Saying Hello.....

[OregonEAA]

Hello Everyone:

I am Jeff from Oregon. I (due to health reasons) do 99% at home EAA. My Equipment is two setups: My Grab and Go is a C5 (ZWO224/Meade FR3.3) on a SLT which uses a Manfrotto 055 CF legs and RC488 as it's tripod. My "big rig" is a Orion AZ-EQ Sirius Pro with Celestron StarSense mounted with a C8 (FR3.3/6.3) and a ES102 Triplet with .8 reducer/flattener, ZWO 224 & 294 controlled by a laptop with SharpCap PRO and SkyTools V4 visual and imaging remotely by AnyDesk to my office with 50" 4K. Currently doing as many of the Herschel 2478 objects as I can see from my limited in view Bortle 6 Skies.

I tend to do 1 to 5 objects a night and do my observing reports in the following manner:

First of the resources are my “old school” guide books. The Complete Guide to  the Herschel Objects by Mark Bratton, IBSN:  978  0  521  76892  4   Hardback and Observing Handbook and Catalogue of Deep-sky Objects by Christian Bl Luginbuhl and Brian A. Skiff, IBSN: 0  521  62556  4   Paperback.

These two books are my rainy day target selection tools when I want to look for very specific object details. Bratton is a full list by constellation of the Herschel Objects. He views every Herschel object with  varying sizes of scopes and I find this fairly expensive book useful in an attempt to hunt and understand these objects. Lubinbuhl and Skiff is unusual in that is was written for visual viewers. While not all Herchel Objects are found in it a significant number are, and it is these descriptions I use with my Electronically Assisted equipment to see what features I can see in my 4, 5 and 8 inch scopes in Bortle 6 class skies compared too larger scopes in dark skies (I do the same with the Bratton book but he does not compare as many sized scopes as do Lubinbuhl and Skiff).

There is one last step I do in this hunt (not counting plate solving for object confirmation at astronomy.net) is to go to (no pun intended) Cornell University’s Astronomy Research collective of research papers  (Link https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.03767) and see if there has been any type of research published about the particular Herschel Object I have “seen”. These can be somewhat technical in detail, but I feel I owe William and Caroline the effort to understand everything that is known about the objects they spent their life cataloguing for history and science.

Look forward to participating in the forums.

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by OregonEAA

[Space Bat]

Welcome Jeff.  🙂

[Mr Spock]

Hi Jeff, welcome to SGL 

[bingevader]

Hello.

[laudropb]

Hello and a warm welcome to the SGL.

[banjaxed]

Hi Jeff, welcome to SGL.

[Floater]

Welcome. Hope you continue to have fun. 🙂

[TobyW]

Welcome to the SGL.

 

Enjoy.

[sloz1664]

Hi Jeff, and a very warm welcome to the Lounge

Steve

[PeterCPC]

Hello Jeff and welcome.

Peter

[Dave Lloyd]

Hi Jeff, welcome. 

[ronl]

Hello Jeff, and welcome to the community, hope you enjoy your time with us,

see you around the forums.

Clear Sky's.

[Pete Presland]

Hi welcome to SGL from Peter in Bedfordshire 🙂

[Dr Strange]

Welcome aboard!