Category Archives: Equipment

Observing 26-27 September 2009

The third clear night in a row! So I lugged the scope out to cool down and went back inside to watch Casualty on BBC1 (Yeah, yeah, I know it’s sad, but I like Casualty – for those outside the UK, Casualty is a BBC-shown hospital-based drama series, not unlike ER) while waiting for the scope to cool and the first quarter Moon to set.
Once Casualty had finished I finished gathering my stuff together and decided to look at Jupiter, as I had not tried out the 12 inch on any Solar System objects before now. I know the blog title says Visual Deep Sky Observing, but once in a while I like looking at shallow sky stuff. Jupiter, despite being at quite a low altitude, gave me one of the best views I have had of it in the Northern Hemisphere. Bands and festoons were obvious and I could see the Red Spot. Even sticking the magnification up to 300x didn’t degrade it too much, although at that magnification the seeing, while pretty good wasn’t perfect, meant the image was a little unsteady.
Jupiter was also handy for aligning the Telrad and 8×50 finder.

Ok, onto the ‘serious stuff’. I planned to knock off some Herschels tonight, so that was to be the main part of the session.

Conditions:
Chilly: 8 degrees Celsius (later 6 degrees C) with 82% humidity – the dew became a nuisance later on. No wind, 1st quarter Moon set late PM. Seeing II, transparency II-III. Visual limiting magnitude with the unaided eye was around 6.2 to start with, increasing to 6.4, this is based on how many stars I can see in the Great Square of Pegasus. However skyglow, due to moisture in the atmosphere, was quite pronounced; on drier nights you hardly notice it.

Instrument: 12 inch Dobsonian

NGC 7619 and 7626, galaxies in Pegasus. I had to wait until Pegasus and Pisces were clear of the house roof before looking for these, which are part of the Pegasus 1 galaxy cluster. I saw NGC 7619 and NGC 7626 with no problem, although dew formation on my secondary wiped out the other, fainter, galaxies in the area. Dew is a major problem here in the UK and I am going to have to make a dew shield for both the scope itself and the Telrad (the latter being very prone to dewing up).
Both galaxies are oval, with brighter middles. NGC 7619 is the brighter of the two. Nothing else seen, due to the aforementioned dewing. 61x, 101x

NGC 7742, galaxy in Pegasus. Oval, fairly dim although easy to find and see. Slightly brighter middle. 101x.

NGC 205, galaxy in Andromeda. When I saw this on the Herschel 400 list I looked for it on the chart. I couldn’t find it on the chart, which was odd, but there was a reason for this; that reason is that it is better known as M110, one of the companions of M31. As Homer Simpson would say ‘D’oh!’. Large, oval, fairly bright. Brightens somewhat, gradually towards centre. In a nice starry field. Fainter than M31 although it would be a showpiece in its own right if it wasn’t overshadowed by its bigger, brighter and more famous friend. 61x

Looked for NGC 891. I have observed this galaxy before, with my 8 inch scope, but completely failed to find it this time. 891 is noted as being hard to find, but after 40 minutes of searching I gave up. I think I was in the right place, but the dew was making life awkward and wiping this already quite faint galaxy out.

NGC 752, open cluster in Andromeda. Large, loose cluster which fits neatly into 1 degree field of 40mm Plossl eyepiece, with room to spare. I started a sketch of this (although I hate sketching open clusters!) but didn’t finish it due to the secondary dewing up. 61x

NGC 1664, open cluster in Auriga. Small, triangular o.c. with a chain coming south-east from it, like a tail. In fact it does remind me of a cat, with two brighter stars as eyes. Not rich. Around 30 stars of uniform brightness. 101x

Because of the dewing, a bad back and cold feet, I packed up earlier than intended at 0230 BST. Not a bad session, and I managed to tick off some Herschels, but the dew was a major pain. I am going to have to fashion a dew shield for the OTA and one for the Telrad.

I have sent off to First Light Optics for a new laser collimator, hopefully that should arrive tomorrow, but with the Moon on the rise again and some more unsettled weather this week, I won’t be doing much observing for a while. As a footnote, I woke up this morning to a weird red glow over on the computer desk. Yep, my collimator had come alive; I must have left it switched on. This isn’t going to save it from the bin, though, its unreliability means that its fate is sealed!

Aggravation, clouds and some galaxies

The forecast was clear for the night, with a run of settled weather and high pressure predicted by the BBC weather website for the next few days, so I lugged out the 12 inch for – hopefully – a good long session.
Unfortunately the session got off to a bad start when my watch broke (the pins that hold the strap in place). Then once I’d set the scope up and had left it to cool for an hour I then discovered that the collimation, for some reason, was miles out. Trying to sort out the collimation made it worse and things weren’t helped when the batteries in the laser collimator died; naturally I didn’t have any spares, so with the most taboo swear words I could think of I hurled the collimator across the garden in the dark. Not a good idea, as I then had to get a torch and hunt for it among the bushes, fortunately I found it after a brief search. Also not a good idea as the near neighbours across the way may well have heard some exclamations of ‘for f**k’s sake!’, ‘s**t’ and even worse!

I got my visual collimator out and tried to use that, but visually collimating the scope requires a second person to look through the eyepiece or twiddle the collimation knobs or one person doing it but needing the reach of a gibbon to do both at the same time. I had neither so I adjusted it as best I could and left it at that. I tried it on the Double Cluster and, fortunately, the view was reasonable, although high powers left a lot to be desired, so I decided to get on with the session. I do need some stiffer collimation springs, so I will send off for some from Bob’s Knobs. These will improve the collimation no end, according to others who use the GSO/Revelation and Lightbridge scopes.

By this time I had wasted two hours sorting the bloody scope out, and therefore the observing session was shortened as a result. But I had all night…

Conditions: Chilly at 8 degrees C. Humidity was 82% so there was a fair bit of dew falling.
No wind. No Moon (waxing crescent had set earlier in evening). Limiting magnitude to the unaided eye was around 6.3 with seeing of II-III on the Antoniadi scale of seeing. Transparency, on a scale of I (excellent) to V (very poor) was III.

Instrument: 12 inch Dobsonian.

I began in Perseus, looking for the Perseus galaxy group, but failed to see it. This should not have been difficult, but the combination of hazy skies and less-than-perfect collimation probably conspired against me here.

Moving on to Pegasus, a rich galaxy hunting ground, brought some better luck. I quickly found NGC 7479. This galaxy looks, to direct vision, like it is an edge on; however averted vision shows it to be rounder and with the hint of spiral arms. The elongation seen with direct vision is the central bar of the galaxy. 101x

NGC 14, galaxy in Pegasus – small fairly bright. Oval. Elongated north-south. Slightly brighter middle. I thought I’d found NGC 7814, which is what I was looking for, but it looks nothing like it when compared to sketches and photos in books and on the net. It’s definitely NGC 14. 101x

NGC 23, galaxy in Pegasus – small, very bright. Elongated north-south. There is a star superimposed on the northern end of the galaxy. 101x

I had planned an all night session but, just to round off an incredibly annoying and frustrating session, unforecast clouds built up at around 0200 BST. So much for the Mess Office and their forecasts. So I packed up at 0230, after waiting for the clouds to clear. They did eventually, but left in their wake terrible transparency so I called it a night. Not a great session, a paltry three sketches made and not much done.

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As a little postscript, I went to a jewellers to get my watch fixed this afternoon, and while I was in there bought three button batteries for my laser collimator. Two small pins for my watch and three tiny batteries came to the princely sum of £13. Daylight robbery.

I have sent off to Bob’s Knobs for some collimation springs and secondary knobs. I don’t need new primary knobs as these are ok. Hopefully, these should enable the scope to remain aligned for longer.

Awesome night, 28/29 August 2009

I am back in business with a 12″ scope so last night was its first time out. It took a while to set up as the tube is heavy, although more awkward than actually difficult trying to get it out of the house without knocking the tube. I had planned really to mess around with it, looking at ‘lollipops’ and getting it ‘just so’ but it turned into a full-on serious session.
The session didn’t get off to a great start as firstly, my laser collimator started acting up, only intermittently working and a change of batteries made no difference (it’s just over a year old, so I have emailed Telescope House about it), although I did manage to get the scope collimated very well in the end, and then a grasshopper jumped on my head. I hate bugs and when I felt this seemingly huge creepy crawly on my head and it’s disgusting little legs walking on me I yelled, jumped six feet in the air and ran indoors in a totally girlie display of cowardice. Fortunately my aunt, who hadn’t yet gone to bed, rescued me from this thing – or rescued it from me, depending on your point of view. I am an absolute coward about large insects, spiders and centipedes, etc, so I donned a baseball cap and a hooded top with the hood pulled over my head, to prevent any more unpleasant surprises. Yes, I looked like a complete chav but who cares in the dark? Better to look like a chav than be a convenient perch for various disgusting bugs!

Onto the session:
Conditions: Clear, the odd drifting cloud at first but then completely clear from around 10pm onwards. There was a waxing gibbous Moon at first but that set around midnight, so that did not interfere and it was very low in the sky.
Very breezy, around 20mph, did not die down all night. Humidity 68%; temp 12 degrees C (feels colder; very autumnal, due to the wind).
Seeing steady, transparency good with good contrast in the Milky Way once the waxing gibbous Moon had set. NELM 5.8 at first to 6.5 later on.
Instrument: 12 inch f5 Dobsonian.

NGC 6934, a globular cluster in Delphinus.
This was very bright and condensed. Slightly oval and brightens towards the core. It looks granular with direct vision and with averted vision some stars are resolved. 61x, 138x

NGC 6905, planetary nebula in Delphinus.
This took a bit of searching for but I eventually found it. Its located between Delphinus and the tip of Sagitta. Small, round and very bright. Slight ‘fluffy’ appearance. OIII brings it out well. In my notes I put ‘Very slight hint of’ and didn’t finish the sentence for some reason. ‘Very slight hint of…what’ I wonder? I’ll have to go back to that one I think. 190x

NGC 6207, galaxy in Hercules.
This galaxy is often overlooked as it is right next to the big showy globular M13. It is a nice edge-on galaxy, elongated NE-SW. It’s easy to find, mainly because it is so close to M13 and is easy to see in the 12″. It has a slightly mottled appearance with a brighter middle. I put it out of the field of view to observe it, but when it’s in the same f.o.v. as M13 together they make a pretty sight. 61x, 190x

Hickson 92/Arp 319 – Stephan’s Quintet, galaxy group in Pegasus.
Finally found Stephan’s Quintet with my own scope (I have seen it through other scopes in the past, but not found it myself). I have looked for this in the past, probably over ambitiously, with my 8″ from here and – maybe unsurprisingly – saw nothing, although I have read reports of people getting this group with scopes as small as six inches aperture (but they were under Arizona skies and not humid, particle laden UK ones). It is a short star hop just south west of NGC 7331.
Through the 12″ the group was faint and I saw the five (if NGC 7318A and B are counted as two and not one) members with averted vision, two reasonably ‘bright’ and the others fainter. These were NGC 7317, NGC 7318 A/7318B, NGC 7319, NGC 7320. I put the magnification up to 190x to darken the sky and this paid off with a better view of the group.
The galaxies are interacting here, hence the Arp designation. 61x, 190x, 304x

NGC 7331, NGC 7335 and NGC 7337, galaxies in Pegasus.
NGC 7331 is a very bright, elongated galaxy. The middle is very bright and looks mottled. NGC 7335 and NGC 7337 which are in the same f.o.v. are much, much fainter. Both are oval glows showing no detail. NGC 7337 is smaller than 7335, but both are equally bright (or not!). 61x, 190x

NGC 404, galaxy in Andromeda.
This one is always a piece of cake to find because it is located next to Beta Andromedae. Once B And is out of the field (higher magnification is needed here) 404 is easy to see being quite bright. It’s round with a brighter middle. I used a magnification of 304x which gave a nice view darkening the background and increasing contrast. 61x, 190x, 304x

NGC 278, galaxy in Cassiopeia.
Round glow with brighter middle. easy to see. 61x, 190x, 304x

NGC 672 and IC 1727, galaxies in Triangulum.
After the obligatory look at M31 (fantastic with the dust lane very prominent at 61x), M32, M33 and M110 it was back to the serious stuff. NGC 672 is very faint, nondescript bar of light elongated east to west. It’s evenly bright. IC 1727 which is in the same field of view is an even fainter, more nondescript object, a mere elongated brightening of the back ground sky. 61x, 190x, 304x

By now it was 0320 and by the time I’d packed away my eyepieces, atlases and notes and lugged the scope back indoors I got to bed at 4 o’clock. It was a fantastic session of serious deep sky observing, the first in a long time. I have sketches, but I need to redo them onto another sheet and scan them in, so they’ll appear later.
It was nice to see Orion rising in the east with the promise of long winter nights observing…

I’m very pleased with the 12 inch so far, it performs well at high magnifications and the contrast is good. The stars are pinpoints and the scope is easy to push round the sky.

Double vision

On Tuesday (11th August) we FINALLY got a clear night. Well, clearish, as the haze was bad but it was certainly better than the near 100% cloud cover we’ve been getting recently.

Because of the murk and the rising waning gibbous Moon, I decided to stick with a few doubles in Bootes, plus some ‘lollipop’ bright objects elsewhere in the sky. It was also a short session as it was gone 11pm and I had to be up for work the next morning.

My observing notes read as follows:
A rare clear night this summer – July and August have been frankly bloody awful with only a couple of clear nights for observing, including tonight.

The transparency tonight is not good and I am only using a small refractor (my 12″ is out of action, and likely to remain so for a while or until I get a new one), so concentrating mostly on double stars. After having been out here a while, the sky conditions are not good. It’s milky and there’s very little contrast in the Milky Way with some high thin cloud and the waning gibbous Moon interfereing.

Alcor and Mizar in Ursa Major:
One of my favourite doubles, this well-known system is a lovely white pair, visible to the unaided eye but superb through the small refractor at 37.5x

Albireo (B Cygni):
My favourite double, the bright gold star and it’s slightly fainter, bright blue companion are stunning.

Delta Bootis:
Faintish gold star with faint blue companion. Wide double. Nice.

Unfortunately only a short session, due to having to go to work tomorrow. I’ll be glad when the long nights are here and BST is back to as it should be, GMT.

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Have decided to go for a 12″ Lightbridge or Revelation. I had decided on the LB, but my work contract finishes two weeks earlier than planned, so I might go for the cheaper Revelation instead. However, I was pretty annoyed to hear that the Revelation has now gone up from £549 to £660 in the past week. Bugger!

Scopes and stuff

Hopefully, in a few weeks’ time I’ll have a new 12 inch scope. My current temporary work contract, due to finish on Friday 7th August, has been extended until September 7th, so I hope it won’t be more than four weeks before I can afford to spend £500+.

I have narrowed the choice down to 12″ Skywatcher Flex Tube, 12″ Meade Lightbridge and 12″ Revelation (GSO, same as the Lightbridge). Ideally I would have gone for something like the Orion Optics UK 12 inch but at just under £900 this is out of my price range and, anyway, one of the cheaper ones will do nicely until such time as I can afford a bigger-aperture scope. These days, though, even the cheap scopes are good and I wish they’d been around when I wanted a larger scope ten years ago, then I wouldn’t have messed around buying mirrors and then waiting (interminably it seemed!) for the damned scope to get built and then getting problems with the f**king thing! I also considered an Orion (USA) Intelliscope 12″ but they are a hideous price, over £1000.

The Island Planetarium at Fort Victoria sells scopes (Meade, Orion USA, et al) so I have gone there in my search. They deal with B, C & F so that narrows the field down but there are still some good choices on offer. Getting it from the Planetarium resolves the issue of someone having to be at home to accept delivery of the thing or the even worse hassle of a visit to the mainland to collect it.

I have considered the Revelation 12 inch Dob, if they still do them (Telescope House do, via the net but whether the wholesalers BC&F do, I don’t know), as it’s a positively bargainous £550 – and a decent scope too, from the reports I have read – although I have heard that the tube is a bit of a big bugger, weighing in at around 23 kilos, but as the rucksack I lugged round Australia and SE Asia a few months ago was around the same weight, I do not foresee a problem. If I do my back in again, though, there might be an issue but until then…

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I am curious as to exactly how many clear nights we really do get here in the climatically-challenged, sea-bound British Isles. Opinion varies slightly on the quantity of clear nights (depending on your geographical location as there’s a lot of variety even in this tiny country) although we all agree on one thing – there’s NOT NEARLY ENOUGH of them! So I am doing a spreadsheet over the next few years that should give me a clearer (pun not intended!) picture of our local sky conditions here on the Isle of Wight. It’s not scientific but should be interesting.

Scope bother – the tale continues

A few posts ago I mentioned that the mirror cell of my home-made Dob was not very good, with the collimation slipping several times in a session. Also the mirror itself – unrelated to the mirror cell problem – has started to oxidise (looking through from the back it is like looking at a starry sky), but, I was told at our society’s weekly get together last night, that’s normal (funny, my old 8.5 inch never had this problem) and it also looks filthy. I washed it a few months ago, but got some instructions on how to try and – carefully! – get more of the crap off it.
Therein lies a lesson: never, ever, let a non-astronomy relative talk/nag you into storing a scope in the bloody garden shed!!! It was the mould that has done some of the damage.

Below is the mirror in its currently grubby state. I have labelled a cat hair, just in case it looks like a scratch – no, the cat has been nowhere near my mirror, but her hairs have a nasty habit of getting everywhere. I will get the mirror recoated sometime, but in the meantime, I have put it in a box in a cupboard until I decide what to do with it. The rest of the scope can go back in the shed!



Because the home made 12″ scope is a bit cumbersome and pretty big, plus takes up too much storage space, I have decided to buy an off-the-shelf 12″ Dob, such as a Revelation (made by GSO and sold by Telescope House here in the UK) or Lightbridge (sold by Meade but actually made by GSO). I have heard mixed reports about these, but at £550 for the Revelation, you can’t go too far wrong. Taking into account the mirror cell problem and mirror problem with my current scope, deciding to get something else is not a hard decision and besides a cheap scope will do until I can save up for a 16″ Orion Optics UK Dob.
I also have an 8″ Celestron Newtonian on a Vixen GP mount which I can use in the meantime. However, this scope’s mirror is also in a poor state! I hasten to add that it was like it when I acquired the scope (I was given it a few years ago by someone who no longer wanted the thing).

I hope that it won’t be too long before I can get back into observing with a decent-sized scope. I am currently temping (the economic climate is shot to shit and prospects are gloomy at present) and I am hoping that my current short-term contract lasts a few more weeks so I can get my hands on a new Dob.
In the meantime, I will carry on observing with my binoculars and other small instruments. I have a deep sky binocular project on the go at the moment, so it’s not as if I am wasting time.

Scope bother

I had been keeping my 12 inch in the shed. The scope was well covered over and the shed is dry as far as I could make out – I certainly wouldn’t keep an expensive mirror in a damp environment – but when I got it out yesterday the mirror was in a disgusting state, covered in dust and something that looked suspiciously like mould. I was not pleased but, following instructions I found on Cloudy Nights forum I decided to wash it. Anyway, I got it cleaned up okay, although there are still marks on the mirror but these are such that they won’t degrade the image. I have moved the scope back indoors, although my aunt doesn’t really want it in the house. I could take the mirror in and out of the scope but it is a time consuming operation and a huge pain in the arse to do.

Since getting the scope, collimation with it has always been a bother. As far as I’m concerned, collimation holds no fears, it’s a piece of cake, but I don’t want to be doing it five times in one observing session. The mirror moves around too much in the cell and the things that hold it in place are set too far apart. Also, I can never get it collimated perfectly, there’s always a cometary look to stars at high powers, which is no good. I am going to ask my friend who built it to makes some adjustments to it. I won’t need the scope for the next few months as I am going to be away in SE Asia and Australia (hoping for some southern sky observing – a small sky atlas, a printout of the AL’s Southern Sky Binocular Observing list and my binoculars are coming along).

Observing 30th June-1st July 2008

It was clear last night and I didn’t have to be at work today so I set up the 12 inch for an hour or two of observing under less-than-ideal conditions – it was clear enough, but as the solstice was only ten days ago, it wasn’t really dark enough for serious deep sky observing but as I am fed up with no observing and at least *something* was visible I went out anyway. As it was, it didn’t get ‘dark’ enough for observing until after midnight, when brighter portions of the Milky Way became visible.
I did, however, begin the Astronomical League Globular Cluster Observing Program as summer is a prime time for hunting these and there are rich pickings to be had in Ophiuchus and what parts of Scorpius and Sagittarius there are accessible to those of us at these northern latitudes. I’d bought the AL’s Globular Cluster book at TSP in 2006 with the intention of doing this program.

Seeing was excellent, very steady (detail was visible on Jupiter when it rose higher) and transparency was also very good, with little haze. Shame about the sky not being quite dark, though!

Because of the fairly light sky, finding stuff was a little difficult and actually seeing it was worse, but I found things that I would never have seen with the old 8 inch.
NGC 6426 was the first GC on my list. It’s located just north of an attractive white double, 61 Ophiuchi. It was round, very faint and not resolved. I couldn’t see it at all at 44x but it was seen at 102x. 2330 UT (0030 BST).
Because of the conditions, I messed around looking at brighter stuff and then packed up at 0100 UT (0200 BST). There was, at 0010 UT (0110 BST), a bright meteor which left a green trail through Cepheus.

I got to use my new 35mm TeleVue Panoptic for the first time on my 12 inch (although it had its actual ‘first light’ on Larry Mitchell’s 36 inch Obsession at TSP last month) and my slight concerns about it being too heavy and tipping the scope were unfounded. The balance on the 12 inch, and the friction on the bearings, are so good that it stayed put when the big eyepiece was put into the focusser. The view was good right across the field to the edges, with practically no coma.

New toys

At TSP, I bought a 2″ fit 35mm TeleVue Panoptic eyepiece (I don’t really need one, but I have always wanted one which is a good enough reason). It is pretty heavy, though, and I am hoping I will not have to make too many (any!) adjustments to the balance of the scope.

35mm Panoptic

I also bought – second hand – a 4 inch Meade Schmidt Cassegrain for the bargain price of $110. I have to admit that I need an SCT like a hole in the head, but I couldn’t resist it and it will be a good travel scope (unlike the little refractor travel scope I already have and which doesn’t focus very well without racking it in until it will go no further and also has a godawful mount on it). This is a cute little scope. I also had to get a 2″ diagonal to fit it, which cost me an additional $50 but this was also a bargain.

The Meade with the 2″ diagonal and 35mm Panoptic in it

‘Observation Manager’

While surfing various astronomy sites I came across ‘Observation Manager’, a German-made observing notes software. I’ve downloaded it as it looks interesting.
It is a nice, easy-to-use clean interface and you can enter information easily. The lack of a ‘Help’ menu is irritating, but the program is so easy to use that it doesn’t really matter -anyway it was free so I can’t really complain about anything I suppose!
To enter an observation, select ‘Create Observation’ and then fill in the necessary details of location, scope, etc. To add notes, click on ‘Deepsky Finding Details’.
Another slight irritation is that the utterly pointless and waste-of-time ‘Caldwell Catalogue’ is in there and is the default option, rather than the RNGC (the RNGC is in there of course, but the list follows alphabetical order so Caldwell pops up first).
If you neglect to enter an observer or any other piece of data then the program will not let you proceed further, so you have to – annoyingly – scrap the observation, enter the required data in ‘Create New…’ and start again.

It’s not a bad little bit of freeware though, but I’ll stick with – mostly – my Deepsky program I bought at TSP a couple of weeks (a couple of weeks??!!) ago.