Nick's Astronomy Observing Log

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. :)