f2.5 and a field of view of nearly 5 degrees.

With Cygnus high overhead, I couldn’t resist looking at some old favourites. The fast effective speed and dark sky combination really showed since emission nebulae just was everywhere. With the fast speed of the Tak the plossl did show some astigmatism at the edge of the fov but the very minimal field curvature controlled this well and the widefield views were excellent. 5 degrees is larger than I normally observe with and I found that I enjoyed the additional framing of the larger objects.

For example, here is the Veil, North America/Pelican and Crescent nebulae.

The background emission nebulae is very apparent in the Crescent image and gives an indication of how the skies looked as I was just panning up from Sagittarius to Cygnus.

Next up was a look at the nebulae in Sagittarius (which in the UK are very low, but significantly higher in Tenerife). The large fov and low mag meant that the detail in these smaller objects was limited but again the background nebulosity again came out well. 

Here you see the Swan and Eagle and the Trifid and Lagoon.

Given the dark skies, I then moved on to some less well known objects. Here is CED 214.

 

I’d noticed recently a large object near the bubble which I wanted to explore more. From research afterwards I discovered this was sharpless 157 or the lobster claw. 

And I often find the widefield views of the nebula containing the elephant’s trunk a bit indistinct and disappointing but not tonight - the dark nebula was clearly visible.

The pac-man, cocoon and wizard were quite small but still fun to view

It was approaching 2am now and a couple of old friends had now arrived reasonably high in the sky. The heart and the soul nebulae, which were again framed really nicely by the Tak/55mm plossl combo. 

It had now been a long day, so I decided to pack up and get some sleep ready for night 2...

Night 2

I spent the day at the beach with my family and then did the drive up the mountain at about 8pm. When I left the coast it was sunny but it gradually got cloudier and cloudier as I went higher. By the time I arrived at the Teide hotel it was completely clouded over .

Checking the internet satellite pics things looked much more hopeful with skies looking clear by around 10.30pm. I went out around 10pm and by the time I had setup the skies were once again dark (sqm 21.48 max) and clear with the Milky Way sweeping overhead as before.

This time I focused mostly on real-time nv visual observing, moving from Sagittarius upwards towards Cygnus following the swathes of nebulosity visible through my Tak. A breathtaking view of the night sky.

After a couple of hours of just scanning the general emission nebulae in the Milky Way, I took a few phone images of some lesser known dsos.

A couple of examples were sharpless 119 and sharpless 86.

 

To end day 2 I finished with another couple of favourites. First up the 5 degree fov of the setuo gave a great framing of the gamma cygni nebula (which seems a bit underrated compared to the North American etc) but I really like it. And the the California nebula, again the large fov captured this large nebulae well.

The next morning as I was driving down the mountain back to the coast (listening to Suede, Oasis, Radiohead and Duran Duran(!)), I reflected on the 2 nights observing. My new scope worked faultlessly with the az gti and the skies were the best I’ve observed under. I realised that I get so much more enjoyment observing with nv under dark 21+ skies rather than the 18.4ish I get at home in SW London. Even though the nebulae are visible in London, the sky background is much brighter unlike the dark skies where the sky background is inky black and the nebulae just seem to pop out of the sky. 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2019 by GavStar

[PeterW]

Amazing time then!

PEter

[don4l]

Very nice write up! It's a fantastic spot.

 

(The photo in my avatar was taken  a hundred yards from where you were set up.)

[RobertI]

Superb! That widefield Tak is just spot on for NV, some amazing observations, you lucky thing. I rather liked the small Pac-Man,  don’t usually see it framed like that  🙂

[Highburymark]

Great collection of images Gavin. Looks like the FSQ has tightened up the haloes around bright stars, and cleaned up astigmatism too. Particularly impressive if you were using the 55mm plossl throughout and not Panoptic 41.

 

[robbymain]

Super writeup Gavin! I may be visiting Tenerife again in February and am planning to take my newly assembled travel kit (Megrez 72, Porta II mount and Manfrotto 055 tripod) with me for trips up to the crater.

I have been past the Parador hotel a few times in the past. Is it easy to setup somewhere away from lights on their grounds or did you park nearby off the road to the Teleferico?!

Cheers,

Rob

[GavStar]

2 hours ago, robbymain said:

Super writeup Gavin! I may be visiting Tenerife again in February and am planning to take my newly assembled travel kit (Megrez 72, Porta II mount and Manfrotto 055 tripod) with me for trips up to the crater.

I have been past the Parador hotel a few times in the past. Is it easy to setup somewhere away from lights on their grounds or did you park nearby off the road to the Teleferico?!

Cheers,

Rob

Rob,

The hotel turns the lights off around 11pm and suggested I setup behind the hotel on a section of patio. It seemed to be fine for me - Sqm 21.6 as measured from my sqm meter.

[2STAR]

On 13/09/2019 at 23:10, GavStar said:

My family enjoy summer holidays in the Canary Islands, great food, sun and lots of swimming. I add to that fantastic skies for astronomy and on our most recent trip, I was able to stay two nights in the Teide national park hotel, Parador de las Cañadas del Teide. This hotel is situated at about 2100m high and is the only place to stay in the national park itself so has very good dark skies.

Attached is a daytime photo I took of my observing location.Given luggage constraints, I decided to take my recently acquired Tak FSQ-85 together with my night vision monoculars and various eyepieces for afocal use. Also attached is a photo of my setup in use at Teide. Apart from a quick test session at home, this was my first chance to try the Tak and I was eager to see what the fast side flat field views would be like with Night Vision under a dark sky. I wasn’t disappointed:)

The Tak worked brilliantly with my skywatcher az gti and once I’d done the initial alignment I didn’t have to update it for the rest of the session.

Night 1

Lovely clear skies on arrival at the hotel at about 8pm. I had a beer in the hotel for refreshment after a day in the sun and then headed out once it got dark at about 10pm. I took a number of sqm measurements through the night and the best was 21.58. First up I decided to just have a scan of the Milky Way with my night vision monoculars. The centre of the Milky Way was pretty high (certainly compared to the UK!) and the dark rifts were as clear as I’ve seen.

I took a short phone video of the views which gives some indication of what was visible.

 

Then the Tak was setup. I did a star test and this showed the optics were top notch.

First up with the Tak was some planetary viewing (not with nv!) of Jupiter and Saturn which are much better placed in Tenerife than the UK. I was using my 3.5mm Pentax Xw giving around 130x. The GRS really popped out and around 6 cloud bands were visible. The seeing was very good and I got very sharp views. Saturn showed the Cassini division very clearly plus some cloud handing on the actual planet. A great start!

Next up I used my night vision in afocal mode to get my first proper view of m22. I used an 18mm delite to get 25x mag and got nice mass of stars resolved in the centre. 

I was keen to see what the Tak could deliver for widefield vision views so changed to my 55mm plossl in afocal mode (with ha filter for viewing emission nebulae) which would give an effective speed of f2.5 and a field of view of nearly 5 degrees.

With Cygnus high overhead, I couldn’t resist looking at some old favourites. The fast effective speed and dark sky combination really showed since emission nebulae just was everywhere. With the fast speed of the Tak the plossl did show some astigmatism at the edge of the fov but the very minimal field curvature controlled this well and the widefield views were excellent. 5 degrees is larger than I normally observe with and I found that I enjoyed the additional framing of the larger objects.

For example, here is the Veil, North America/Pelican and Crescent nebulae.

The background emission nebulae is very apparent in the Crescent image and gives an indication of how the skies looked as I was just panning up from Sagittarius to Cygnus.

Next up was a look at the nebulae in Sagittarius (which in the UK are very low, but significantly higher in Tenerife). The large fov and low mag meant that the detail in these smaller objects was limited but again the background nebulosity again came out well. 

Here you see the Swan and Eagle and the Trifid and Lagoon.

Given the dark skies, I then moved on to some less well known objects. Here is CED 214.

 

I’d noticed recently a large object near the bubble which I wanted to explore more. From research afterwards I discovered this was sharpless 157 or the lobster claw. 

And I often find the widefield views of the nebula containing the elephant’s trunk a bit indistinct and disappointing but not tonight - the dark nebula was clearly visible.

The pac-man, cocoon and wizard were quite small but still fun to view

It was approaching 2am now and a couple of old friends had now arrived reasonably high in the sky. The heart and the soul nebulae, which were again framed really nicely by the Tak/55mm plossl combo. 

It had now been a long day, so I decided to pack up and get some sleep ready for night 2...

Night 2

I spent the day at the beach with my family and then did the drive up the mountain at about 8pm. When I left the coast it was sunny but it gradually got cloudier and cloudier as I went higher. By the time I arrived at the Teide hotel it was completely clouded over .

Checking the internet satellite pics things looked much more hopeful with skies looking clear by around 10.30pm. I went out around 10pm and by the time I had setup the skies were once again dark (sqm 21.48 max) and clear with the Milky Way sweeping overhead as before.

This time I focused mostly on real-time nv visual observing, moving from Sagittarius upwards towards Cygnus following the swathes of nebulosity visible through my Tak. A breathtaking view of the night sky.

After a couple of hours of just scanning the general emission nebulae in the Milky Way, I took a few phone images of some lesser known dsos.

A couple of examples were sharpless 119 and sharpless 86.

 

To end day 2 I finished with another couple of favourites. First up the 5 degree fov of the setuo gave a great framing of the gamma cygni nebula (which seems a bit underrated compared to the North American etc) but I really like it. And the the California nebula, again the large fov captured this large nebulae well.

The next morning as I was driving down the mountain back to the coast (listening to Suede, Oasis, Radiohead and Duran Duran(!)), I reflected on the 2 nights observing. My new scope worked faultlessly with the az gti and the skies were the best I’ve observed under. I realised that I get so much more enjoyment observing with nv under dark 21+ skies rather than the 18.4ish I get at home in SW London. Even though the nebulae are visible in London, the sky background is much brighter unlike the dark skies where the sky background is inky black and the nebulae just seem to pop out of the sky. 

 

 

Brilliant report and great images.