More Excellent Seeing

[John]

38 minutes ago, Barry-W-Fenner said:

Some good stuff on this thread, Looks like you all managed to get out and enjoy the sky. I will definitely be out tonight! After all the positive results on the Pup I want to have a go later!

 

Baz

Try finding Sirius in twilight Baz. It helps reduce the glare from the primary star. 

[Saganite]

14 hours ago, F15Rules said:

Got the Pup!😀👍

After reading John's post about the good seeing, and his sighting of Sirius B, I decided, on impulse, to whip my FS128 out and aim it towards Sirius. I popped in my Carton 10.5mm, giving just about 99x, adjusted my fine focusing ep holder..and there it was!

The Pup was elusive, but definitely there. I knew the scope could show it, but the atmosphere had clearly settled down after yesterdays high winds, and tonight the air was very calm.

I was only outside for 10 minutes and looked only at  Sirius, low over my house roof!

Thanks, John, for the heads up!!

Dave

Well done Dave !...

[Barry-W-Fenner]

2 hours ago, John said:

Try finding Sirius in twilight Baz. It helps reduce the glare from the primary star. 

Thanks John I will give that a go and report back 😁

[John]

1 hour ago, Barry-W-Fenner said:

Thanks John I will give that a go and report back 😁

Good luck !

It's cloudy here so no observing tonight for me.

 

[Barry-W-Fenner]

1 hour ago, John said:

Good luck !

It's cloudy here so no observing tonight for me.

 

Thanks John. Just got a great shot of Venus while getting ready for Sirius. However the cloud has rolled in big time now. Fingers crossed it clears up!

 

 

[Barry-W-Fenner]

No joy with the Sirius split for me tonight. There's always next time.
On the plus side, venus does look totally amazing at X300 possibly the best I have seen

 

[bomberbaz]

didn't get the scope out at all tonight, just did a ethereal looking moon photoshoot and came up with this. TBH it's my best effort yet. 

[AdeKing]

On 06/04/2020 at 21:00, John said:

Thanks Jeremy and Dave,

I've just been observing Tegmine (Zeta Cancri) at 257x up to a stupid 450x - amazing with a clear split of the tighter 1.3 arc second pair all the way !

Just waiting for the Moon to clear the trees and rooftops. I'm keen to see what can be seen around that sliver of a terminator tonight.

I had success with Tegmine too last night John.  I saw your earlier report and added it to my list.

For the first time, I managed to fully resolve two airy discs for the tight pair rather than a peanut shaped star with hints of a thin line separating the two.

I used my 3-6 Nagler Zoom and one combination or another of the the Baader VIP barlow in my ED120.

13 hours ago, John said:

I hope it lasts too Stu.

My observing is all about star hopping so my dalliance with the Vixen GP the other night didn't last long I'm afraid. Within an hour I had the Tak back on the Skytee II and was much more comfortable that way. Like putting on an old pair of slippers !

I'm not an "eq man" these days I fear, despite how well they look

Since getting my GP mount, I've made the decision to learn how to star hop using an EQ mount and whilst it is not as easy as using an Alt Az mount, now that I've got my head around which directions the mount moves when I turn the slow-mo controls, I think I'm getting there, though the mental acrobatics I have to perform when looking through the eyepiece makes my head hurt.

13 hours ago, Stu said:

The Tak has been almost permanently on the GP for the last two weeks tracking the Sun in the day and more recently the Moon and Venus at night. A bit limited but still very enjoyable.

Might chuck the Mewlon on the AZ100 tonight if it stays clear.

My GP has also been set up permanently in the garden (much to Mrs K's disapproval) and has had the Lunt LS60DS sat on it pretty much every day for the last two weeks.  Now its reasonably well polar aligned, I appreciate only having to make the odd correction in Dec to keep the solar disc centred.

Edited April 7, 2020 by AdeKing
spelling

[John]

Well done for getting Tegmine with the ED120 Ade

I got it again tonight with the 130mm triplet. Seeing good again and even a barmy 600x showed a well defined triple system of stars.

I found these rather quirky facts about traveling times to Tegmine on the web:

	Description Speed (m.p.h.) Time (years) Walking 4 13,715,786,604.62 Car 120 457,192,886.82 Airbus A380 736 74,542,318.50 Speed of Sound (Mach 1) 767.269 71,504,448.14 Concorde (Mach 2) 1,534.54 35,752,177.47 New Horizons Probe 33,000 1,662,519.59 Speed of Light 670,616,629.00  81.81
	So there you have it !   David A Hardy produced an artists impression of the system a few years back:

[Stu]

Having read about Tegmine on here, I thought I would have a look at it tonight after enjoying Venus for a while. Using the 8” f8 again, it was quite straightforward to split, once I found the little blighter! The sky seems steady but not very transparent tonight so star hopping was a challenge. I ended up just eyeballing a location for it from SkySafari using the Telrad, and remarkably enough it was in the field of view first time! 

I started with the Leica Zoom with AP Barcon element screwed into the barrel which I believe gives x1.5 multiplying factor, resulting in x271 which produced a split. Better still, the Nag Zoom gives x 266 to x533 in this scope, and x320 to x400 showed a very clear split between the two tighter airy disks. Lovely target.

[John]

It is a lovely target

Seeing and transparency rather poor here tonight. Only the brighter stars showing and the seeing is not supporting high powers with my Tak FC100DL. Even Porrima is hard work !

I'm waiting for the moon to put in an appearance but I'm not expecting a great show under these conditions.

Glad it's better where you are Stu.

 

[Dave1]

I was out observing tonight with my 80mm F15. I thought seeing was pretty bad tonight, could see boiling, and it wasn't very transparent. I did think to go for Tegmine but the constellation of Cancer is towards the light pollution, combined with the seeing conditions made it a hard target, so left it out tonight. I did bag 54 Leonis in Leo. I also spent time on Venus. 

[Stu]

7 hours ago, John said:

It is a lovely target

Seeing and transparency rather poor here tonight. Only the brighter stars showing and the seeing is not supporting high powers with my Tak FC100DL. Even Porrima is hard work !

I'm waiting for the moon to put in an appearance but I'm not expecting a great show under these conditions.

Glad it's better where you are Stu.

 

Seems like we all had poor transparency; like Dave I struggled to see Cancer at all, it is often tricky but last night was worse than normal. I could just about make out Altarf but that was it. Star hopping was very tricky, hence eyeballing Tegmine through the Telrad, I just guesstimated the distance between Pollux and Altarf and fortunately got it right first time somehow!

The seeing during the day for solar had, at times, been excellent although still variable so I was hopeful of at least some success last night and so it proved. At its best the three stars were beautiful white disks against blank, with very clear separation. At times they got quite messy but most of the time the split was there.

I tried for Sirius earlier and was optimistic because it looked quite tight but again no luck. I’m sure once I’ve seen it it will get much easier, I am just never quite sure how far out I should be looking.

[Littleguy80]

15 minutes ago, Stu said:

I tried for Sirius earlier and was optimistic because it looked quite tight but again no luck. I’m sure once I’ve seen it it will get much easier, I am just never quite sure how far out I should be looking.

I’ve had a couple of goes at the pup after reading this report without success. How far out to look is exactly what troubles me too, Stu. Persistence is so often the key with these things though. 

[John]

The Pup star is further away from Sirius A than you expect. The gap is around 10 arc seconds so around the same as Rigel and it's companion star but the position angle is different and the brightness difference massively different. Its not like observing any other binary pair to be honest. 

Even with my 12 inch scope I've not had an observation where the Pup star was clear for prolonged periods. It pops in and out of view but consistently and in the same place.

I've often tried to find an image or sketch of the pair that resemble the view through the eyepiece and it's quite hard. I came across this ultra-high magnification image recently that was acquired on 20 Jan this year so the position angle is current. I've oriented the view to match the Newtonian and I've enlarged the central portion of my sketch done in Feb 2019 for comparison. 

As you can see, typically, even with the best seeing and optical systems, the glare from Sirius A extends at least 5-8 arc seconds around the star so Sirius B is seen peeking though this.

I expect people are actually seeing the Pup star from time to time but not quite recognising it for what it is

20-01-2020 image (not mine):

My sketch:

 

[John]

Oops !!!!

I've just realised that I had the above images orientated to show the refractor / mak-cessegrain / schmidt-cassegrain view (using a diagonal). Here is the newtonian view:

 

[markse68]

It’s  been really poor here for past few days- I think the warmer weather is raising moisture from wet ground causing a haziness as the evening cools that means I can’t even see Orion clearly

[Barry-W-Fenner]

1 hour ago, markse68 said:

It’s  been really poor here for past few days- I think the warmer weather is raising moisture from wet ground causing a haziness as the evening cools that means I can’t even see Orion clearly

Same scenario here,  the last two nights have been really poor. A stark contrast to the beautiful blue clear sky in the day. I have struggled seeing the major stars let alone any of the others. Maybe tonight will be better??

[markse68]

I’ve got my fingers crossed Baz- need to find that comet before it completely disintegrates!

[Barry-W-Fenner]

4 hours ago, markse68 said:

I’ve got my fingers crossed Baz- need to find that comet before it completely disintegrates!

That's on my to do list aswell Mark! I don't know how easy it is going to be with the moon being on full blast at the moment? Hopefully it's still up there on Monday!

 

 

[Barry-W-Fenner]

6 hours ago, John said:

Oops !!!!

I've just realised that I had the above images orientated to show the refractor / mak-cessegrain / schmidt-cassegrain view (using a diagonal). Here is the newtonian view:

 

Great sketch John. This is exactly what I need to see to stay inspired and hunt down the pup. I will get it one day. Might have already?? But I can't be certain!

 

Baz

[Piero]

On 06/04/2020 at 21:00, John said:

I've just been observing Tegmine (Zeta Cancri) at 257x up to a stupid 450x - amazing with a clear split of the tighter 1.3 arc second pair all the way !

Congratulations John!

I tried it with the Tak tonight, but was only able to see an elongated shape with no clear split. This was at 215x and 308x. However, I managed to split Iota Leonis at 308x. It is a nice yellow-white pair with magnitudes of 4 and 11, respectively. The companion chases the main star very closely as the latter advances towards the eyepiece field stop.

[chiltonstar]

Tegmine is a jewel in good seeing! Last night, although slightly hazy the seeing was good to excellent and at x270 (180 Mak and 10mm Baader Ortho) the close pair AB (1.1 arcsec) were well split with a dark line between them and well-defined diffraction rings. Going up to x350 was too much for the conditions. I always get the impression that the third star (C) is slightly elongated, but that is probably wishful imagining!

The seeing to the E was nowhere near as good, even Epsilon Lyrae was a shuddering mess.....

Chris

Edited April 11, 2020 by chiltonstar

[Littleguy80]

I did the rounds of the comets and some planetary nebula last but a nice split on Iota Cas put Tegmine on my mind. 300x from the 4mm setting on the Nagler zoom in my 10” dob gave a really nice split. I don’t observe a lot of multiple star systems but they two were really nice. 

[Stu]

I found another, easier version of Tegmine last night which was 12 Lyncis. Looked very nice and the tighter pair is 1.9 separation so is a lot easier.

My seeing wasn’t great last night, nor was the transparency. I did have a bit of a trawl round but it was quite disappointing really. I stayed up to watch a lovely orange Moon rise above the tree, but through the scope it was pretty shimmery. Can’t have it good all the time I guess and I’ve had plenty of good views lately. It does feel like we need a good downpour to clear the air though.