FAIL Observations, Tuesday 16 October 2012

Location: Home, outside back door
Conditions: Seeing good, clear but gathering cloud.
Equipment: Skywatcher 130, 25mm eyepiece.
Highlights: none

A mixed evening. Caught up earlier on writing up my logs from Oman so that’s a WIN.
However my observations with the scope as a FAIL. Didn’t find any of the targets I was looking for, although it was useful as starhopping practice. These notes are for completeness and for potential future comparison for when I do manage to observe these targets.
Clear skies outside with some cloud so I set up outside the back door. My plan was to have a crack at he September Sky at Night magazine Deep Sky Tour around Cygnus. Cygnus was to the west, close to the zenith just above the fir trees. That’s why I set up there. Tried for both the Pelican Nebula, IC5070, and North American Nebula with no joy. Below is the notes I put into SkySafari+ as I was working on them.

Pelican Nebula – IC 5070 Bright Nebula in Cygnus 16 Oct 2012 21:15
Did not find. From Sept S@N DST. Located the area between sars Cyg 56 and 57 by starhopping from Deneb. No sign of nebula though. Seeing is good tonight. Moved away and came back to confirm my hop and tried again to discern the thicker patch between 56 and 57. FAIL

North America Nebula – NGC 7000 Bright Nebula in Cygnus 16 Oct 2012 21:29
Another DNF from Sept S@N DST. I fancy i can make out some nebulosity but probably not. This is a big spread out nebula so using 25mm eyepiece. In the right area. Have referred to star charts several times to confirm. Too much grey and not enough black in sky. Tried to use Gulf of Mexico and Mexico areas as recognisable features and again FAIL

I’m about to give up on the Sky at Night Sept 2012 Deep Sky Tour. I just don’t think it’s possible in these skies.

Observations – Wednesday 8 August 2012

Location: Home
Weather: mixed cloud. Thin at start, cleared whilst observing, pretty much 90% by 23:30. Dry.

22:00 – 23:30 My plan had been to work my way through the Sky at Night magazine August 2012 deep sky tour. I’d set up an Observation list in SkySafari3+ on the iPad. A somewhat ambitious plan perhaps. I did start with M71 but the leap up from Altair in Aquila up to the constellation of Sagitta left me a bit lost so i moved on to the second target on the list M27, the Dumbbell Nebula.
I got there through some star hopping. I took a load of screen shots to get there, eventually arriving at 14 Vul. I’d got there through the 9×50 RACI finderscope. Twisting the crosshairs to line up with the RA and dec motion really helps and it also divides the area into quadrants. having lined it up with the OTA on Vega before i stated was crucial.
The other thing that really helped was that I’d calculated the FOV of my finder and eyepieces and so set them as target circles in SkySafari+. The following sequence shows how I got there through the faint constellation of Vulpecula.

Firstly I located the double star, Albireo in Cygnus. Shifting that to the top left of my finder brought 10 Vul into view.

Shifting 10 Vul to the centre of the finder showed a line of two stars heading WSW towards 13 Vul

Once at 13 Vul I was able to identify 12 Vul, 16 Vul, 17 Vul and 15 Vul.

So, having got to 14 Vul then the messing about started. I switched to a 25mm eyepiece on the Skywatcher 130M and instantly had to switch my mind into recognising the view was now upside down.
It took ages, perhaps 1/2 hour to actually spot the Dumbbell nebula. I could see there was another star….in a line with 14 Vul and the Dumbbell Nebula should be reasonable size in comparison to the stars and about double the distance away. Light pollution really wasn’t helping. I put the LP filter on the 17mm Plossl and where I knew it must be it began to drift in and out of view. It took a lot of averted vision before I would allow myself to believe I’d seen it. To confirm I stepped away from the scope a few times to check in books such as Turn Left At Orion and then go back and check if i could see what I’d seen before and confirm it wasn’t just a trick of the light. The other thing that helped was holding up a magazine in front of the OTA to stop a bit of the light from a nearby street light from bouncing down and washing out my view.
So that’s my second Messier object – 2 out of 110 observed. I’ll be back again to M27 later in the week hopefully to get a better view and understanding of it.  I’d be hard pushed to describe what I observed of the Dumbbell Nebula at the moment.  It was a fuzzy and indistinct smudge to me.  I know what it should look like but I don’t want to describe that.  Next time I hope to make better observations.   For this evening though, I take some satisfaction in successful starhopping.  After several evenings of getting lost and poking around aimlessly, I now feel that I can navigate the night sky. 

I’m actually sitting in the garden now, typing the initial observation notes up in SkySafari and will add the screenshots to them when I post them on the blog (as I now have done). The cat just came under the fence and made me jump so it’s time to pack up and go in.