Observations from the Back Garden – Friday 12 October 2012

Location: Garden, Home, Top of drive – had started down in middle of the so-called lawn.
Conditions: cloud gathering through evening.
Equipment: Skywatcher 130 scope, assorted eyepieces, new streetlight baffle.
Highlights: Andromeda Galaxy, M31

22:00 Andromeda Galaxy – Messier 31
First time out in the garden in a while. Was a clear night when heading home so I was hopeful to get some decent observing in. It’s also dark a lot earlier now. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve been out here. Not as dark or warm as Oman though.
I recognised constellation of Andromeda high to The East. I starhopped from Mirach through u and v to find M31, the Andromeda Galaxy which was distinct in the RACI view finder. Switching to the 25mm eyepiece on the scope Andromeda was very obvious. No detail but an expansive smudge of light from 2.5 light years away. I moved up to the 17mm plossl and it was OK-ish, a bit disappointing. I was starting to battle against gathering and drifting clouds though and the 6mm superwide was just useless. At this point I gave up. Cloud stops play.
It’s a start on the Sky At Night Magazine Oct 2012 Deep Sky Tour anyway. That’s Just as well as my November subscription arrived today. Also got the Moore Winter Marathon to try. I saw it on this month’s TV show. I never did get anywhere with the September Deep Sky Tour around Cygnus. It’s dark earlier though so maybe I’ll get a last chance early one evening in the next week.
I think I’ll set up a page to keep track of my observing objectives or plans. At the moment I feel like I’ve a lot of catching up to do.

I also pressed a new bit of kit into service tonight and it seems to have been a success. I mounted a large sheet of plywood on uprights that I can move around the garden to shield me from the street lights. It was very helpful in keeping the light out my eyes and stop it reducing my dark adaptation.
Only cost about £4 to make too.

Observing programs
Messier: 8/110
Lunar 100 observed: 8/100
Lunar 100 imaged: 8/100

Celestron 15×70 Skymaster Binocular – First Light Report

This week I took delivery of some new binoculars. I bought some Celestron 15×70 Skymasters from Rother Valley Optics. As with any new astronomy kit you have to be careful unboxing them so as not to let the clouds out.

My Skymasters may have arrived cloud free too thanks to the courier DPD who obviously though GLASS HANDLE WITH CARE meant the exact opposite. When the package above arrived at my workplace, i got a call from reception to go sign for it. The driver was a total idiot – “it’s not my fault, nothing to do with me”. I suspect it may have something to do with him in the next day or two thanks to trackable consignment numbers. Rother Valley Optics were great about it. They had packed them well inside despite the worst efforts by the tossers from DPD. They refunded the delivery costs and if there’s any probs will take them back. DPD’s customer services were also very responsive to a tweet I posted about it and contacted me to apologise and make good.
Good to see such good customer service, despite the actions of some of their employees.

So having got the unpleasantness out the way, I’ve had chance to try these monsters out and they’re pretty good. They are heavy and handholding isn’t that easy but I did know and expect that. To explain the numbers, 15 is the amount of magnification and 70 is the size of the big end-70mm of objective lens. This is a good thing for astronomy as that’s the aperture, how much light they pull in. Without that any magnification is pretty much a waste of time.

I was out again on Friday night with friends and as we left a curry house up in the dark skies of Clent I gazed up to notice a clear sky. This was my opportunity to give the bins a bit of a test run when I got home.

Whilst driving home approaching midnight I could see Jupiter in the East Northeast sky. I found a spot in the garden down by the pear tree where I could look out through a gap in to trees to get a look at Jupiter with the bins. The disk resolved clearly and looked almost orange, although I couldn’t make out any surface detail. I also couldn’t make out any moons although that might be due to the fact that the street light lies in that direction.

I came back up to the back door and hunted for M31, then Andromeda Galaxy. Didn’t take long to spot it near the zenith and it was an impressive sight. I had one of those wow moments – it’s another galaxy two and a half light years away! More than just a fuzzy blur, it showed as an eclipse with a bright core. I was amazed how much sky it seemed to cover, especially as when I put the bins down there was no sign with the naked eye. That’s the power of those 70mm objectives I guess. Writing this up on Saturday evening I can still recall the image in my mind.

So far I’m pleased with these binoculars and they don’t seem to have any problems despite the courier so I’m keeping them. They’re going to be ideal for travelling or when I don’t have enough time to get the ‘scope set up.

Observations – Friday 7 September 2012

Location: Home, middle of the lawn
Weather: Clear but cold by 23:30
Highlights: Iridium 58 Satellite, M29 Open Cluster, M31 Andromeda Galaxy

22:00 Iridium 58 satellite
I started off lining up on Sadr in Cygnus, ready to starhop to the M29 open cluster like I did on Wednesday.  A very bright satellite passed through my view in the RACI finder and distracted me for the next half an hour trying to work out what it might be.  It was very bright and when I looked up from the ‘scope, it was visible to the naked eye, although not as bright.  At first I thought it might be the ISS but having checked the app on my phone and confirming on SkySafari+ I established it wasn’t.  I spent some time with satellites enabled in SkySafari+ running through an animation using the the time buttons in the app to see which satellites were passing through this area of sky around this time.  I’m pretty sure it was an Iridium flare, the reflection of the solar panels on Iridium communications satellite 58. SkySafari has it down as only mag 5. It was definitely brighter than that, although that might be the flare.

22:37 M29 Open Cluster
I finally started observing properly after much mucking about getting the finders aligned with the ‘scope.  I had a quick look through the 25mm and then the 6mm ultra-wide.  I spotted a nice double nearby so went and took a look at that.

22:43 HD194206 double star.
I spotted this interesting looking double in the vicinity of M29.  It looked like a double in the RACI finder but was only just about splittable with the 6mm eyepiece.

23:07 NGC6888 Crescent Nebula
Did not find!   I found the area and the stars around it.  I was able to identify HD192163 at its centre.  There was no sign of the nebula though in 17mm Plossl eyepiece.  I tried the light pollution filter but this didn’t help.  I wasn’t sure if a light pollution filter helped with emission nebula or not though.  I’ve checked since and they do.  It’s meant to be good for emission and planetary.  The screenshot below shows how I got there.

23:17 Andromeda Galaxy M31
I was getting frustrated at not finding much on the Sky at Night September Deep Sky Tour.  I Went up by the house, over by the fence again and found M31 with binoculars, a pair of 8×40 Omiya that belonged to my Dad.  They must be over 30 years old.  To find Andromeda I located Mirach, through u and then just up a bit from v Andromeda, there it is.  Not very distinct though.  Just a smudge really.  Hopefully in a month or so when it’s in a more southerly position it’ll be easier to observe with the scope.

Telescope Case

Setting up the scope for each observing session takes around quarter of an hour, at least. A fair amount of this time is spent in and out of the house to get all the kit out. It takes the same time again to pack up afterwards before i can write up my log and get to bed.
It usually takes two to three trips for just the telescope, the OTA, the tripod and mount and a bag of bits including the tray, the tracking controls and the counterbalance weight.
I’ve looked for an inexpensive scope case to fit my Skywatcher 130M with little joy. I had a bright idea though and a quick search suggested that the large travel cover that golfers use to put their golf bag and clubs in might well do the job. I do play a bit of golf sometimes so I visited the local driving range to take a look and found one that was reasonably priced at £30 and had a bit of padding and wheels. I see from the link that the online price has gone up a tenner since though. A very helpful assistant asked me if I was taking my clubs on holiday and asked where I was going. “..erm no, it’s not for my clubs.”. I then had to explain it was for a telescope just in case he thought I was intending to move a body or anything.

A bit of work with a Stanley knife, a camping mat and a roll of gaffer tape and I’d made a protective sleeve for the OTA tube.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was away at the weekend so took the ‘scope in this, which fitted across the back seats without too much trouble. The whole thing is quite heavy although most of that is in the counterweight which I stuffed down at the bottom. It seems to provide reasonable protection. I do have to remember it contains a sensitive instrument rather that a set of clubs and not bash it around or wheel it up or down steps or kerbs.

 

Observations – Saturday 4 Aug 2012

Location: Worthing, in-laws back garden
Weather: mixed cloud. Moving quite quickly so changing opportunities. Dry.

22:00-ish First light on the new Skywatcher 9×50 RACI finder scope. It’s great-so much easier to use than RDF. You can see so much more. In fact I’m thinking it’s worth taking away with me when travelling. Even though i know where it is now, I was on the Ring Nebula, M57 within minutes.
Yeah, yeah, I know M57 again but I wanted to see if a couple of other factors improved the view. Firstly there is far less light pollution in Worthing, their street lights aren’t so orange, and being on the coast there is half the amount of light anyway. Well until the moon came out. More on that later.
Secondly I’d been to Sussex Astronomy Centre and bought a new eyepiece. I got a Skywatcher 6mm ultra wide eyepiece with 66deg APOV (apparent field of view).
M57 was really clear in it. I could really see the ring and the darker centre. I could also see that it wasn’t uniform all round.

Father in Law came out to see what i was up to at this point, so I moved on as this is perhaps a tricky target if you’ve not looked through a telescope before. So I showed him the double Albireo in Cygnus. The difference between the brighter yellow and it’s blue companion was very pronounced.

23:00-ish Then my Mother in Law came out, together with a lot of cloud so all I was able to show her was Vega directly above in Lyra and a few stars around it.

23:30-ishThey went in and my Brother in Law came out as the moon was clearing the trees. About two days past full. It was washing out much of the sky and reflecting off clouds and I think the sea a couple of streets to the south.
Had to put the moon filter on to cut the brightness and we went straight for the 6mm. Seeing was good. Hardly any rippling. Put the tracking on and observed along the terminator. Highlights were Mare (Lunar 100 #10) and the adjacent Cleomedes crater and a chain of 4 craters including Langrenus, Vendelinus, Petavius and Furnerius. Of these Petavius (Lunar 100 #16) was the most impressive with it’s central peak.
Takes my Lunar 100 count up to:
Observed 3/100
Imaged 8/100

24:00-ish. popped the Asda webcam into the eyepiece holder and fired up Sharpcam on the netbook to snap a couple of shots of the moon.

Mare Criseum and Cleomedes crater.

Craters on the terminator. You can see the central peak in light and shadow on Petavius

Indoor astronomy

A cloudy one tonight so I took the opportunity to sort some kit out. I ordered a new finderscope which arrived on Monday, a Skywatcher 9×50 RACI (right angled corrected image). I also ordered an extra base.
I attached the extra base with double sides sticky pads, butting it up to the collar of the OTA (optical tube assembly) to give it a bit of stability. I wasn’t ever intending to drill new holes in the OTA to fix it. The extra base was to take the old RDF (red dot finder) which I still might want to use. The extra base is to the right of the eyepiece holder in this photo.

I did set the scope up but only to test out aligning the finders with the OTA. Sky was just orange with cloud. Got everything lined up nice though and packed up.
I used to leave the RDF attached to the OTA but I didn’t think that was a great idea for either finder now. The RACI is too heavy so something will get damaged and I’d rather not put any strain on the sticky pads holding the RDF base on. An excuse then to reorganise the foam cutouts in my eyepiece case. It is satisfying to have everything fitted snugly in there. Left spaces for future eyepieces I have my eye on.

Final job of the evening was to wrap some red film round one of the camping lanterns and put a piece inside a torch so I have decent redlights so as not to impair the night vision when observing.