Observations – Wednesday 21 November 2012

Location : Home, next to the bench
Conditions: Clear. Had been raining earlier so damp.
Equipment: skywatcher 130 scope, AsdaCAM
Highlights: Jupiter, Auriga, M36-Pinwheel Cluster, M37, M38-Starfish Cluster

17:30 1st Quarter Moon, Jupiter
As I left work this evening the skies were reasonably clear with a quarter moon shining brightly to the South, after over a week of cloud. While driving home along the dark A38, I also spotted Jupiter up in the East. Was looking forwards to getting out when I got home.

21:00 Jupiter
In and out of the garden setting up while I was doing the tea. Got out to start observing just before 21:00. Spent until about 21:30 imaging Jupiter to the East before it went behind a fir tree. Used the AsdaCam. Used some of what I picked up from the Bromsgrove Astro session on webcam imaging on Monday. Found that I could shoot at 1280 rather than 640. Also ran it at the fasted frame rate I could in Sharpcam. Used the histogram to get the best exposure. Also picked up on the fact that Jupiter rotates quickly so kept my captures down to 45 seconds. I also captured some over exposed video so that I could combine the moons, 3 of which were visible in a line of to the the right side. It’s a shame that it went behind the tree when it did, as a Great Red Spot transit was due between 21:30 and 23:30. I’ll process the images in the next few days.

21:40 Auriga, Capella – Alpha Aurigae
The space to the left of the fir tree to the east was filled Auriga. Another new constellation that I can identify easily to help find my way around the sky. Capella is it’s brightest star.

22:10 Pinwheel Cluster – Messier 36 , Open Cluster in Auriga
I was intending to try for the Double Cluster next between Perseus and Cassiopeia but that part of the sky was right up at the zenith and I couldn’t get the scope there without it fouling on the tripod mount. So instead I used SkySafari+ to find out what was in the vicinity of Auriga. Delighted to find there were 3 Messier objects, all open clusters. So there’s my objective for the evening. I started with M36, the Pinwheel cluster. An easy starhop from Elnath-Beta Tauri via Chi Auriga. This was a rewarding target. It was a bit boring at first in the 25mm but stepping up to the 17mm Plossl eyepiece and spending time at the eyepiece brought out more stars in the cluster. It didn’t have a particularly recognisable or distinctive shape but I think that will come from more time spent on return visits. This is one of the targets in the Sky at Night Deep Sky Tour for November 2012. I also got the Turn Left at Orion book out to compare notes.

22:43 Messier 37 Open Cluster in Auriga
This was a tricky starhop. I tried from Elath first and got lost so tried again from Theta Auriga and found it on the second attempt. I was hopping using quite faint stars and it was pleasing to be doing so with confidence. My starhop skills with the RACI really have improved. M37 was just about visible in the RACI. Moving to the scope and looking through the 17mm Plossl I was struggling to make out any detail other than a fuzzy. There was a bit of thin cloud about but this was reasonably fast moving so not too much of a problem. The glare of the street light was not helping either. I had my baffle screen out but I couldn’t get it close enough to the scope without having to move everything and without it obscuring the sky. It was difficult to resolve individual stars but it was definitely there as I could make out the fuzziness. I was a bit surprised by this as SkySafari+ was claiming it to be quite a bright object. Changing to the 25mm in an attempt to improve the brightness of the image was actually worse and I pretty much lost it altogether. Checking in Turn Left at Orion helped and reassured me that I was looking at M37, 4,600 light years away as it described it as fuzzy and challenging. It also suggested that in a small to medium scope it wouldn’t resolve to individual stars and looks a bit like a globular cluster.

23:02 Starfish Cluster – Messier 38 Open Cluster in Auriga
My favourite cluster of the evening and my 3rd new Messier in this session. Takes my count up to 11/110. SkySafari+ didn’t know why it’s called Starfish but I think it does look a bit like one. It certainly seems to radiate out from a centre. The 17m eyepiece is definitely the eyepiece of choice for these Open Clusters. Again this is a cluster that rewards patience and persistence at the eyepiece. It’s resolving into stars well and there is some nebulosity there. The seeing is quite still now.

23:31 Crab Nebula – Messier 1 Nebula in Taurus
Tried but did not find. Needs to be a target for the next few days. I’m adding it to the general list on my observing plans. It should be just above Zeta Tauri on the lower horn of Taurus but I’m having problems reorientating myself now. Might not have been helped by moving the scope down the garden a bit without going through a full realignment.

23:45 Packing Up and Conclusions
Just before packing up I noticed that Orion was up to the South East. Some treats in store here in coming weeks, I think. I also had a quick look at M45, the Pleiades through the binoculars which is always a treat. I do love the way they glow blue. The nebulous glow is just visible with the naked eye which draws me to them when just gazing at the sky. It was a cold evening tonight but that wasn’t a problem. Was wearing my snowboarding base layer, walking trousers, hiking boots and socks, hoody, body warmer and waterproof. Also had on a hat and scarf and my North Face eTip gloves were essential to working the laptop trackpad and the iPad. Time to pack up as lights have gone on around the house now as A heads to bed. Called to through the window so had to go into the house so my night vision is shot now anyway. One thing I noticed this evening is that now the leaves have gone from the trees there is more sky available but there is much less shade from the orange glow of the streetlights. Making these final notes I notice that the cloud has come in and only Jupiter and Capella are visible now. The cloud has been drifting across all night but with some pace so has not been a problem. It’s been a good observing session. I’m very pleased with the three new Messiers.

Observing programs
Messier: 11/110
Lunar 100 observed: 8/100
Lunar 100 imaged: 8/100

Bromsgrove Astronomical Society – Webcam Imaging

Went to a meeting of the Bromsgrove Astronomical Society. I’m thinking of joining. I’d considered Birmingham or Walsall’s groups but they’re too urban. I’m looking for one that gives an opportunity to observe away from the city lights but that isn’t too far.
It was a wet evening so no chance for observing but there was a very interesting talk with a lot of in depth detail on webcam imaging. I learnt a few interesting things that I hope to put into practice.
– Maximum capture times for various solar system objects to reduce blurring due to the speed of their rotation.
– Frame rates
– using the histogram in Sharpcap to optimise exposure
– what gamma is
– which webcams to use. Annoyingly the best webcam still seems to the rare and almost out of date Philips Toucam or SPC900. Ideally I’d like to get my hands on one of them without spending a fortune second hand on eBay. There must still be loads sitting in boxes in spare rooms unused. Otherwise it seems to be the costly dedicated astro-webcams. For the moment I’ll stick with the AsdaCAM I hacked together.

Jupiter Observations – Friday 2 November 2012

Location: Home, Garden , Top of the drive
Conditions: clear, reasonable seeing. Cloudy later.
Equipment: Skywatcher 130, AsdaCam
Highlights: Jupiter

Good clear skies tonight. Jupiter was the first thing I set my sights on and I got so caught up in it that I didn’t move the scope to another target all evening. First of all my notes taken while observing and then the results of the imaging I tried.

21:47 Jupiter seems to be the main prize for tonight. Looking ok in 25mm eyepiece. 2 moons visible. With the 6mm eyepiece signs of banding are showing.
Fitted the RA motor so I’ve got it tracking reasonably well. Occasional dec tweak needed so not perfectly aligned but good enough for me.
I slotted the AsdaCam webcam into the eyepiece socket and shot some AVIs.
Io is supposed to be transiting but I can’t see it. I think I may have seen a notch at the edge of the disk earlier in the 6mm but I can’t be absolutely certain.
Actually, I can see three of the moons. Callisto is visible to N.
According to SkySafari+ the Great Red Spot is meant to be visible – can’t see it visually though.

22:15 The clouds are starting to close in. Rather than pack up though I’m sitting in the garden with the laptop and have set Registax processing the first of the AVIs I shot of Jupiter. I decided I couldn’t wait until later. Also, if I’m doing it wrong I’d rather know now when I have chance to retry than find out later after I’ve packed up and gone in.
So while that processes the clouds have cleared a bit. In between breaks in the cloud I’m writing up these notes.
Meanwhile tried the 6mm barlowed. The disk is huge but not much detail. This cheap and basic barlow does degrade the image.
Cloud settling so making notes now. If it clears I’ll look again. It would be cool to see Io come off the disk.
Tried with moon filter and barlow on 6mm to increase contract. Too much glass in the way now. Barlow off. Hard to tell if moon filter helps. It tones down the brightness but doesn’t help contrast. Tried green wratten 56 filter. Wow that brings out contrast.
I should look into planetary filters. Which colours are best for Jupiter?
Registax has finshed stacking. Had a quick play with the wavelets. Oh wow!!! Got an image with some colour and banding detail. More than I can see visually.
…And the laptop battery dies before could save the test stacking. Not a problem as the source AVIs are safe and now I know the potential is there to pull something from these AVIs. If this patch of cloud doesn’t clear I’m off inside to process them.

22:25. A break in the cloud but not enough to see Io come off the disk. Lets focus instead on the belts.
Northern Equatorial is almost at centre. Can see Southern Equatorial too.
Made a quick sketch. It’ll be interesting to compare with the photos I get from Registax.

22:38. Packing up now. Too much cloud. I’m abandoning the sketch. I think I’m just sketching what I think I saw earlier.

Once inside I had another go at processing my AVIs in Registax. This is a piece of free software that takes a video you’ve shot with a webcam or a series of still frames, finds the best frames and then combines them with some clever processing to bring out more detail. Whilst the workflow is pretty much the same with every image there’s a lot of parameters to choose so on these first attempts it’s a bit trial and error. My first attempt at an image isn’t bad though. It’s clearly Jupiter and it is quite exciting to see this on screen and know that I shot that, in my garden, with a hacked webcam that cost £3 from Asda. It’s 400 million miles away.

I posted the picture to Twitter and Facebook and went to bed, picking up a few positive comments from friends.

I had another go at processing the following day on Saturday. I did a bit of tweaking in Photoshop after to rotate 180° as the image through the scope was inverted. I also resampled it so that it wasn’t so pixelated when enlarged a bit. A further tweak on the contrast brought out the Great Red Spot at the right edge of the Southern Belt. I got excited again at this. I knew it should be there when I was observing visually but couldn’t see it. It’s incredible the extra information you can pull out this way. Think I need to get a better webcam with higher resolution.

The Moon, Observations – Friday 26 October 2012

Location: Home, top and middle of drive.
Conditions: thin cloud, amost full moon.
Equipment: Skywatcher 130, asdacam, 7×15 binoculars
Highlights: Moon, Jupiter

The nights are closing in.  Good news for observing.  Clear early on this evening but by the time I got the scope out and set up about 20:30 it was getting cloudy.  It was OK observing the moon through the cloud although at times there was too much reflection into the clouds causing something of a halo effect that meant there was no definition to be found on the edges. Moon was about 3 days from being full so there was still a terminator.
The crater Bailey was just into the darkness. The rays around Tycho were bright white.
Cloud was moving quite quickly so was variable in thickness. Decided to have a go at imaging so popped a cheap 640 x480 webcam (£3 from Asda) that I’d previously modified, removing the lens and IR filter, into the eyepiece holder.   Shot a few AVIs to try some processing later….
Cloud cover was at about 90% by 22:00 so I packed up. Of course by the time I was taking the last of the kit in, about 20 minutes later it was clearing up again.
Jupiter was just clearing the front gates so I took a quick look through the binoculars.  Looking forward to getting the ‘scope on this and seeing the banding in coming weeks.  Walsall Astro’s What’s Up Newsletter for November helpfully includes transit times for the Galilean Moons and the Great Red Spot (GRS) which I’ve added to the Observation Plans page so I’m looking forward to observing those events.

Oman Desert Stargazing Observations – Tuesday 2 October 2012

Location: Desert Night Camp, Wahiba Sands, Oman
Conditions: Clear, dark. No cloud, no mist, no haze.
Highlights: Dark Skies, Milky Way, Mare Criseum, The Desert

I’d really been looking forward to our stay in the desert in Oman. We stayed at the marvellous Desert Nights Camp in the Wahiba Sands region. It was great fun driving 11km into the desert with our 4×4 Land Cruiser drifting through the sands.
After settling into our luxurious tent they took us up onto the dunes to watch the sun set.

19:00 By 7pm it was dark. I’d expected dark clear skies but this was incredible. Before my eyes more detail came into view minute by minute. I used the Summer Triangle to get my bearings. The Milky Way was visible stretching through Cassiopeia in the East, Cygnus at the zenith and to Sagittarius in the West.
I had the binoculars with me and I also had my Canon EOS400D on the tripod to take some long exposures for potential processing and stacking later. However I was more interested in just viewing the spectacle of it with the naked eye and had a bit of a wow moment at the detail I was seeing.

19:30-20:00. the moon rose at about 8pm. It was about 3 days past full and very bright, again washing out the sky and lighting the camp. This was a major shame as a lot of the detail was lost to me and the Milky Way pretty much disappeared from view. I could discern it in places but that might have been more of a case that I was expecting to see it there.

21:45 Before booking the Desert Night Camp I’d been in contact with them by email and they had told me they had a telescope I could borrow when I visited. When we checked in, it was there in reception a 114mm newtonian with a 1000mm focal length in a shortish tube – a parabolic mirror I guess. They told me it wasn’t working but I was welcome to try it. I think they hoped I might be able to fix it. After dinner (which was great, although I thought the ice sculpture was a bit over the top. The Oud player was brilliant though – unusual stringed instruments – another of my interests) I went to check it out but couldn’t get anything out of it. I suspect the collimation was way out. It had probably been fiddled with by a well meaning enthusiastic amateur trying to fix it. I hadn’t really got the skills, equipment or time to do much with it and figured I was wasting my time and would be better off with my binoculars instead.
I spent some time observing the moon – 2/3 days past full so some detail along terminator. The Mare Criseum was a standout and the walls around it formed a horseshoe with the upper edges of those extending like two horns into the darkness. I was using my Cambridge Star Atlas to identify the lunar features.  The numbers refer to the numbering in the Star Atlas.  Of particular note were the rays from Proclus.  This is number 12 on the Lunar 100.  This takes my tally up to 8/100.
 There was also a distinctive line of 4 craters along the terminator – Petavius, Snelius, Stevinus and Rheita.

22:15 I observed the Andromeda Galaxy, M31 through the binoculars. Really impressive.
Jupiter rose above the Eastern dunes and once again I sketched the positions of it moons to compare their progress from night to night. I could only see 3 of the Galilean moons this evening as Ganymede was really close to Jupiter and i was unable to discern it.
I’d given up on the tripod for the binoculars as lengthy viewing was giving me some neck ache. Instead I was outside our tent on a beanbag. There wasn’t anybody else about. There weren’t many other people at the camp and it’s not a place for late night drinking and partying. I heard a burp footsteps nearby behind me and turned to see two camels wandering through the camp. A little later I heard some more grunting sounds and thought the camels were back. However it was just a couple in a nearby tent shagging.

05:30 The following morning we were up early at 5:30 to catch the sunrise over dunes.
By now it was getting light and only planets were visible to the naked eye. Jupiter was up at the zenith. Venus was to the east. Observing it through the binoculars showed a bright star nearby which A spotted when she took a look. This was Regulus in Leo which was within about 8 arcminutes and this conjunction had been mentioned in the highlights for the month in various publications and podcasts. Closest approach was 3 October so this was a fortunate treat. I hadn’t been looking for it.

The moon was also still up now over in the Western sky.

Observing programs
Messier: 7/110
Lunar 100 observed: 8/100
Lunar 100 imaged: 8/100

Observations – Tuesday 4 September 2012

Location: Home, middle of the lawn
Weather: Clear, Dry, some high cloud.
Highlights: Moon, Sea of Tranquility Sea of Serenity

What a difference a couple of weeks make. I’ve not been out in the garden with the scope since 14 August. It’s getting darker much earlier now. The Summer Triangle, which was in that prime piece of sky to the South, is now slipping round to the South West. There have been a few clear nights recently but I’ve been either busy or out so I haven’t had chance to do any proper observing. After I got in from band practice last night I set up about 23:15 and made a start in my usual places around Vega. I was intending to go for M57, the Ring Nebula, to get my eye in. However by the time I was set up, in the middle of the lawn grass, the constellation of Lyra was disappearing into the crown of the oak tree. I chose Albireo as my starting point instead. I got the scope and finders lined up and once again admired the blue and yellow double. I was about to start some star hopping from there, and possibly to have a go at the Deep Sky Tour from September’s Sky At Night magazine when I noticed the waning gibbous moon coming up through gaps in the laburnum to the east so that became my target for the session.

I got lined up and focussed with the 17mm Plossl and grabbed a quick afocal iPhone snapshot.

I spent quite some time observing around the Sea of Tranquility and made an attempt at getting to know a few of the features by sketching them. The view through the scope is inverted so N is down on the below sketch.

Craters around the Sea of Tranquility area

This was an opportunity to increase my observations on the Lunar 100 up to 7/100.
New spots for me this evening were:
#3 Mare/highland dichotomy
#20 Posidonius crater
#21 Fracastorius crater.

Retrospective Stargazing – 5 Years Later

I’m planning a trip to Exmoor soon and was looking at some old photos from my Flickr last time I went there. I didn’t have a telescope then but I did take a couple of longer exposure shots of the sky with my SLR on a tripod.

Whilst looking at the photo I naturally became curious about which stars and constellations were in the shot. To help me with this I took a look at the exif info for the photo to get the date and time it was taken. Incidentally, knowing what I know now and how I remember of the skies from that visit, I’m surprised there aren’t more stars visible in this shot. However from the exif I see that I took this 30s exposure at ISO100. Next time I’ll bump that up considerably.
A quick bit of Google map work gave me the longitude and latitide of the location and I recall from the orientiation of the site that the shot was taken pretty much facing south.
Plugging all this into SkySafari gave me an exact starmap for that time and place. That’s pretty cool.
I see then that that’s Scorpio just above the rising hillside on the right. Three stars in a slight rising curve pointing towards the three in a vertical line. The central orange one of the three on the curve is Antares.

What excited me though was discovering that the really bright star in the centre of the sky isn’t a star at all. That’s Jupiter that is. I hadn’t realised that at the time and nor in the period since.

Summer Triangle Widefield Imaging – First Attempt

At mentioned in my last post, I ended up with 263 frames of the Summer Triangle. I thought I’d have a go at processing one of these to see if I could get more detail out.

So here’s my starting image.

I hadn’t realised quite how bad my light pollution was until I saw this.
It’s a 30 second exposure, sunlight white balance at ISO400 taken on a Canon EOS400D with a Sigma zoom set at it’s widest 18mm focal length.
faintest stars you can see here are about magnitude 4.
I then tweaked it a bit in photoshop, adjusting levels to bring out fainter stars up to about magnitude 7. I removed the colour cast as best I could, although I think I went a bit too at as it’s quite blue now.

Now I know this is far from perfect. It’s a first attempt and I can see quite a few problems.
Stars aren’t quite in focus. I’d focused manually and it’s difficult to know in the dark through the camera eyepiece.
Next time I’ll lock the mirror up to prevent that causing a bit of shake.
Exposure is only 30 seconds but I don’t think I can do longer without the stars blurring with motion. I could, if I put the camera on the telescope’s mount. There is a piggy back mounting screw.
I think I need to really up the ISO, perhaps up to 1600 to captured the fainter stars. I’d held back because I thought I’d end up overexposed with all the light pollution. I think though, that I can fix that with levels in processing.
I need to investigate stacking multiple images too, as that seems to be how many people do it.

Finally I annotated the final image in Skitch on the iPad to identify the various constellations and stars. That was an fun and educational thing to do. I hadn’t noticed the small constellation Delphinus creeping in just below Cygnus for instance, and on zooming in and around the shot, I also noticed Collinder 399, Brocchi’s Cluster aka the Coathanger sneaking in.

Observations – Tuesday 14 August 2012

Location: back garden, shaded from streetlight by laburnum tree.
Weather: 90% at start, cleared but clouded again.
Highlights: M57 Ring Nebula, M56 Globular Cluster, Summer Triangle time lapse.

22:40 Ring Nebula – Messier 57, a Planetary Nebula in Lyra. I started off here just to get my eye in. It took a while to set up tonight. I set the camera up too just in case there might still be some Perseids about. There weren’t but I got a load of images that I’ll do something with later.
By the time I was set up it had gone from 20% to 80% cloud. Lots of gaps between though. 10 min later (now) it was clear again. Ring Nebula is looking great through 6mm eyepiece with light pollution filter tonight. Seeing is a bit turbulent but given the high magnification not bad. Ring is really pinching through tonight. The turbulent seeing makes it almost look like it’s spinning.
And onwards to something new.

23:09 Messier 57 – Globular Cluster in Lyra. Another new Messier for me, taking my Messier count up to 4/110. Really working this Summer Triangle. I’ll describe the starhop as always.

I started from Sulafat, gamma Lyra, and from there hopped to 17 Lyra and on to 19 Lyra, which is where the target above is centred. There is a 6mag star close to M56, HR7302. I used that as my final jumping off point. I couldn’t see the M56 globular cluster though, but as is the way with new Messiers I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for.

To confirm i was in the right part of the sky, I hopped a bit further until I came to Albireo and then headed back. I could just about make out M56 although it was faint. At moments it did glow though. I was using the 17mm Plossl eyepiece. I shifted to to the 6mm and dropped the LP filter. I then lost M56 whilst messing about. Found the LP filter though.
Started the hop from Sulafat again. I didn’t take any notes and it’s actually a few days later that I’m writing this up. Must remember to take better notes. It seems that first time I find an object, it’s about the finding and the next time it’s about the observing.
I was wearing a peaked beanie this evening. Shifting it’s peak around my head helped eliminate some glare from streetlights. It also makes a headtorch more comfortable. Last week I picked up a tall folding stool in Poundstretcher. Perching on this when at the eyepiece is more comfortable than leaning into it. I think it also helps keep my body still so improves observing.

Whilst observing I also had a Canon EOS400D SLR set up on a tripod facing high and south in the off chance of catching a late Perseid meteor or two. I had it set to ISO400, daylight white balance, shutter priority with a 30s exposure. Camera was on continuous mode with a locking remote shutter release. I just left it shooting during my observing session and reviewed the 263 shots on the camera afterwards. I didn’t catch any meteors, just a couple of planes. However I did realise as I was paging through them on the camera that it might make an interesting time lapse showing scudding clouds and the rotation of the earth. I used MakeAVI to put together a short 17 second film. I know it’s in portrait mode, but my original intention had never been to make a film of it.
(I’ve since had a go at processing some of the shots but I’ll do another post about that.

Observations – Thursday 9 August 2012

Location: Home, on the lawn, rather than up by house. It’s closer to the street light but shaded by a laburnum tree.
Weather: A sunny clear day leading to a mostly clear sky. Some thin high cloud. Seeing is poor.
Highlights: M57 Ring Nebula, M27 Dumbell Nebula, M71 globular cluster, Collinder 399- Brocchi’s Cluster – the Coathanger.

21:45 Set up on the lawn this evening. Despite being closer to a street light it’s shaded soemwhat by a tree The positon also gave me visibility of the sky to the north above the house so I could do a trial run for meteor watching with a camera. It’s the Perseid meteor shower around now with the peak expected this weekend. There was an article in the August edition of Sky at Night magazine on photographing meteors which I want to try. I’ll outline the gist of the procedure here.

• I put an 18 to something zoom on it’s widest setting on the SLR and set it up on a tripod pointing up at about 60deg facing north-ish. The Perseids should be radiant on the constellation of Perseus which was approximately in that direction.
• I put the camera, a Canon EOS400D into shutter priority (Tv) mode.
• I focussed manually to infinity and took a test shot of a few seconds to check.
• The article in Sky at Night magazine says to up your ISO to 1600 or so but I found that this caused the sky to be too bright on long exposures so I stuck with ISO 200. I can always change this later if I find myself with darker skies.
• I set the exposure time to 30 seconds and the shooting mode to continuous.
• I then fired the camera with a locking remote shutter and left it running for as long as batteries and memory cards (I have spares of both) will allow. Every 30 seconds it would then take another shot.
• The idea is to leave this running like that throughout the observing session and whilst there will be a lot of frames of just sky there should be some with meteor streaks across them. Reviewing the shots on the camera afterwards, there weren’t any last night but I am a bit early. The point was to test the procedure anyway.

So while the camera was clicking away, I got on with some observing.

22:05 Started with M57, the Ring Nebula, in Lyra tonight. It was just a smudge in the 17mm Plossl eyepiece with a light pollution filter. The ring was visible in the new 6mm ultra-wide eyepiece when I was using averted vision.

22:15 Started to starhop from Albireo to M27, the Dumbbell Nebula in Vulpecula. Seeing is poor tonight. I was there within minutes this time and got there by memory too. I observed it through 17mm with light pollution filter. My awareness is increasing. I wasn’t confident yesterday evening but it was definitely there tonight. It is indistinct though, guess that’s why it’s a nebula. It’s a strange sensation – more being aware of something than actually seeing it. I found Let it drift across the eyepiece a few times I got a better view. It’s also larger than I expected.

22:44 My next target was M71, a Globular Cluster in Sagitta. I tried to get there yesterday from Altair in Aquilla, but tried a different path tonight, just a short hop down from M27. Again, I’ll attempt to share the starhop route I took, together with some screenshots from SkySafari3+. I recognise this isn’t the most obvious starting place but if you consider it the next step on a route then it’s a reasonable way to go. If you need to know how to get to M27 then take a look at yesterday’s post.

Starting with 14 Vul, which is close to M27, in the centre of the finderscope, I moved the scope down on the dec axis until 14 Vul was just about to disappear from the top of the view finder. Gamma Sagitta and Eta Sagitta were in view. (I need to work out how to do greek alphabet on here) Gamma Sagitta was my target to centre in the finderscope.

Next step was to find 9 Sagitta which is close to M71 and get that centred up

Time then to switch to the main telescope OTA which I had a 25mm eyepiece in. The following section is from the notes I took at the scope.

Have i found it? Can only see a few stars – probably clusered together. Certainly not a ball of them in a haze as is described. Losts of very faint stars in the background. Guess i’m in the band of the Milky Way here. Consulted some other stuff. Not looking like it from the black on white Messier sheets TBH. Think I’m lost actually.

So I went back up to M27 to try again. As a distraction the Dumbbell was quite distinct in 25mm (no LP filter) this time. In fact the Dumbbell was looking wonderful. Just goes to show magnification isn’t everything.

So I tried again. Got back down to 9 Sagitta. Those were just stars I was seeing. It needed to be more fuzzy…. So I started looking differently. I was definitely in the right place but M71 was just being elusive. Knowing what to look for and how to look for it is part of the challenge, I’m discovering.
Again from my notes.

23:20. Found it! So I was looking for a faint fuzzy all along. Just NE of 9 Sagitta. Line of 3 stars and then off to the side a round smudge, just like the drawing on pg 139 of Turn Left At Orion. The book says it’s quite dim. It’s very dim for me. I need to get out to a dark site to see these things better. It may or may not be a globular cluster apparently. So I need to look up and understand what a globular cluster is. So far my previous 2 Messiers were Planetary Nebula and I think I know what they are/were. Anyway 3/110 of the Messier objects.

23:32 Finished off with a visit to Collinder 399 – The Coathanger, or Brocchi’s Cluster. A nice asterism to end the evening on and one I hadn’t visited before. It was a short hop across Sagitta and Vulpecula. I found it easily. it just fits in the 25mm eyepiece’s FOV. 6 stars across base 4 for hook. All blueish stars apart from one orange according to SkySafari. Not seeing the orange star though. Sky Safari tells me it’s 4 Vul, a double star at the top of the hook (bottom really -it’s an inverted coathanger) Can’t split it either even in the 6mm though, the seeing is too poor.

A very sucessful couple of hours I think. Got the hang of starhopping and am learning to see what is almost perceptible. Revisiting the M27 Dumbbell Nebula and seeing more this time around tells me that there’s plenty to appreciate in going back again to build on previous viewings.