Near-Midsummer Session with the SV140 - 16th June 2024

[Captain Scarlet]

Two days late penning a report, but a proper session after such a long break demands one, I think. This was the night of Sunday 16th June.

Nearly midsummer, and it doesn’t get to what I consider “appreciably dark” until 2315, with further 90 minutes before it gets to mag 20, the start of Astronomical Twilight. So all evening I’d been prevaricating about whether to bother going out or not. Then it occurred to me: it’s clear and going to remain so. It’s warm(ish), and there’s no wind. If I don’t go out on a night like this, I’m admitting that I’ll never go out on late summer nights. That was enough to get me going.

I quickly put out my SV140 to cool, dragged out my Planet, AZ-EQ6 and started connecting everything. It was about 2330 by the time I was ready to go. I didn’t have an ambitious plan, I was just glad to get out and point at whatever came into my head.

First look after alignment on Polaris and Arcturus was Izar, with the Delos 6 for 156x which I used the whole session. Easily split but slightly scruffy owing to a not-yet-cooled scope. The cleanliness of view improved steadily through the night, as the seeing was quite good. 8/10 at a guess. I have had a 10/10 here, with this scope out too, so I knew what I was comparing.

Albireo came next, and I was surprised at how widely-separated it was at 156x. Its vivid blue and yellow colours were very apparent.

Delta Cygni close by popped into my head as, IIRC, a good challenge. But just as it landed nearby and stopped slewing, I noticed the SW handset flicker. The plug for the power lead from the Celestron battery is a little loose, so I generally try to “rest” the plug against a leg of the tripod to keep it from moving around. I must have moved it or pulled the cable slightly. The power cut off momentarily, and the handset was reset to zero. Because I was nearly at Delta Cygni, I flicked through all the buttons and finished the slew manually. It was an easy split.

After levelling everything back to Home Position and re-aligning, I selected Zeta Lyrae. A widely-separated mag 5 and mag 4 pair, I moved on to Epsilon Lyrae, which demonstrated the now-cooled scope and the good seeing. Four quite separate white stars, I never tire of it. I recall a few months ago not getting any sort of split with the same scope whereupon at that time I simply packed up.

A couple of the famous red/carbon stars came into my head, so I headed first for “La Superba”, Y Canum Venaticorum, a mag 5 star of visibly extreme redness. But Mu Cephei, which I looked at next, was much redder probably owing to its extra magnitude. Rather prominent naked eye. I’ll have to dedicate a whole night to carbon stars soon, I think.

Finally I went to NGC 1502, the open cluster at the end of Kemble’s Cascade. Looking away from my house and with the scope fully cooled, this little OC was a exquisite. The tiniest needle-point stars, the whole reminding me of a right-angle set-square with a row of various-brightness doubles along the bottom, and a quarter-circle-curve of faint stars joining the perpendicular sides. I made a little sketch on my notes but it doesn’t do justice. I had dropped to the Delos 10 for 94x and followed the stars of Kemble’s Cascade but of course that’s far too much magnification. You need binoculars and 10-15x to see that properly. However I did notice whilst panning around a tiny faint cluster that resembled a minuscule jellyfish. I can’t be certain even after trying to find it on charts, but I think it was Trumpler 1. But there seemed to my eye to be one more star than Skysafari suggested there should be. Yet the surrounding star field was right. Oh well.

That was it, apart from some time mid-session around 10 past midnight spending a few minutes taking a DSLR/tripod shot of my set-up. You can see my Northern horizon to the right of the scope - nowehere near dark. It was SQM 20.25 at that point. A lovely evening, I was very happy in the end to have got out after a long gap, and finally hit the bed just before 3am.

Thanks for Reading, Magnus

Edited June 20 by Captain Scarlet
typos

[VNA]

15 minutes ago, Captain Scarlet said:

Nearly midsummer, and it doesn’t get to what I consider “appreciably dark”

Hello, it is not even summer yet but at least the nights will get longer and the "Indian" summer is on the way, when temperatures should still be comfortable--beautiful picture of your site.The light on the North horizon (to the right of your scope) must be remnants of day light?

[Zermelo]

Thanks for sharing, Magnus. There's always something to see, even in these lighter evenings.

[ST_Steve]

Great report Magnus. Proves it is always worth setting up, even if the session gets truncated, and the joy of observing returns to sustain us when the weather gods deem clear skies are not to be.

[Captain Scarlet]

12 hours ago, VNA said:

… The light on the North horizon (to the right of your scope) must be remnants of day light?

Yes the sun is 12 degrees below the horizon there, giving that amount of brightness, mid-way into nautical twilight.

[Captain Scarlet]

Re what I thought might be Trumpler 1. I’ve had a more thorough check and yes Trumpler 1, aka Collinder 15 is what I was looking at. But SS seems to show only a line of three stars not four which is what condfused me at the time.

The third in line seems to be a double too, that might be splittable in a large enough scope. In the summer nautical twilight, the whole thing was definitely noticeable but faint and small at 94x. One I’m certainly going to revisit.

There’s a good discussion of it here https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/685122-trumpler-1/

and a wiki image:

Edited June 20 by Captain Scarlet

[bosun21]

21 hours ago, Captain Scarlet said:

Two days late penning a report, but a proper session after such a long break demands one, I think. This was the night of Sunday 16th June.

Nearly midsummer, and it doesn’t get to what I consider “appreciably dark” until 2315, with further 90 minutes before it gets to mag 20, the start of Astronomical Twilight. So all evening I’d been prevaricating about whether to bother going out or not. Then it occurred to me: it’s clear and going to remain so. It’s warm(ish), and there’s no wind. If I don’t go out on a night like this, I’m admitting that I’ll never go out on late summer nights. That was enough to get me going.

I quickly put out my SV140 to cool, dragged out my Planet, AZ-EQ6 and started connecting everything. It was about 2330 by the time I was ready to go. I didn’t have an ambitious plan, I was just glad to get out and point at whatever came into my head.

First look after alignment on Polaris and Arcturus was Izar, with the Delos 6 for 156x which I used the whole session. Easily split but slightly scruffy owing to a not-yet-cooled scope. The cleanliness of view improved steadily through the night, as the seeing was quite good. 8/10 at a guess. I have had a 10/10 here, with this scope out too, so I knew what I was comparing.

Albireo came next, and I was surprised at how widely-separated it was at 156x. Its vivid blue and yellow colours were very apparent.

Delta Cygni close by popped into my head as, IIRC, a good challenge. But just as it landed nearby and stopped slewing, I noticed the SW handset flicker. The plug for the power lead from the Celestron battery is a little loose, so I generally try to “rest” the plug against a leg of the tripod to keep it from moving around. I must have moved it or pulled the cable slightly. The power cut off momentarily, and the handset was reset to zero. Because I was nearly at Delta Cygni, I flicked through all the buttons and finished the slew manually. It was an easy split.

After levelling everything back to Home Position and re-aligning, I selected Zeta Lyrae. A widely-separated mag 5 and mag 4 pair, I moved on to Epsilon Lyrae, which demonstrated the now-cooled scope and the good seeing. Four quite separate white stars, I never tire of it. I recall a few months ago not getting any sort of split with the same scope whereupon at that time I simply packed up.

A couple of the famous red/carbon stars came into my head, so I headed first for “La Superba”, Y Canum Venaticorum, a mag 5 star of visibly extreme redness. But Mu Cephei, which I looked at next, was much redder probably owing to its extra magnitude. Rather prominent naked eye. I’ll have to dedicate a whole night to carbon stars soon, I think.

Finally I went to NGC 1502, the open cluster at the end of Kemble’s Cascade. Looking away from my house and with the scope fully cooled, this little OC was a exquisite. The tiniest needle-point stars, the whole reminding me of a right-angle set-square with a row of various-brightness doubles along the bottom, and a quarter-circle-curve of faint stars joining the perpendicular sides. I made a little sketch on my notes but it doesn’t do justice. I had dropped to the Delos 10 for 94x and followed the stars of Kemble’s Cascade but of course that’s far too much magnification. You need binoculars and 10-15x to see that properly. However I did notice whilst panning around a tiny faint cluster that resembled a minuscule jellyfish. I can’t be certain even after trying to find it on charts, but I think it was Trumpler 1. But there seemed to my eye to be one more star than Skysafari suggested there should be. Yet the surrounding star field was right. Oh well.

That was it, apart from some time mid-session around 10 past midnight spending a few minutes taking a DSLR/tripod shot of my set-up. You can see my Northern horizon to the right of the scope - nowehere near dark. It was SQM 20.25 at that point. A lovely evening, I was very happy in the end to have got out after a long gap, and finally hit the bed just before 3am.

Thanks for Reading, Magnus

I also have been thinking about carbon stars lately and hopefully tonight I will put it into practice. I have the 120ED/AZ-EQ6 outside cooling now 🤞.

[Mircea]

I ''discovered'' the open cluster Tr 1 in 1994 while observing in Cassiopeia with my first Dobsonian telescope of 160mm aperture. What I saw then was a line of four stars.

Recently, I observed again Tr 1 with somewhat bigger telescopes. It hurt me and is hard to accept  but in all those passed years the apertures of my telescopes  grew from 160mm to only 200mm and 250mm. ( Shame on me ! )

In these somewhat bigger telescopes, Trumpler 1 consist of a line of stars and a clump of dimmer stars to the South. Very dim stars are making the main asterism of four stars to look actually like the ''T'' capital font.

I read this asterism as ''iT'' because it was reminding me of the horror movie with this title, saw around the time when I made my new observations.

The aperture used was 200mm, the magnification 385x, obtained with a TS 3.2mm Planetary eyepiece.

 

Clear sky, Mircea

Edited June 20 by Mircea

[Nicola Fletcher]

Thanks Magnus for a great and inspiring report!