Geminids

Tonight was my first bona fide meteor shower. I don't know that I'd call it a shower as much as a trickle since I only saw about 13 spread out longer than 3 or 4 minutes each. I have a feeling the light pollution near my house was the main culprit, so I'm not overly downtrodden. I'd have liked to see fireballs streaking through the sky, but I saw 13 of them and that's worth mentioning. It doesn't help that it's midnight on a school night and 36° F outside. Sitting on a fold out sunbathing chair trying to stay warm isn't what I would call fun, but it was nice listening to the rustle of leaves and watching Orion climb in the night sky. It's enjoyable to revisit constellations I first learned a year ago and see how different they look now that I've been paying closer attention.

First Star Party

Tonight Harrison and I are heading to Lindale to participate in our first star party. It's only a couple of hours and we're only taking his scope (70mm refractor), but I'm looking forward to seeing how the Astro Society of East Texas conducts themselves. So far they seem like a great bunch of folks and I'm mostly just hoping to listen and learn. Once I get more comfortable w/ them I'll bring out the big scope, but it's too much of a hassle on top of me not really knowing what to expect out there.

New Telescope

My brother James basically gave me his astronomy stuff for super cheap, so now I'm the owner of a Meade ETX 90 w/ a nice eyepiece kit (much more complete than what I had). It's sad in a way because he gave me all of it, but that also means he can upgrade next time across the board. In any case here's what I'm learning so far.

My first scope was a Goto - this is a Goto. They have their advantages and disadvantages...

Alignment still eludes me, but I'm getting closer. Getting it polar aligned the other night worked pretty well and it sure was nice having Jupiter stay in the view rather than sneak out.

Batteries suck - soon as I can afford it I'm getting an AC adapter so I can stop worrying about messing with them. I'm always worried that I'll run out of juice and be dead in the water.

All in all the optics are really nice, but I do notice some strangeness near the edges that isn't apparent in my 10"

The eyepieces (Meade 4000 series) are much nicer than I realized and I need to back off on the TV's and enjoy these. The truth is... I can't see the difference being such a beginner, so why complain?

Still haven't gotten to the observe stage w/ this scope - still learning it's curve.

Anyway - I'm glad to have it, but I need some patience while I work out the technique for using it effectively. Then I'll work on taking some pics :)

Dark Sky Site w/ Amy

My wife Amy went w/ me to my dark sky site last night. We left around 6:30pm and got home about 11, so it was a pretty productive night. On the way the moon was a fingernail just above the road in the sunset and was very nice to look at. We arrived just as it started getting dark and she was a little worried since you couldn't really see the Milky Way. I assured her that in an hour it'd be much brighter and went about setting up. We brought the XT10 and all of my regular gear (EP kit, table, drummers throne, etc). I really need to build an observing chair, but for now I'm pretty happy with what I've got. Anyway... it's crazy how hard the constellations are to find when the sky is full of stars.

I spent a decent time showing off the easier things I knew I could find with no problem (Ring Nebula, Hercules Cluster, Andromeda Galaxy w/ naked eye and telescope and the Double Cluster). It's crazy how much brighter all of the DSO's were, but that's what a dark site is all about.

New stuff we saw...
M22 - in Sagittarius was a nice globular cluster
M8 - Lagoon Nebula was perfect in 15mm (note to self... need a 2x barlow instead of 3x)
M33 Triangulum Galaxy - sort of between Andromeda and the Triangulum... man this thing is dim even out there! It's not much to see optically, but I saw it finally!

All in all we had a great time! I spent almost 2 hours w/ the telescope and Amy enjoyed the overall sky with tons of stars (and a few meteors).

Happy Birthday to Amy and happy Dark Sky night!

Good Seeing (w/ the exception of neighbor lights)

So... I desperately need to build an astronomy blind. I've got the plans and know that it's mostly PVC pipe and tarps, but I need to actually do it. I checked the weather and had clear skies tonight. I get out there and it's nice and dark (for in town that is). Then right when I was checking out Jupiter my idiot neighbors decide to turn two flood lights on. I grumbled, went inside to get my hoodie and made some attempt to soldier on. Here's what I saw...

Andromeda's Galaxy - much brighter than usual. The galactic center looked almost like a fuzzy star for all it's brightness.

Double Cluster - looking nice in my 32mm and also looked at Stock 2 that had a line of bright stars pointing to it (from the Double Cluster).

Jupiter - with it's single stripe (currently) it looks sort of unreal, but I had good seeing and think I saw the spot. Hard to tell, but I definitely saw 4 of the moons.

Uranus - pale blue dot - the only reason I know it's not a star is at high enough magnification it appears as a circle. :)

Can't talk about the conquests without mentioning the failures. I need some GOTO I guess, but I spent about 15 minutes attempting to find M33 (Triangulum Galaxy), but couldn't.

Bright spot to end on - Pleiads appeared again so that marks my first year observing (since it was up when I started) :)

Zenith viewing w/ a dob :(

For all it's aperture, there's not much fun to be had attempting to view at the Zenith with a dobsonian mount. Lots of moving around the scope to get the spot that works, but I did see what I was after.

Albireo - Double star in Cygnus was a very pretty orange and blue/green set. They are cherished by telescope folks and I can see why. The contrast is beautiful.

Dumbbell Nebula - once again my hopes are slightly out of alignment w/ reality. Nice round blur, but no color that I could discern. It's fairly large at least and made me want to visit my dark site to see what it "really" looks like. In any case I think I'm going to have to break down and get an astro-photography rig before much longer ($$ willing).

Jupiter - big and bright, but the seeing wasn't too great as it swam in and out of focus.

Uranus - tonight I found it without any help :) nice blue dot passing through my eyepiece

Neptune

I just spent an 1.5 hours looking for one target. Neptune is so small in my telescope that I had to spend about 15 minutes looking at it to make sure it was a planet. It was a circle, but not a very big one. It definitely had a blue tint to it (similar to this picture someone made w/ a 10" SCT and stacking multiple images. I wish I'd taken it, but this gives you a pretty decent idea of what I saw.



Right now it's located between Aquarius and Capricorn, but it's not a straight shot from anywhere in particular, so I had to really stretch my star-hopping abilities to get to it. Anyway... I'm beat down and proud to say I've seen every planet (now that Pluto has been demoted). I'm proud and think I've justified my hobby to some degree :)

Cassiopeia and Friends

Tonight being the Saturday night of Labor Day was the best night I've ever had in Longview. Perfect skies. Not necessarily dark enough, but very clear. It makes sense that now that I have a dark site to visit (1.5 hours away) my backyard wound finally give me some decent nights :)



M52 in Cass - just about perfect in 15mm w/ the XT10 - nicely framed w/ a little border of black around it.



Eta_Cassiopeiae - Double in Cass that most closely resembles our sun.



Jupiter in both 70mm refractor and 254mm reflector was bright and beautiful. I have to say through the refractor it's slightly nicer... just clearer, but not necessarily brighter. Makes me want a big refractor :)



Uranus - near Jupiter tonight, up and to the right. The only reason I could tell it was a planet was at higher magnification it became a circle instead of staying a pinprick (like stars do).



Andromeda Galaxy / M31 - Finally a faint fuzzy that I originally saw with my 5" Celestron. Bright in 15mm, but always blurry. Makes me want an imaging setup :) there's always Christmas



Double Cluster - perfect through 32mm - nice and bright with distinct stars.

Perfect and on a Holiday no less!

I've never seen it this clear in my area. Ever. :) Now if I can just get some viewing this weekend (Labor Day...)

View from the eyepiece - Moon

New Observing Blog

This is my new blog for stargazing. I've pretty much decided that's all I'll end up blogging about unless the kids do some particularly funny/frightening. In any case I'll most likely be moving old posts from my old blog to here that are Astronomy based. They'll be older, but have my observances for the past year, so I want them all in one place.

Scorpio (A)

Tonight I paid a visit to Amy's parents house to feed their dog. Mostly I was just wanting to take advantage of some dark sky on a clear night since it's been weeks since I got any decent nights for telescope time. I didn't have the guts to lug the big one, so I took my 70mm (basically one half of my binoculars) and tried it out. With a dark sky it's pretty awesome. I can see wanting a slightly nicer grab-n-go scope, but this one isn't bad at all.



I had a nice view to the South so tonight I spent some time getting to know Scorpio. It's actually a very cool looking constellation and has quite a few nice DSO's near it.



M4 - looked nice through the scope and then with binos was easy (keeping in mind that my binos are 70mm too - small scope, big binoculars).


Scorpious Jewel Box w/ binos was very pretty... two globs of stars on top of one another.



M7 (right) - looked like a 3d X made of stars almost, lots to look at and I spent quite a while looking at it.


M6 - not as nice as M7, but nice with binos


M8 - Lagoon Nebula - as nice as Orion's Nebula (nearly) :)


M20 - Easy to spot with lots of clusters around


And lastly... tonight I saw the Milky Way for the first time and recognized it - faint, but unmistakable :)


Lagoon Nebula (M8) below..

Jupiter (A)

Stacked w/ Registax - this is about 36 frames of an HD video stacked up looking through two filters (polarizer and blue). Not mind blowing, but not terrible either...

Telescope Mods (A)

Tonight is the first time in probably a month that I've had the sky and time to do any looking. Here are the mods I've made since last time...

• New 15mm Televue Plossl EP (so now I've got a 32 and 15)
  
• Flocked Tube - Amy helped me apply the synthetic black velvety stuff to the inside of the scope to completely kill any stray light. Seems to work ok.
  
• Cooling fan - new fan mounted on the objective mirror (one on the bottom) is supposed to help get it to the right temp which helps in seeing.
  
• Milk jug washers on the base - these allow the telescope to pivot on the center and move very easily (way easier than stock). Makes minute adjustments less of a study in chip opening (narrow window of force between opening the bag and making it explode in a shower of chips).
  

80° and Humid enough to swim around. I took a chance and ran to Walmart to get a ThermaCELL butane mosquito repellant device. It's about the size of an old wall mount phone and emits some sort of odorless thing that runs them off (at least for 15' square). Seemed to work ok, but I got a few bites I know... maybe I should have given it 15 min to get started before diving in.



Spent some time looking at M57 - the Ring Nebula. Huge in the 15mm w/ the barlow in place (240x magnification) - man I wish I had a camera to show that off :)



the Summer Triangle is easy to see looking up at 11pm towards the East - formed by Deneb, Vega and Altair.



Since it was fogging on the moon I ended up looking at the Double Double in Lyra (two sets of double stars).



Man I can't wait till winter and less cloudy nights along w/ fewer mosquitos :)

Hercules, Lyra and Aquila (A)

My list of choice Messier objects coupled with the free monthly star charts from skymaps.com (righteous) are making it easier to determine the best catch of the night for my location / time of year / time of night.



Right now Hercules is high in the sky when I finally get outside (10pm or later), but I don't mind waiting since it's pretty hot until then when some cool breezes start lending me their help. Near the keystone of Hercules we looked at M13 - the Hercules Globular Cluster commonly called "Best Globular in the Northern Skies"... it doesn't suck too much at all. This is where the 250mm beats down on the 70mm since I couldn't really get much closer than the 20mm in the refractor, but w/ the big dob I went all the way to 15mm w/ 3x Barlow (240x magnification) which showed me individual stars :)



Lyra - saw the double double (one is stacked up and one is side to side).




Ring Nebula - while looking at Lyra I noticed this DSO and it's the one you see in the picture books... Here are two pictures of it (one that's almost like it looked for me and one that's a hubble level badass).



Here's the badass...




It's so amazing to actually see a smoke ring floating through space with my own eyes and absolutely no artificial shenanigans at all (electronics, etc.).



Now on to Aquila (the eagle) - At it's tail is M11, the Wild Duck Cluster... named for it's V shape through binoculars. Lots of stars that are easy to differentiate, but the shape is definitely asymmetrical.



Scorpius - Saw the three stars that make up his claws and identified it - that's pretty much it.

Help from Cloudynights.com folks (A)

So I've been a little bit down mainly due to not being able to resolve anything on Mars. I registered on the forums for cloudynights.com a while back (huge astronomy forum website w/ tons of international/professional/amateur folks on it).




So... I figured I'd ask the powers that be if I was just out of line expectation wise. Turns out... noone is seeing much of anything on Mars right now due to it being so far away from Earth. In 2012 it'll be close again and will allow us to see something, but considering it's 1/2 the size of earth and pretty far away (see pic).



Anyway... they were hugely helpful and gave me a ton of tips and DSO's (Deep Sky Objects) that I need to be checking out to get the most out of my telescope. Tonight was more productive than usual because I didn't bother trying to eke out 8mag galaxies and went for the ones they'd mentioned that were in my line of sight.



12:30am 5/29/2010 - 73° with a full moon to make my eyes hurt when I'm not in the shade.



I started with binoculars thinking, "I'll just take a peek for a little while... no harm there", but eventually had to get the big gun out because it's just too clear and nice to not to.



My binoculars are basically like having 2 70mm telescopes on your head with magnification of 15x (Celestron Sky Master) and are bad ass when you can keep them still.



M13 / 5.7 magnitude - in the "keystone" which is part of the constellation Hercules, through the binos was a nice fuzzy ball, but using the Barlow (3x) and 15mm (for a total of 240x magnification) was a beautiful cluster of stars. Had the moon not been out smacking me about the head and neck with a broken bottle it would have been gorgeous.



Draco V - nice double star described as cat's eyes (looks like Derek Riggs handiwork) - very nice at 112x magnification (32mm).




My last constellation was Aquila (which has an alpha of Altair) and the nearby Brocchi's Cluster, called "The Coathanger". I couldn't find the cluster w/ the scope, but with binoculars it totally looked like a coathanger with 5 stars on the bottom and the hook made from another few.

Full Moon Feber (A)

So... it's hot and muggy/buggy and I'm doing my best to tolerate the full moon :(



Seeing wasn't great, but I was looking to the west to get some Mars/Venus action and I've got trees overhead, so you get what you get.



Venus - white and featureless (no big surprise since no one ever sees much when looking at Venus, still... it was nice getting up close and seeing a big white ball rather than a small white ball.



Mars - orange and featureless - the seeing was particular bad for this target and it was very wavy to look at. I'm sure the heat was an issue, but nothing to be done for that... Checked out the Beehive Cluster with my new 32mm Televue and it was very nice. Usually I end up looking at it through binoculars, but this was a pleasant change. For some reason it looked like it had less stars or something. I'm sure it's just my imagination and the single eye vs. both eye effect.



Discovered that collimating with my new laser tool showed me that you probably need to do your alignment with the scope pointed in the right direction (alt wise) since the motion of pointing from down to up can flex the tube and cause the collimation to be off quite severely. A different mount might improve this, but who knows?



During collimation I realized I need some Bobs Knobs to go tool less.


Spent a little time looking for about 5 galaxies in Leo with no luck, but they were 9th mag galaxies and that's pretty faint. Need to study up on my City Astronomy book to see what targets are the least susceptible to light pollution. My new filter is blocking some light, but I can't really tell if it's working the way it's supposed to.



I'll be honest. Reading my astronomy books and reading things like "easy to see details in a small scope" is depressing since I can't seem to pull it off with my largish scope. I'm sure it's a skill deficiency on my part, but I've not been able to pin down the problem yet. Anyway - I'm still learning and having fun, but toting that big mama-jamba isn't easy. I think next time I'll have to drop the cash and get something w/ capability, but lighter and smaller... easy to say when I don't have the cash :)

Strange Luck, but good :) (A)

I received my new Barlow (3x) adapter and various other sundries (light pollution filter, etc.) and tonight I actually got to use them. Most of the time I end up with "new telescope syndrome" whereby the weather conspires to keep me from enjoying my new toys for a week or more. For some reason it ended up clear tonight. Humid and hot, but clear none-the-less.



M13 - located in the keystone (Hercules) this is the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules and per the Interweb... "Globular cluster M13 was selected in 1974 as target for one of the first radio messages addressed to possible extra-terrestrial intelligent races, and sent by the big radio telescope of the Arecibo Observatory." It's very easy to spot and I viewed it at all of my resolutions finding the 15mm w/ Barlow to be the closest without getting blurry or out of focus. I think if it hadn't been so close to the horizon I'd have seen it brighter, but still... a DSO is a DSO sometimes.



The new gear performed well. The Televue eyepiece and barlow perform so well it's hard to believe. :) I'm not so sure about the filter... we'll have to see in a more varied environment.

Televue to the Rescue! (A)

I received my first Televue brand eyepiece today. It's a 32mm plossl with a 50mm apparent field of view. That just means it's got a bigger view than a typical plossl (usually 40 or so). Ultimately it's a space window that lets you get a wide view of things and is 100% clear from edge to edge. My other eyepieces are clear in the middle, but get blurry on the edges, change focus, etc. This makes it particularly nice since moving my dob isn't necessarily smooth and easy. I just get the heavenly body on the opposite side of the scope and let it drift from one side to the other enjoying perfect focus the whole time.



M81 and M82 - FINALLY!!!! I saw them. I saw both galaxies at the same time and was overcome with joy as I've been attempting to see both of them for at least a half dozen outings. It doesn't help to read the words, "M81 is one of the easiest and most rewarding galaxies to observe for the amateur astronomer on the northern hemisphere, because with its total visual brightness of about 6.8 magnitudes it can be found with small instruments."



That statement makes me look like a dumb ass for not being able to see them. It only hit me now, but I should have centered up and went for the high powered look, but I can do that later. For now I'm just satisfied to have finally spotted them.



Corona Borealis - sort of a crown on it's side beneath Bootes... I spotted it and it just looked familiar so I looked in my book and sure enough it was the crown



M3 - Now we're talking! After looking at Bootes (Arcturus in particular) I started looking to the left and up to spot this globular cluster (big knot of stars basically). After going up in magnification (from the 32mm to 9.7mm, so 38x to 124x) I could actually resolve the stars instead of just a blurry patch in the sky. Incidentally... all Messier objects are pretty much "faint fuzzies" so they all look blurry to some degree.



Anyway - my new EP is awesome and takes advantage of the light gathering power of my telescope so now I can actually spot some DSO's (Deep Sky Objects) :)

Moons of Saturn (A)

Not a super night tonight, but I gave Saturn some time and enjoyed it's moons.


From left to right, Titan, Rhea, Tethys, Mimas (which I couldn't see because it's like right on top of the rings), Enceladus, Dione

Astronomy Shed (A)

So... I've successfully craigslisted our mower and trimmer (good idea wife!) to make room in the storage shed. I've swept it out and moved the gardening stuff to the other side. I still need to throw some stuff away, but this is a start. I'm planning on having half the shed for astronomy stuff since my huge telescope eats up as much space as it does. The upsides are more room for stuff and I won't have to wait for cool-down time since the scope will already be at ambient temperature. I'll be moving stuff out there tonight probably so we'll see how comfy it is once I get everything moved in. Now I just need to figure out how to attach wheelbarrow handles so it's easier to move around.

Snow on Sunday, Hot on Tuesday (A)

Conditions: Clear and quiet, no wind. Temp 59° or so. Only spent about 40 min out... clouds rolling in from the East.



Around Ursa Major

Coma Berenices - sort of a V shaped cluster, pretty through binoculars.

Arcturus - very brilliant yellow star -0.1 mag




Saturn

Saturn is in opposition right now (directly opposite the Sun, so supposedly as bright as it gets, even though the rings are flat). Saw three moons (Titan, Rhea and I think Tethys) near it and the upper and lower shadows near the rings. Man I need to get closer to that jewel...



Moon

Tonight the Moon is at 58% full - click to see current. I loaded up on three filters (red, blue and polarizer) just to look at it w/o getting the flashlight treatment. Once I got comfortable with that (even though stacking them that much makes it hard to keep them in focus... budget filters, feh) I enjoyed a nice view of the following landmarks.



Seas of Tranquility, Serenity, Fertility and Crises (all easy to spot... they are the dark spots on the upper right) - the cool part was seeing the little nub they landed on for Apollo 11. I've been watching "When we left the Earth" and those guys pretty much did the impossible... in less than 10 years even!



I think I saw the Maginus crater - either way it was a big one near the terminator (dark line coming over the Moon that pumps up the contrast) and had a splash back mountain inside just barely showing light.



The last thing was seeing a ridge called the Apennine Mountains which was pretty awesome looking. The best thing about the Moon is it's really close compared to pretty much everything else so you can see tons of details and it stays in view for a while. All in all a good night observing and I didn't spend more than a minute or two collimating so that's all good.

Clear Friday Night before Spring Break (A)

Conditions: Clear and quiet, no wind. Temp 55° or so. Spent about 3.5 hours outside over a few visits.



Mars

Tonight is the first time I've seen some features on Mars. Not clear and not distinct, but with my orange filter I could make out some dark patches (sort of like two dark bands near the tropics). I was looking at 124x and it was plenty bright enough to have gone further (if I had the eyepieces).



Around Leo

M65 and M66 - seen as very faint blurs (need a light pollution filter badly...) - averted vision is all that saves me on these. I constantly "mow" and move my eyes.



Around Virgo

Identified Spica, Corvus and looked into the "Realm of the Galaxies" only to be reminded... it's not dark enough here. Still good to be getting some more constellations under my belt, Virgo and Bootes are pretty easy from the Big Dipper.



Around Ursa Major (Big Dipper)

M101 - still no luck resolving this one... hopefully new filters / eyepieces will bear fruit. I might just have to take a trip sometime.



Mizar / Alcor - very pretty double, the second star in the handle of the Big Dipper. Mizar is actually another double, but only through the telescope (need a bino tripod badly).



The temperature was pretty much perfect, but alas... my attempts at sleep got me back in the house by midnight. If only I had a week of clear skies off and no one to tend to. Oh well... it's not a race ;)

FM 2276 In-laws house (A)

View Larger Map
Last night Amy and I loaded up the kids (and telescope stuff) and went to Henderson to do some gazing in a decently dark area :)



Conditions: Clear and quiet, no wind. Temp 50° or so and only slightly humid. Spent about 3 hours outside.



Around Leo

Beehive Cluster - looked with binos and scope... this is one target best seen through binoculars and the problem is... showing other people is hard because I don't have a bino tripod and they sometimes had trouble finding stuff.

M65, M66 - two 9th magnitude spiral galaxies (translated... little blurry clouds that are hard to see unless you use averted vision to make them pop out). These are what dark skies and a big aperture are for!




Around Orion

M78 - 8th mag nebula, almost looks like a scratch on your telescope

Orion Nebula - Enjoyed looking at it with real darkness, the wispiness was much more apparent than in the backyard.




Mars

At the zenith we've been observing with about as good of "seeing" as we can expect, but I'm convince we just don't have enough magnification to see any detail. I can't wait to get a 5mm eyepiece so we can get really "up in the sky", but the one I want is wide view (70° as opposed to 40° traditionally).


Saturn

We ended up looking through some trees so that knocked down our brightness some, but it's always fun to hear someone's reaction to seeing Saturn for the first time. Everyone knows it's up there technically, but almost no one expects to actually see it with their own eyes and nothing but pieces of glass making it possible. Saturn is 746 million miles from us. To put that into context (a bit) go around the Earth 30,000 times. The only reason we can see it is because it's big (about 10 times larger than Earth).


Anyway... it's fun to see people react :) and Amy's dad is no exception.

Splitting Doubles / Quadruples (A)

Apparently double stars are pretty common (moreso than I thought at least) and a neat thing to do when stargazing is to split doubles. Basically it means looking at what appears to be one bright star and using binoculars / telescope to see that it's in fact two. I think it's always interesting when you see something with your eyes and then through the optics it's a whole new world :).



Anyway - another thing my new book says is that you get more out of looking if you take notes on what you see and sort of "collect" experiences that you can look back on later. (so here goes).



Conditions: Clear and quiet except for bats, geese migrating and hot rods / motorcycles on the loop. Temp 50° so it was relatively comfortable and I ended up spending maybe 2 hours outside looking up.



Around Ursa Major (Big Dipper)

Alcor & Mizar - double with binos

Cor Caroli - nice double with scope and 15mm eyepiece

Coma Berenices - nice open cluster w/ binos



Around Leo

Watched migrating geese at night through binos - beautiful and a huge formation way way up there... I could barely hear them.

Algieba - double with scope

Beehive Cluster - easy with binos, went right to it



Around Orion (through the trees pointing West no less)

When looking at Orion I pretty much always check out the Orion Nebula immediately... this time I focused within it to see the trapezium (quadruple star in the middle of the "bloom")

Alnilam - quadruple with scope and 9.7mm eyepiece (beautiful and I even saw the 10.3 mag teeny one)

Rigel - Double, but hard to tell... looks like a single oval star so I didn't technically split this one



Saturn

Yellow Filter - showed shadow on planet above ring (lit from below)... or cloud bands (I'm guessing shadow since it's pretty sharp contrast-wise)

Blue Filter - pretty blah... almost uniformly smooth and hard to see detail at all

Orange Filter - middle of the road, the Yellow did best, but I didn't attempt with the polarizer (moon filter) to knock down the glare.



All in all I'm happy with what I saw and how much I observed happening (sound, stars, planet, etc.). More later... the sandman is calling me :)

Today and Tonight (A)

Now that I'm old (37) I went to the Doctor today. They took blood, pee, measurements, etc. and will do the rest later. Basically I'm expecting them to come back and tell me I need to lose weight and take pills (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.). The only upside I can see is that in an obese country the numbers should be on my side keeping the cost of the drugs down. Who knows... maybe I'll be able to get out of it by going back to the gym (no breath holding)...



Pretty clear night - really wet outside, but with rubber boots all things are possible. Looked at the Beehive Cluster again (with binoculars) and looked at Mars through the dob. It's looking clearer tonight, so that was better. Still a pale orb, but this time it was even clearer and I could swear that I saw a little bit of detail on it... since it was wet I put down a piece of plexi-glass we've had for a while. It has a side effect of making the scope jiggle around, but I have no desire to get my base wet and without a night concrete area that's what I have available. I need to find a place nearby with level concrete and no lights.



Anyway - ended up peeking through trees and getting little to no love that way. I'm giving it a couple of hours and will go out and try to see what Saturn looks like more to the zenith. As clear as Mars was I imagine Saturn will be even better. :)

First shot w/ the 10" Newtonian Reflector (A)

So... they aren't called Dobs for the scope, but for the mount. I learned that today reading my most excellent field guide (NightWatch). Tonight was clear and pretty damned bright due to a full moon acting as a spotlight pointed at my eye. That being said I still made some strides.



I spent over an hour collimating the scope for the first time. There are basically two mirrors that can be out of alignment (thus giving you not so great performance). Collimation is the process of aligning them and making sure that it's all kosher before you get out under the stars. Now that I've done it the manual way I totally want a laser collimator (just because it makes it easier and faster).



Initial feelings for going from a 125mm (5 inch) to a 254mm (10 inch) were a little disappointing. Sure it's big, but I looked at a few things and didn't get any noticeable difference. Orion's Nebula, check - looks the same... maybe slightly brighter, but with a full moon who the hell can tell? Pleaides, check - now I'm noticing that the entire sky is grayish yellow instead of just dark gray (since I'm in town it never gets super good, but new moon with decent seeing is the best).



Mars. Oh how I want to see anything on Mars. It looks like a bright circle... that's it - pretty much the same view I had before, but now that I'm realizing the light from the moon is killing me it's not so bad. One proud moment... when looking around with my binoculars I noticed and identified the Beehive Cluster which was cool.



So... I've Ebay'ed my retail $699 computer scope and now I'm using this monster on full manual with zero computer help at all. It's got 4 times the light gathering capability and twice the aperture. It's not small. I'm expecting to see Hubble stuff with it and I'm let down (which I think is a lot to do with the light of the full moon, but whatever). That is... until I see Saturn.



Saturn has been getting a lot of crap lately because this year it's rings are on edge to us which makes them thinner. I have to be honest in saying that no matter what tilt it has, Saturn is one of the prettiest sights a telescope can offer. Previously I'd looked at it with a 25mm, 15mm, and my 9.7mm (which being the highest power meant basically 128x magnification and was blurry and hard to see). It might be the collimation or it might be the scope, but Saturn was great looking at 123x :) I could see the shadow beneath the rings and because this scope is manual I basically put it at the top of the ocular and let it drift all the way across w/o touching it. That way I could see the "seeing" change from turbulent to smooth (and thus give up some more detail). I put some filters in play to tweak it (polarizing one for the moon / glare, yellow to just pump up the details) and it looked even better.



Score for the Newt! Now if I can get a night like this w/o the G.D. moon kicking my butt :)

Learning Guitar (G) and Astronomy (A)

Last night I started using this exercise to begin the fingertip toughening that I'll need to play for real. Here is the site.



Also, I'm starting with AC/DC Back in Black (thx to James) and I've got a little bit of Fell on Black Days as well. Chords I'm learning... E, D (tricksy), A.



It's killing me to wait on the new telescope. Since yesterday was patch day I went up on the roof of my building to see if the seeing was any better... nah - way too much light. On a plus note I'm enjoying my binoculars more and more (mostly whenever I can find something to prop/steady them on).



(the notation in the title denotes this as a minor blog post just documenting where I'm at in that particular hobby, regular observations won't have that)

Astronomy Fun

So... I'm waiting to get my new telescope and it's back-ordered till the 26th. I'm going from a Computerized 5" aperture to a fully manual 10" aperture. The truth is I never really got the alignment to work as well as I'd have liked to. It was never centered when I got done and always seemed to take way longer to align than to do any viewing.
Click here to check out the new scope :)



So tonight I finally had clear skies enough to look around and I was rewarded decently. With my binoculars, I found the Beehive Cluster pretty easily and with the aid of my Adirondack chair was able to look at it for a while w/o killing my arms. It's times like these I wish I lived in the woods (or had access to the power grid). :)

Remote Controlled Telescopes / One more reason to learn Italian

Having had a telescope for a month now I've been enjoying looking up from my backyard and from a few darker places (In-laws field, my mom's house). My brother gave me some new eyepieces at Christmas that he'd been using (he's got a bunch) which then gave me a total of 3 (9mm, 15mm, 25mm) which give me 3 powers of magnification (138x, 83x, 50x). Now having a big aperture matters to me way more since the higher the magnification the smaller the opening (and less light can come through).



So... I've gone from mostly wide field viewing to some deeper looks that have shown me the rings of Saturn pretty well, stripes on Jupiter, the Orion Nebula and when I look hard enough the Andromeda Galaxy (little blurry cloud by eye). It's come to my attention that just like CG movies (which are really just a bunch of still frames knitted together and take months to render), astronomers use cameras to "look" at space. You can see things with your eye, but having a camera allows you to go further and coincidentally is how many astronomers do their job.




This pic is of the Andromeda Galaxy using the GRAS 3 (http://www.global-rent-a-scope.com/) which isn't really that much larger than mine. Theirs is a 160mm and mine is 125mm. Their's is all super wicked and has special coatings (hence it's a $30k telescope), but due to having a free trial I get to play with it. Anyone interested needs to jump on the bandwagon since I've already gotten 3 sessions out of it and I'm only about 1/3rd through my alloted time/points.



Now I'd be lying if I said that's what it looked like to begin with - it was a black and white image and I through some color in to show off the shape of the galaxy a bit. That's a 10 minute exposure (tracking obviously).



Anyway - I'm having fun and I can't wait to get my adapter to take pics on my own (physically). :)