Fuzzy hunting

[Stardaze]

I haven't really had the dob out for a number of weeks now, for a number of reasons, but mostly I have been enjoying a new pair of binoculars. Each night as I pack away I've been watching Virgo slowly climbing above the house. The dob is a few weeks away from it's first birthday and so this time last year I was very new to observing galaxies and so really didn't manage to look at Virgo's treats at all, concentrating my efforts around Leo I recall.

Last night I started out by zipping around a number of open clusters to help take in a lovely crisp, clear night and probably because many of them have been binocular targets these last few weeks. Perseus was falling in the north, and so the double cluster was a quick first stop, quickly followed by all 3 of Auriga's clusters. I couldn't see M38 in the finder but dropped on it at the first time of asking. The pinwheel cluster caught my gaze for a little longer and looked great at x96. Working anti-clockwise made sense and so M35 was next port of call. These 4 Messier objects seemed to evade my eye last year and are such a delightful sequence. I remember (really need to take notes!) looking up at the beehive cluster a lot last year, which has been a good test recently here trying to gauge how the seeing will be. I could just make it out and it looked great in the binos, but lazily I still had the 13 EP (x96) and stopped by, well over-gunned. Even with 100 deg viewing it was too tight, but I glanced around all the same. I dropped down to M67 quickly but was itching to see how a Leo fuzzy looked. But then I noted Hydra weaving over next doors roof and couldn't help myself grab the 8mm (156x) and set off ghost hunting. Jupiters Ghost was found very low down and quite tight to the roof but nevertheless, looked relatively crisp. Not as good a view as I have seen, but one of my first planetary nebs from last year.

As the 8mm was still in the focuser I couldn't resist dropping onto Algeiba. Well split into the components but the colour separation didn't seem to pop to me, they both seemed quite pixelated too. Time to see how easy Leo would give up her treats this year, so once the 20mm (62x) was back in position I placed the Telrad's circles right between Chertan and lota Leo. Again, I remembered faffing around last year, not really knowing too much but it seemed quite simple using the Telrad and straight away I noted the two spiral galaxies looking quite bright and prominent but couldn't make out the Hamburger galaxy of the triplet. M95 and M96 were relatively easy to find but just as I was trying to get my eye into M105 I was cut short by a technical glitch 'the girls' had with the TV. It was time for a brew anyway before grabbing my copy of Turn Left...

Maybe it's just me...well, of course it is, but for whatever reason I just don't find some of the maps that intuitive in the famous book. The section on the Virgo galaxy cluster is very good and so I set out a little table in front of the dob with torch and book close to hand feeling all, dare I say it, prepared. I was hoping the girls would head to bed soon as I could see a little too much light in the corner of my eye, but had to wait half hour. The batteries on my torch failed. So I scrambled in to turn all the lights off and refresh the batteries (note to self: the 6 P's!!) Finally ready, the finder was quickly placed on Vindemiatrix but realised from there that my star hopping needs work still. I just couldn't find 41 & 34 Vir, or be certain of the two.I find that frustrating, seemingly two simple stars... I ended up shelving the book and resorted to Sky Safari. I'm ashamed to say that I found a very bright, large fuzzy pretty quickly when I went solo; I think it may have been M59 looking at rough positioning now, but that one does seem slightly fainter than others. It could have been more that it seemed on it's own that it stood out? From there I found 3 in a row, which I'd love to think was Markarians famous chain, but, I can't substantiate that for certain. I was actually surprised that many more didn't just pop out at me, was kinda thinking that there would be a glut of fuzzy blobs all over the EP. I got a little frustrated at my ineptness, lame ability; sometimes I think I have learnt quite a bit and get around relatively well, then it's times like tonight that make me realise there's still plenty to improve.

My toes had started to disappear now and there was a little frost forming on the grass, so I decided to head towards the zenith and drop onto an old fascination of mine from last year, M51. Again, I didn't need the 9x50 for fine tuning, I had this one firmly implanted in my head and dropped straight on her. The seeing wasn't as crisp as I have witnessed before but I could make out a little structure. She's definitely my first fuzzy love and so aptly I spent 10 minutes observing before packing up around 1am relatively satisfied and yet a little frustrated all the same.

Edit: and this is maybe why I should takes notes... I also took in M53 for the first time too. Was a lot smaller than I’d imagined and needed this 8mm to resolve some detail, but another first all the same.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Stardaze

[Froeng]

Nice report! Understand your frustration - but this where you are really learning “the craft”...

a good haul anyway!

Edited April 4, 2021 by Froeng

[Pixies]

Nice report. The 'chain'  is pretty faint apart from the 2 Messiers. I've never been able to see it apart from those 2. Your scope is a little bigger than mine, but I think you'll need pretty dark skies.

[Stardaze]

27 minutes ago, Froeng said:

Nice report! Understand your frustration - but this where you are really learning “the craft”...

a good haul anyway!

I know, but it’s frustrating all the same. It is after all part of the chase though so that’s the catch. 

16 minutes ago, Pixies said:

Nice report. The 'chain'  is pretty faint apart from the 2 Messiers. I've never been able to see it apart from those 2. Your scope is a little bigger than mine, but I think you'll need pretty dark skies.

Looking south last night didn’t seem as good as I have had, but it’s still my basic star hoping in new areas that doesn’t always slot into place quickly for me. You certainly seem much more adept at getting around; I’ll get there..

[Stardaze]

I think sometimes scale throws me a little off still, thinking about it. The way I interpreted Turn Lefts map is a little too tight. I’ll need to familiarise myself with the area using the binos and get a better understanding of the background stars. It is the one very intriguing area of the sky that I haven’t studied out in the field yet, so I shall  just have to put the ground work in. 

[Kon]

I enjoyed your report and you managed a lot of nice targets. M35 must have looked amazing on a 100 degree EP. I can also feel your frustration, i have been there many times, but it is part of the game, isn't it?

[Pixies]

10 hours ago, Stardaze said:

Looking south last night didn’t seem as good as I have had, but it’s still my basic star hoping in new areas that doesn’t always slot into place quickly for me. You certainly seem much more adept at getting around; I’ll get there..

I've worked out a way of finding targets that works pretty well for me. I'm using SkySafari at the eyepiece, though. I use the Telrad to get to the nearest naked-eye star (which is limited in my back garden skies) and then use my 60mm RACI finder with the SkySafari app. The finder's FOV is a bit bigger than the outer Telrad circle on the app display, which makes it pretty easy to compare the 2 views. Sometimes I wonder if I should have one eye on the finder and the other on the app!

My finder shows just the right magnitude of stars when compared to the app, so I have little trouble matching the two views. It's slightly bigger aperture means I don't have to move to the eyepiece until the last minute, since I can often see the target in the finder (unless it's very faint). Once I'm at the eyepiece, I find star-hopping a little trickier and it's easy to get lost. I must admit to my high-tech way of changing the app display to match the reflector view - I turn the phone upside-down in my hand! 😳

It's easy to get lost with the Virgo galaxies, though - as they are in quite a featureless area of the sky

I gave up with the charts in Turn Left at Orion as I find the app much easier. Have you seen the book "Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders" by Thompson and Thompson? It's pretty good and a bit of a 'next-step up' from TLAO.

But (and it's a big BUT) this is all very well in my light-polluted back garden, but I know one thing: when I get to a proper dark sky, I'm going to be lost! For one, I doubt I will be able to use the app without restricting my dark adaption. I've got it at the lowest brightness and in 'night mode' (red), but little things aren't always red and I doubt the lowest brightness is low enough. I've been hacking an old Kindle Fire to get it working with SkySafari, and might even get some red acetate to cover the screen. But if I need to start using paper charts properly, it'll be a steep learning curve.

Also, the big RACI finder might be a little too large. Some people have warned that it might just show too much in a dark site, and be hard to locate star-hopping pointers. In which case I'll have to either make an aperture mask to stop it down a bit, or just swap in the smaller 6x30 from the ST80.

[Stardaze]

Thanks @Pixiesthat's an interesting take. I've largely shunned away from using SkySafari at the EP because of the phones initial start up brightness. Even in night mode I find it a bit too dark and so keep the brightness up a little, maybe I should persevere. I normally use my pocket atlas, but didn't the other night at all. Great tip about tweaking the apps magnitude to match, it's only recently that I noticed you can do that, I've been using the default settings for a year! And I'm glad to hear that somebody else also turns things upside down at times too 😆

I have that book tagged for next month along with a couple more. I'll certainly have a little dabble at setting things up similarly and see how I find it, makes good sense. 

[Stardaze]

11 hours ago, Kon said:

I enjoyed your report and you managed a lot of nice targets. M35 must have looked amazing on a 100 degree EP. I can also feel your frustration, i have been there many times, but it is part of the game, isn't it?

M53 was still small in the 8mm and a little underwhelming I thought at the time, but I've still got some of last summers globulars in my mind to draw comparison. It was probably a third smaller than M13. It took me a while to let it resolve, but I could clearly make out a couple of prominent orange stars. It's an easy one to find though and so I'll stop by sometime soon again no doubt. 

[Stu]

10 hours ago, Pixies said:

My finder shows just the right magnitude of stars when compared to the app, so I have little trouble matching the two views. It's slightly bigger aperture means I don't have to move to the eyepiece until the last minute, since I can often see the target in the finder (unless it's very faint). Once I'm at the eyepiece, I find star-hopping a little trickier and it's easy to get lost. I must admit to my high-tech way of changing the app display to match the reflector view - I turn the phone upside-down in my hand! 😳

SkySafari Plus and Pro can be customised to show exactly what you see in the finder or scope view so it is worth considering an upgrade if you haven’t done this. They run half price offers quite frequently so it is worth looking out for these.

Tapping the top left allows quick adjustment of star and DSO brightness, while top right allows for changing of orientation and display of field of view circles.

I find star hopping using this method very easy, it literally replicates exactly what you see in the eyepiece. I’ve used SkySafari even under fairly dark skies, for instance with a 16” dob under mag 21 skies I used it (with Nexus Push to) to trawl my way around the Virgo cluster including Markarian’s chain. You can set custom colours on an iPhone via the accessibility options so everything is dim and red which really helps. I forget how, but my phone is set up so if I triple click the right side button it toggles between colour and red screen.

[Pixies]

15 minutes ago, Stu said:

SkySafari Plus and Pro can be customised to show exactly what you see in the finder or scope view so it is worth considering an upgrade if you haven’t done this. They run half price offers quite frequently so it is worth looking out for these.

Tapping the top left allows quick adjustment of star and DSO brightness, while top right allows for changing of orientation and display of field of view circles.

I find star hopping using this method very easy, it literally replicates exactly what you see in the eyepiece. I’ve used SkySafari even under fairly dark skies, for instance with a 16” dob under mag 21 skies I used it (with Nexus Push to) to trawl my way around the Virgo cluster including Markarian’s chain. You can set custom colours on an iPhone via the accessibility options so everything is dim and red which really helps. I forget how, but my phone is set up so if I triple click the right side button it toggles between colour and red screen.

Blimey! I never knew that! I have the plus version for the observing lists functionality.

I've got the app running on Android. It lacks the useful screen colour customization function of an iPhone, though.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Pixies

[Whistlin Bob]

I'll second what @Stu said- I use Sky Safari too, using the custom equipment menu to get the exact fov for my finder and most used eyepieces. I'm pretty lost now without it. I'm using the Android version- and I use it with a blue light filter downloaded from the Play store to preserve night vision. I used it at a Bortle 2 site a couple of years ago and it was fine.

[John]

I feel like a bit of a dinosaur just sticking with the Pocket Sky Atlas and my finders

Seems to work OK though, which is the main thing

Once I've found something I can usually get back to it from memory for a few weeks afterwards.

Next season, I need to re-find the more obscure stuff though

 

 

 

 

[Stardaze]

31 minutes ago, Stu said:

SkySafari Plus and Pro can be customised to show exactly what you see in the finder or scope view so it is worth considering an upgrade if you haven’t done this. They run half price offers quite frequently so it is worth looking out for these.

Tapping the top left allows quick adjustment of star and DSO brightness, while top right allows for changing of orientation and display of field of view circles.

I find star hopping using this method very easy, it literally replicates exactly what you see in the eyepiece. I’ve used SkySafari even under fairly dark skies, for instance with a 16” dob under mag 21 skies I used it (with Nexus Push to) to trawl my way around the Virgo cluster including Markarian’s chain. You can set custom colours on an iPhone via the accessibility options so everything is dim and red which really helps. I forget how, but my phone is set up so if I triple click the right side button it toggles between colour and red screen.

Thanks Stu, some very useful tips there. I've been trying not to use SkySafari in the field thinking it will destroy my dark adaptation so I'll give it more of a go and I'll set my iPhone up as you suggest.

I only have the basic version and hadn't activated the FOV or co-ordinates until just now. I don't think my version has the custom version but I can zoom in easy enough to around 5.5 degrees and set the mag to 8.8 and reckon that won't be far off my SW 9x50. 

[Stardaze]

2 minutes ago, John said:

I feel like a bit of a dinosaur just sticking with the Pocket Sky Atlas and my finders

Seems to work OK though, which is the main thing

Once I've found something I can usually get back to it from memory for a few weeks afterwards.

Next season, I need to re-find the more obscure stuff though

 

 

 

 

Was going to say that I've been using my pocket atlas all year John. I do love it's simplicity for basic hopping but have often found I need a more expanded view, up close at times. Certainly was that way with the recent Cass Nova, the atlas is too basic there. 

[Stardaze]

Just noticed another quirk, the mag changes depending upon your FOV. So when zoomed into 5.5 degrees it's actually at 9.9 mag? Probably have to upgrade. What does pro offer over plus?

Edited April 5, 2021 by Stardaze

[John]

41 minutes ago, Stardaze said:

Was going to say that I've been using my pocket atlas all year John. I do love it's simplicity for basic hopping but have often found I need a more expanded view, up close at times. Certainly was that way with the recent Cass Nova, the atlas is too basic there. 

I just print off a chart from the web for that sort of target.

My preference is always to keep things as simple as possible out at the scope.

 

[Pixies]

31 minutes ago, Stardaze said:

Just noticed another quirk, the mag changes depending upon your FOV. So when zoomed into 5.5 degrees it's actually at 9.9 mag? Probably have to upgrade. What does pro offer over plus?

The Pro offers a lot of fainter objects over the Plus version. I've never felt the requirement to upgrade from Plus yet, though.

But above the custom eyepiece/scope displays, the best feature worth the upgrade from basic to plus/pro is the observing lists feature. You can download ones (some from here) or create you own. Have them displayed on screen or just go through them manually. Add your own observing notes.

For example, I created the list of Leo doubles one my tablet. It synced over to my phone (using their 'Live Sky service) and used that to organise my evening. I went through the list one by one, making notes of each observation. If I observed something that wasn't on the list, like a galaxy that was nearby, I can still make an observation, as the night's session is stored separately from the observing list.

Later on, if I'm looking at an object, I can list all the times I've ever noted an observation of this object, and look back on the notes I made. All of this is synced across devices and on their web portal, too.

Plus and Pro have scope control too, if that's your thing.

 

[Stardaze]

1 minute ago, John said:

I just print off a chart from the web for that sort of target.

My preference is always to keep things as simple as possible out at the scope.

 

I was doing that a lot last year. Have just set my phone up as Stu mentions, works a treat. Here's a quick link to how for an iPhone: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204390

Click on the red pen and turn up the opacity fully. 

[Pixies]

1 hour ago, Whistlin Bob said:

I'll second what @Stu said- I use Sky Safari too, using the custom equipment menu to get the exact fov for my finder and most used eyepieces. I'm pretty lost now without it. I'm using the Android version- and I use it with a blue light filter downloaded from the Play store to preserve night vision. I used it at a Bortle 2 site a couple of years ago and it was fine.

Hi. What's the name of the filter app you are using? I think I'll try it out.

[Stardaze]

6 minutes ago, Pixies said:

The Pro offers a lot of fainter objects over the Plus version. I've never felt the requirement to upgrade from Plus yet, though.

But above the custom eyepiece/scope displays, the best feature worth the upgrade from basic to plus/pro is the observing lists feature. You can download ones (some from here) or create you own. Have them displayed on screen or just go through them manually. Add your own observing notes.

For example, I created the list of Leo doubles one my tablet. It synced over to my phone (using their 'Live Sky service) and used that to organise my evening. I went through the list one by one, making notes of each observation. If I observed something that wasn't on the list, like a galaxy that was nearby, I can still make an observation, as the night's session is stored separately from the observing list.

Later on, if I'm looking at an object, I can list all the times I've ever noted an observation of this object, and look back on the notes I made. All of this is synced across devices and on their web portal, too.

Plus and Pro have scope control too, if that's your thing.

 

That's worth the upgrade for sure. I haven't been very organised of late and need to go back to making, or at least, sticking to a planned list. Being able to look at your history would be a benefit too. I'm envious of your drawing as I can really see how that would help too, but I am pretty useless with a pencil. I might even pinch the other half's iPad as I don't really fancy taking the MacBook out, I'm too clumsy. 

I'm sure I have seen SkySafari Plus for around £7.99, must be full price at the moment, I'll keep an eye out. 

[John]

21 minutes ago, Stardaze said:

I was doing that a lot last year. Have just set my phone up as Stu mentions, works a treat. Here's a quick link to how for an iPhone: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204390

Click on the red pen and turn up the opacity fully. 

Thanks. I hardly ever use a mobile phone and the one I have is pretty ancient so won't run much.

Plus, I find any light at the scope at all gets in the way of the finding the really faint targets. I dark adapted for about 90 minutes when I was trying for the Horsehead Nebula. I avoided any light whatsoever to really get "into the zone".

 

 

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by John

[Stardaze]

Just now, John said:

Thanks. I hardly ever use a mobile phone and the one I have is pretty ancient so won't run much.

Plus, I find any light at the scope at all gets in the way of the finding the really faint targets.

 

 

That was my logic too John. If ain't broke for you and all that.. You have years of experience working in your favour, I need all the help I can get 😀 I think having the phone in red and turned down should negate my issues with it, so looking forward to giving it a go. 

[Pixies]

6 minutes ago, John said:

Plus, I find any light at the scope at all gets in the way of the finding the really faint targets.

This is what I'm worried about when I get to start observing under properly dark skies. I'll need to up my game where it to paper charts.

[Stardaze]

41 minutes ago, Pixies said:

This is what I'm worried about when I get to start observing under properly dark skies. I'll need to up my game where it to paper charts.

Are you hatching any plans to head out to a dark site? I’m just over 20 mag here so not too bad but I do have to be careful with stray light from the neighbours usually. 

If things do improve this year I would like an autumn trip over to the Welsh countryside. We stayed somewhere in the lakes end of Aug last year and it was superb, the better end of a 3. Definitely somewhere I will go back to with a travel scope sometime.