Patrick Moore’s final Sky at Night

Last night I was working on my astronomy course as I’d got a coursework deadline today. I got it finished just before midnight which was good timing as it meant I could watch Patrick Moore’s final Sky at Night before bed.
It was an enjoyable and fitting tribute. It appeared that part of the show was a planned feature recorded before his death, on setting up a new telescope, where some lucky members of the public were at Patrick’s Selsey home in Selsey, Sussex. This was followed by clips that reminded me what an inspiration and an entertainer he was. Usually Sky at a night isn’t on iPlayer until all the repeats have shown. This month it is up after the first broadcast. His death, combined with this week’s BBC Stargazing Live is likely to mean this episode will pick up a lot more views than usual.
It won’t be the same without Patrick but I do hope the series continues.

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 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

Observations – Sunday 26 August 2012

Location: Cloud Farm, Exmoor. Somerset-Devon border.
Weather:clear to mixed cloud. Sheltered site but cloud cover changing all the time due to strong winds
Highlights: Milky Way, Pleiades, M45, Jupiter, Venus,

As mentioned in a earlier post I was heading off to Exmoor for a camping weekend with friends, at the excellent Cloud Farm campsite. I had hoped for clear skies but accepted that may not happen. I took the scope in case but the weather forecast wasn’t exactly hopeful. The first night, Saturday night, was too cloudy to make it worth getting the scope out despite the dark skies. In the few gaps there were, I was able to see as may stars with the naked eye as I get with the scope back home. Had a bit of a poke around with the binoculars though.
Having gone to bed I awoke around 4:00am Sunday morning needing the toilet. Leaving the tent, I looked up and despite not having my contact lenses in or glasses on, I was blown away by the sky. It was clear and the sheer number of stars was a bit confusing to be honest. It took me a few moments to get my bearings. Even with my blurred vision I could make out the Milky Way streaking across the sky from west to east, using Cygnus as a confirmation. The bright blueish glow around the Pleides cluster (M45) was also evident to the East with Jupiter shining brightly not far away. That’s my Messier count to 5/110.

I then rather foolishly went back to bed but found I couldn’t sleep knowing such a magnificent sky was out there.

So I got up again and set up the scope. By the time I had it aligned and balanced, it was no longer as dark and the clouds were coming in again. I spent my time observing and tracking Jupiter first, and a little later Venus rose above the hillside.
Even through the 9×50 RACI I could make out a couple of the Galilean moons and with the 6mm eyepiece on Jupiter I could clearly see all 4. More excitingly I could make out banding. I’d not seen this before through my Skywatcher 130M. I had seen the banding before, at a Stargazing live event run by Birmingham Astronomical Society at the Mailbox, through a 900mm refractor.
I made a sketch of the banding, remembering that the view was inverted through the eyepiece. I couldn’t see the Great Red Spot.

The sky was lightening as dawn approached, and Venus popped up over the hillside to the East. I tracked and observed that for a while, observing it shining brightly at half phase.
It was daylight by then and my fellow campers were starting to rise as I was packing up at around 6:20. I went back to bed for an hour or two.

Unfortunately Sunday evening was pretty cloudy with quite a bit of mist so no observing that night, just a bit of a late night ukulele singalong around the campfire instead. It turned to rain about 1:00am so there was no late night/early morning viewing to be had. It was worth taking the scope with me though, for the views of Jupiter and Venus the previous morning. It’s just a shame I didn’t know how clear the sky was whilst I slept else I’d have been up and out sooner to make the most of the dark skies.

Update: 10 September 2012. I was watching The Sky At Night this evening. In the night sky section, they were discussing Jupiter and how the Northern Equatorial Belt is rather thick and complex at the moment. The showed the image below, which I have cheekily screenshot from iPlayer, (inc the copyright for credit). I’m quite chuffed at the similarity between this and my sketch. I had noted and captured that thicker band.

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.