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.

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

Observations – Sunday 29 July 2012

Location: The Back Garden
Weather: Clear skies, bit chilly for the time of year.

22:00 For the first time in ages I saw the Moon. I could see it peeking through a gap between the trees. Got the scope out and set up with some urgency as I knew there wasn’t much time. By the time it was set up it was just coming out from behind the fir tree and I’d probably got about 15 minutes before it went behind the next one. It was very low, probably about 30deg. The plane of the ecliptic is quite low during summer.
The Moon was just over 1/2 phase so I looked for interesting features near the terminator. I picked on the crater Gassendi on the northern edge of the Mare Humoroum. It’s a great looking crater with a central peak. Directly opposite on the southern edge or Mare Humorum is a flooded crater, the baylike Doppelmayer.
The image below is a screenshot from the Moon HD app on the iPad.

I’ve started doing the Lunar 100 and Gassendi is #13 on that. Sounds daft but I’m starting from scratch as as I haven’t seen the Moon for ages and that takes my tally to 2/100 observed.
And with that it was behind the tree again, but not before I got A out to take a look. People are always impressed to see detail on the moon through a scope.

22:15 I turned my attention next to the Summer Triangle, and in particular the constellation Lyra. Took a look at the double star epsilon Lyra. It’s actually a double double. I think I just about managed to split them both with a 10mm eyepiece.

Last weekend I bagged my first Messier object, M57, the Ring Nebula. I’m trying to spend time on each object rather than spot as many as I can, as quickly as possible, so I’ve been returning to it in my observations this week. Part of my reasoning is to familiarise myself with and to learn an object better by focussing on a small area of the sky. The other reason is that living in a city I have to contend with light pollution, street lights overlooking my garden, surrounding buildings and a lot of trees so the area of sky available to me is pretty much overhead and a bit to the north and a bit more to the south. This limitation can be frustrating but also means I can’t just go jumping all over the sky.
Really getting familiar now with Lyra and after my first attempts at star-hopping that took about 2 hours to spot, I was able to find M57 quite quickly. The Ring Nebula was quite difficult to see this evening. It was starting to get a bit hazy and the seeing wasn’t great – a bit ripplely. It was more obvious through the 25mm. I was able to get a cleare view sometimes with the 17mm Plossl but only with a bit of averted vision or when I tracked across the region. Then it would kind of pop in and out of view. It’s a fine sight, like a smoke ring. At first I wasn’t sure I’d got it but after returning several times in the last week, it’s a familiar and recognisable sight now.
I also tried a light pollution filter. Whilst it seemed to take out some of the orange glow, I’m not sure if it made the nebula clearer or not. But then I’m not sure if it’s supposed to enhance the view of a planetary nebula such as this.

Whilst moving away from and returning to M57 during this session I made myself familiar with the stars around beta Lyra, Sheliak, and gamma Lyra, Sulafat. M57 lies between these two.
I’ve just started playing with Sky Safari (more on that in a later post) so have matched what I sketched very poorly with what I was seeing around each of these as below.

There’s a line of three stars leading away from Sheliak, and Sulafat forms a triangle with two other stars.

23:25 It was getting cold by now. I was about to pack up and then noticed the Moon was just peeking through a low gap in the trees to the SSW. Took a final look at Gassendi. Noticed a further smaller crater on the northern wall of Gassendi. This was Gassendi A. Together they make what’s known as the diamnd ring.