Now that the weather has cooled down, I've tried to get out some more, but I'm either too tired from a day's work, or wrapped up in something else. I have gotten out to look at a couple things, mostly Jupiter, which was very cool. Haven't seen the GRS yet, but I'm thinking that I need to get the scope properly collimated. The laser just doesn't get it, even barlowed, so I think I'll be getting a cheshire soon. Hopefully that will improve my views.
I've also taken a look at M31 which was quite fun, and wrapped up a few more double stars. The doubles are proving to be one of my favorite things to view each time out. I'm probably going to pick up a book that I read a review of on Cloudy Nights dedicated to doubles.
Finally, I've been playing the waiting game for over a month and hopefully it will be over shortly. I ordered a Hyperion 8-24mm clickstop zoom eyepiece from Telescopes.com at the end of September and they said it should be shipping in the next few days. I can't wait! The utility of the zoom will be wonderful, but I'm really excited about the wide FOV. My favorite EP that I own right now is my 2" 32mm Zhummel that came with my dob, and I know that it's nothing to write home about. To have a nice quality EP to add to my collection will be great. I'll get a first light up ASAP.
Haven't had a post in quite some time, so thought I'd get last night's observing up here before I forgot.
I started on the AstroLeague Urban Club list last night. Specifically the double stars list. I thought that this would be a good way to learn my way around the skies, and see some cool stuff, too. Seeing was pretty poor last night as it was fairly windy. Can't say I minded it too much though as it was still 100 outside at 9pm. Ugh. The skies were completely clear, although the moonshine from the big bright full moon drowned out quite a bit of stars.
I started with Gamma Leo, since it was the lowest in the sky and therefore, the hardest to split given the atmospheric conditions. I started at 60x on my 8" dob and could see an elongation of the star, alluding to the double. Stepping up to 133x just split the pair. There was no color apparent, but I could make out that the B star was just to the SE of the A star.
Next was Zeta Ursa Major or Mizar and Alcor. Now, I knew about the naked eye double of Mizar/Alcor, but didn't realize that Mizar itself was a double. I had only looked with my binoculars before, but when I centered the scope at 133x, the pair was easily split. Both appeared white with maybe a little blue tint, but seeing was crummy, so this could be false.
Next was the Double-Double of Epsilon Lyra. I had split this one before, but wanted to observe it again and log it for the Urban list. First split was easy, visible in just the finderscope. Splitting the double-double was difficult though with the wind the way it was. I tried barlowing my 9mm putting me at 266x, but it was extremely fuzzy. I then accidentally grabbed my 3.5mm thinking it was my 10mm, and put it in without the barlow giving 342x and could see the split! There was a pair with a EW orientation, and the other had a NS orientation. Very nice.
I then moved to Alberio, or Beta Cygnus. This was a very easy split, but one of the more beautiful doubles I've seen yet. The A star had a very nice yellow color and the B was smaller and a pretty blue. I actually returned to this one just before heading in for bed because I liked it so much.
I then tried to find Gamma Delphinus, but couldn't see the constellation from all the moonlight. I did end up finding a double in the area I thought it should be. And it did match the sketch in my copy of Turn Left at Orion, but without being sure of where I was, I didn't log it for my list.
Nice night of observing. Looking forward to getting further down the urban list.
Went out last night even though I was feeling crummy because the Sky and Telescope site said that Titan was to pass into Saturn's shadow around 9:50pm. I watched for a while and didn't see anything, so my guess is that I just don't know which moon was Titan. :-P The seeing was pretty bad where Saturn was sitting, and a lot of light from a nearby street light was bleeding in as well. Oh well.
After that, I turned to Lyra and found the Ring Nebula (M57), which I never had found before. Pretty cool. I upped the magnification all the way 240x and could still see quite a bit. Really neat shape to it. After that I took a quick look at M13 again before heading to bed.
Short post, since it's been cloudy every single night for the last 5 days. :( But it should clear up this weekend just in time for me to go camping outside of Payson in a nice gray zone. We're gonna have to take two cars to get up there with the scope, but Elissa is just fine with that because she knows how much I would love to use it up there. What a wife! I've never said I'm not a truly lucky SOB. :)
I'm trying to get a good list of objects together to look at. I figure I'll be printing star charts all night Friday. :) I'll update when we get back!
So I finally received my Z8 Deluxe this past weekend while we were in California. Got home and immediately assembled it. Much thanks to the folks over on the CloudyNights.com forums who have assembled these before me for posting about the instructions being incorrect. After staring at all the parts for a while, I finally got it all together. Only issue is that I ended up with the eyepiece holder on the wrong side. I'll fix that this weekend.
I've had it out a few times, but did a lot of looking at the same stuff I had previously. The one thing I'll mention is how much better Saturn looked in the 8". It was much easier to make out the moons. Two things that I checked out that were new for me were M81/82 and M3. I had a heck of a time finding M81/82, and in fact really just stumbled onto them by accident. I need a lot of work on my starhopping! The two galaxies were pretty faint, but with averted vision, I was able to see them a little more clearly. No structure was evident, but I was pretty impressed with what I could make out under my orange/yellow zone skies with a bright moon out.
M3 was brilliant! It took a few minutes to find. I picked up a copy of Turn Left at Orion, hoping it would aid in my finding objects, and in a way it did. The diretions it gave weren't working for me. It had me looking for beta Caroli just west of the midpoint between Arcturus and Cor Caroli, and then going slighly east from there to M3. After not findng it for a while, it dawned on me while looking at the chart in the book, that M3 is pretty much on that line between Arcturus and Cor Caroli. I lined up my telrad on that point and then checked in the scope and, bingo! M3 right in the field of view. After enjoying splitting doubles, I now find that I really enjoy globular clusters as well! This hobby just keeps getting better!
Cloudy skies last night, so nothing to look at. Hoping for some clearer skies tonight, or at least this weekend.
So I finally made a decision and bought a scope. Ordered a Zhummel 8" dob from telescopes.com. I'm chomping at the bit to get my hands on it, but will have to wait until Friday to get it. Hope to get it set up that night and get a first light report up.
So I'll be giving my friend back his 6" dob on Tuesday. Since I'll be scopeless for a few days I got out tonight to try and get some time in. Did some more looking at Saturn, which I'm sure I'll keep doing as long as it's up. And then thought I'd try to see if I could split the double in Castor. The seeing was pretty bad, and there was a steady breeze, but I was able to make out the double just barely. Pretty cool. I never thought I would find the double star stuff interesting, but I found that to be pretty fun. After that I went back to Saturn, and then packed it in for the night. Hopefully the breeze will be gone tomorrow night and the seeing will be better.
I haven't had a chance to really get out and observe lately. I started getting up an hour earlier to go work out at 5, which means that by the time the sky is dark, I'm wiped. That and the skies have been fairly cloudy lately, leaving little to look at. I have looked at the moon a few more times though. I think I want to start trying to observe it with a map by me so I can start to pick out individual features.
I took some time during the cloudy nights to build my own shutter release cable for our Canon XTi. I'd never done any kind of electronics work, so it was really fun to do even it was a super simple circuit. I'll post a picture of it later.
Oh, and I'm trying to infect the kids with the astronomy bug at a young age. Wonder if it will work?
I tried to get out Saturday evening after sunset to get a look at the very young crescent moon, but missed it. Between getting kids to bed and everything, I think it had just gotten down below the neighboring houses. :( Bummer.
So I made sure I got out last night to take a look before it sank down again. Thankfully I had a lot more time as the kids were pretty tuckered out and the moon wasn't supposed to set until after 9pm anyway. I came out around 8 and set up. Loved the views of the moon along the terminator. I have no clue what I was looking at yet, and didn't have my map handy, but it was breathtaking to say the least.
I grabbed the point & shoot to try and get some quick shots, but quickly realized that it wasn't gonna work. At least not quickly without more practice. Even in manual mode it was blowing the highlights (which is all I cared about anyway) really bad. So I grabbed the dslr and gave that a shot. Focusing took me a while to get used to. Thankfully after about 20 minutes of trying to figure out why it was so blurry when set to focus on infinity, I remembered reading that I would also have to refocus the eyepiece. Then it came into perfect focus.
I tried setting up the tripod for the dslr, but quickly found that that was a major pain in the ass. If the lens wasn't set just right on the eyepiece, I didn't get any image at all. So I decided to handhold it and took some shots. Here's the best of the group:
This is after some post in Lightroom to bring up the exposure a little, and then some unsharp mask applied in cs3. Turned out pretty good considering.
I'd really like to figure out how to best set up for these afocal shots. I want to really work on this technique before I step up to doing some serious prime focus work.
My boss Ryan let me borrow his Orion XT6i dobsonian scope recently since he hasn't been using it much and knew that I'm looking to purchase a scope. Very nice of him!
Got the scope home just over a week ago, and tried it out that first night. Couldn't find diddly! The flipped views were really throwing me for a loop, and the finder scope wasn't aligned either. So the next day I took the scope outside in the daytime, and got the finder (9x50 I believe) aligned properly. That night, I tracked down M42 and was really pleased with what I could pull in, especially with how low it was sitting on the horizon, and the fact that a street light was damn near in front of me. I was able to see the trapezium through the 25mm lens quite nicely, and really enjoyed stepping it up to 10mm and also using both of those with the barlow lens. I'm glad I had done lots of research on what I would be seeing. I can see how a lot of newbies would be disappointed by not seeing all the color and brightness of the photos they see, but I was completely blown away by it.
Next up was Saturn. I wasn't expecting to look at anything other than a brighter star, but just about screamed out loud when I could see the rings at 25mm (48x). So cool that I had to force the wife to come outside to look. She thought it was neat, but obviously not at the level that I did. Throwing in the other lenses and getting even closer was amazing. The rings are pretty close to edge on, so I couldn't see the Cassini division or any real ring structure, but the rings were definitely there. I just watched Saturn for about an hour for the rest of the night.
The morning after next, I got up a few minutes earlier than normal (I'm usually up around 5:10) to primarily take a quick look at Jupiter before heading in to work. Wow! Even with the pre-dawn light spilling in, it was a great view. With the 25mm I could even make out the large bands with averted vision. I then turned the scope to the moon for just a minute. I couldn't believe how beautiful the view along the terminator was. I really wanted to look more, but didn't have much time left, so I took a quick peek at Venus. A very neat little crescent when I got in on it. I've been waiting very impatiently for the moon to start coming up at night so I can take some better looks at it.
For the next few days, I looked at pretty much all the same targets, so I won't retell that story, but I did force myself to learn a little more of the constellations and try to learn my way around the sky a little better. I've got a long ways to go, but am making progress.
The big disappontment came on Wednesday morning when I was supposed to get up at 4:45 so I could set up to watch the moon occult Venus. The disappointing part is that I set the alarm for 4:45 pm. :( When I woke up at 5:23, I was very upset.
Wednesday night I took out my cheapo Tasco 10x50 binoculars and tried to do some starhopping. Tried to find M81/M82 since the book I was reading said I could find them, but no luck. I was pretty sure I was in the right spot, but saw nothing.
Last night I finally found M81. It was really faint even through the 25mm. There was no way I would have found it with my binos. Maybe from a dark site, but no way in my backyard (which is relatively dark; at least for the city). Couldn't see much, just an oblong blur. Averted vision brightened up the core, but not much. I then tried out the Intelliscope piece of the scope. The alignment was borked on the first try, but the second try gave me a warp of -.3, using Regulus and Polaris as the alignment stars. The April tour pointed me to the Leo Triplet. Pretty cool! Again, not much structure visible, but neat nonetheless. I'd really like to get to a dark site and see what it shows then.
Lastly, I turned to my good friend Saturn. I had been reading about afocal astrophotography, and just wanted to play around, not expecting any results. I have a DSLR, and am very interested in getting into AP in the future, but my research tells me that I should get a nice dob first, learn the sky, and save up for a good tracking EQ mount. With that in mind I've been thinking a lot about doing some lunar and planetary work with the afocal method. So I grabbed our Canon Powershot SD790IS point & shoot and just hand held it up to the 25mm lens in the 2x barlow and shot a video of it. Stacked about 350 frames in registax and bingo, here's the reuslt:
I'm quite happy with it. Especially considering that I wasn't expecting to get anything other than a blurry turd! Looking foward to doing some lunar shots next week when the moon is visible for me.
As of right now, I'm thinking I'll be picking up the Orion XT8 dobsonian without the Intelliscope attachment. I really want to my way around without a computer. I'm holding off on the purchase though, because on May 15th there's a stargazing event at the White Tanks park that I plan to attend. I want to check out some of the stuff there before I make up my mind. Just in case. :)
