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My ever-ending quest to view all of the Messier Objects in numerical sequence was recounted in some detail in the April issue of the Event Horizon, our club newsletter.

In that report, M79 had been found.

M80 rises late, and M83 at 9:30 PM, so finding them before the big day of the full Messier Marathon would mean i could get 'down to business' with the Virgo Cluster right away instead of having to wait a few hours. Also, M93 sets before M80 rises, so it was necessary to do some advance preparation.

It is possible to sight M80 from the steps leading from my porch to the driveway, between the house and some large trees. There was some 'mitigation' necessary in order to block the glare from the neighbor's porch lights due south of my porch. A leaf-bag hung strategically did the job.

The first night, i managed to spot M80, and the star field was sketched, but i could not recapture it when i tried again and the trees were coming in, and the star field did not match CDC enough for my liking. (When i sketch i look for triangles, stars in rows, angles, etc, and try my best to reproduce the stars near the galaxy location)

Trying again the next evening, it was confirmed definitively, and a more precise star field was made.

The Finderscope of the GWS is a 3.5 inch Nexstar and it's comparable to the scope that Charles Messier used for some of his early comet hunting, so it was possible that it was all that would be required for the next few objects. The finderscope can either attach to the GWS or be tripod-mounted. This allows it to be used for astrophotography, as well as quick setup viewing.

On my front lawn in Burlington, positioning the scope such that street lights were shadowed by intervening tree trunks in 2 different directions, and having the porch light blocked for good measure, I tried to find M81. It took 4 trips downstairs to check the sky charts and devise a star hopping plan, because very few stars were visible due to background sky-glow. M81 was found, and a star hopping scheme devised which works with stars of magnitude 7. M82 was in the same field of view, but near the edge. Being on a tripod, it was not easy to adjust the view. I could barely make it out, even knowing where it was. I definitely saw something but only intermittently.

So last night, seeing the CSC indicating some clear skies near midnight, I packed my laptop, tripod, Big Binoculars and Finderscope into the VW and set out for Lynden. At least if it clouded over I could go indoors.

First, I checked with Ann who said that from her location on Hamilton Mountain, the western horizon was clear, and the sky above was clear, but it was very windy.

While travelling, I saw a bank of clouds arriving from the north. Although it was clear over Hamilton, it was going to be cloudy by the time I got to the farm.

No matter, I pressed onwards. When I arrived it was in time to watch some TV, lament the sudden return of the clouds, and do some light yard work for my buddy.

I then watched the Toronto Rock beat Rochester 14-6, and when it was 1 AM I realized it was time to give up and go home. I had brought the Binoculars and tripod indoors, and had been sizing up the clouds at intervals during the previous hours. Some sucker holes but nothing that would allow me time to set up the GWS or even to plan a star hopping path.

As I left for home, with the Big Binoculars and tripod in hand, I noticed a large clear area to the north and west, and the wind blowing the zenith clouds away. Eager to re-confirm my sighting of M82, I set up quickly, and star hopped my way to the right place, using the diagonally opposite stars in the Dipper to get me to the area, and then spotting an asterism of 5 brighter stars that point the rest of the way. I had needed to learn these in the soupy skies of Burlington.

Tonight, M81 and M82 practically jumped out of the sky and into my telescope! I could easily see their shapes, and they had significant sizes. They matched the sketch made 2 nights earlier, for location, but for sheer appreciation of their grandeur, this was grand indeed. It's amazing how much more you can see in darker skies.

Having tried on Thursdsay night to see M83 from Burlington Waterfront Park (before 11 PM so as to not be in violation of the park rules), I had studied the charts and knew if I could find Arcturus, Spica, then I could extend the line to the next bright star, bearing a bit clockwise, and then there would be 2 more stars farther south. The diagonal between the leftmost of those two stars and my intermediate is neatly split in half by M83. On Thursday night there was so much cloud and haze that i could not make out any stars at all in the region i should be looking, although Arcturus and Spica could be seen, and my intermediate was just faintly discernible. I knew that i was not going to see any galaxies if I could only spot one star in the scope. But the practice paid off. I had a chance to apply what i had planned.

Pointing the Big Binoculars in the right direction, I was mildly surprised to see M83 looking back at me. Although I had been warned it was large and diffuse, (the RASC handbook lists descriptions for all of them) I could easily make out an area of nebulosity about a third the size of the full Moon.

I decided to sketch the star field, and confirm it later, rather than booting up the laptop and calling up the star charts to verify it on the spot, since the clouds were blowing in and i would not probably have enough time to try again anyways. Once the sketch was complete, i wanted to try with my finderscope on the tripod, in case the view might be more impressive. (the BB's are the same diameter as my Finderscope, but the finderscope can use different eyepieces).

I reached for the finderscope. Having only one tripod, and not much time, I balanced it somewhat loosely on top of my BB's and had a look. I could not point it accurately with glasses on, and switch to glasses-off viewing to see without moving it, so I refocused it for looking with glasses on. By then, the clouds were back, and that was a night.

On close examination of the star field using Cartes du Ciel at home, it corresponds perfectly with my sketch, and that M83 was in the right place too.

So my quest has chalked up another pair, and the next clear night will see me looking for a crowd of different galaxies starting with M84.

I'm back from vacation from Spectacle Lake Lodge, near Barry's Bay, Ontario, and, I can say that I couldn't have asked for better weather. I was up there from Sunday, September 21 to Friday, September 26, and I got 5 clear nights out of my 5 night stay.

Here are just a few of my images from my trip:

Jupiter and the Sagittarius Teapot set in the south-west on the evening of Tuesday, September 23, 2008.

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On to some of my more serious deep sky shots of the week:

This is an excerpt from my image of the Eagle Nebula (M16) in Serpens, taken on Sunday, September 21, 2008.

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The open star cluster NGC 6939 is at upper right, and spiral galaxy NGC 6946 is at lower left. These are in the constellation Cepheus, near the border with Cygnus. This is an excerpt from a stack of two images taken on Sunday, September 21, 2008.

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The open cluster M52 in Cassiopeia is at upper left. The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) is at lower right. This is an excerpt from an image taken on Monday, September 22, 2008.

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The Pleiades (M45) an some of their reflection nebulosity, in Taurus, taken on Tuesday, September 23, 2008.

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I will post larger versions, plus technical details for each, in upcoming days, after all my post-vacation laundry and my end-of-season baseball banquets have been completed.

I arrived on Sunday evening at Binbrook before 8PM, hoping to be set up and able to scout out M68, the next item in my Sequential Messier Marathon. Here's a picture of my team, in a huddle before the action began.

Ed had his ED80 on a tripod, and was watching for the first sign of polaris to get it aligned. I set up the GWS on the hill, after trying to estimate whether there was more horizon from there or from the newly made, excellent boardwalk beside the parking lot at the bottom of the hill.

I snapped some nice sunset pictures, as i waited for darkness. Ann arrived with Alex and Shaune, and proceeded to set up binoculars, and lent me a copy of Uranometria with all the stars i need to get there.

I had my excellent Flying toy saucer again, and it was again a big hit. It flies so high, it's like scary to think the wind is blowing it out over the lake, so i turn off the power and watch it come falling out of the sky, only to land with a 50m of dry land to spare. It makes an excellent photograph to do a time exposure as it ascends, because of the LEDs on its sides, spinning around. Here's a picture Kerry took on Friday evening.

A timed exposure of a luminous object can be impressive indeed

I had also used Cartes du Ciel to print out star charts with stars to 10th magnitude, to get from Corvus to M68. For reference, i also printed enough stars to navigate within Corvus, as practice.

As the sun got lower below the horizon, astronomical twilight started to end and more stars became visible. I strained to navigate the GWS along my designated star hopping path. It turned out that due to the residual sky-glow and extinction, my star chart had way more stars than the sky, and those in the sky were farther apart than the size of my finderscope, making star hopping a practical impossibility.

I guess an industrial approach would be to have a set of star charts printed with different limiting magnitudes. Use of a laptop computer to generate the charts onthe fly would be another option, at risk of losing night vision in the process. It turned out that the limiting magnitude through the GWS was about 8, and that meant that seeing M68 was going to be problematic. Atmospheric extinction at low altitudes of view really swamps the star field.

At about 10:22 M68 set, as viewed from ED's goto... i mean the location in the sky where M68 is was below the tree line. At the last minute i decided to try an astrophoto of the area to see if i could stretch something out of it. It turned out that at the bottom of the hill, the horizon is slightly lower.

After M68 had safely set, i fished up the chart for the 'Footprint Nebula' and started to star hop from Alberio towards it. Now, instead of too few stars, i had too many. The GWS was showing about 2000 stars in a field where the chart had about 50. Jackie and i painstakingly made our way towards it, and got there in a few minutes. I am certain the star field was correct. I made a sketch of the stars i could see and all were on my map. Unfortunately, even with a nebula filter, no nebulosity was seen.

By then, it was approximately midnight. For an experiment, i slewed the GWS (actually rather quick since it's a dob) down to the spot on the horizon where previously i had been looking for M68, to see if later at night, more stars are visible at low altitude. Even the mighty GWS could only see one star at the top edge of the trees, a far cry from the 2000 in cygnus. So my conclusion is that extinction is real and real nasty.

But not forever, in the case of M68. In early December, it will be a morning object, and i will be out looking for it then. In the meantime, i will be doing Astrophotography, sharpening my star hopping skills, studying some books and participating in the many public events the HAA has planned for the summer and fall.

Many sincere thanks to Jackie, who took my quest as seriously as i do, (or maybe even more so) Ann, and Ed, for being there with me as i tried for the impossible dream.

Steve
Aka Don Quixote searching up new windmills....

Hi All
A small band of the keener group traveled down to Cherry Springs P.A. for their Star Party. 9 intrepid star hoppers in all Steve G. and Kerry H. led off leaving on Wednesday to save camping spots for the rest and get an extra night. Thursday AM. they were followed by Ann T. Jackie F. John G. Ed S.and Jim W.,later that day we were joined by Glenn & Gail M. Shortly after arriving we made ourselves a light dinner of hot dogs and set up camp. We then eagerly awaited sunset. As the stars came out and the skies got darker, we were all "blown away" by the sheer number of stars in this pristine Dark Sky Preserve. I'm not going to go into the full description of all that we saw, I will leave that to more eloquent writers. Suffice it to say it was Magnificent!!!!!! The weather on the following days was not so co-operative, but we still had a wonderful time as we always do when we are together. This is just a lead-off blog to get things started. Others will post their comments and pictures shortly.

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From John

I put my little 80mm scope to good use and saw some wide field views of the North American Nebula, the Veil Nebula (all 3 parts at once!), the startling bright star clouds of the Milky Way and the nebulae of Sagittarius. Other scopes provided me with stunning views of the spiral arms of M51 and a view through a 32" scope belonging to a good fellow from Long Island, New York gave a picture-like view of M13. Breathtaking all! The remote location and altitude of 2400 feet provided a spectacularly dark sky and binocular views were equally stunning. I ended my one clear night by just lying on the ground and soaking in the vista of the night sky, one of the best views of all.

During the day good conversation was to be found with many other visitors from New York City, Boston and the many small towns of America. One, now know as Cookie Sue, walked from site to site providing cookies for all those in attendance and was happy to count herself as an honourary HAA member. She left the star party proudly wearing a Canadian flag pin. Although not so openly displayed, many of us left with an equal sense cameraderie with the new friends we made. In the end though, the best of times was thanks to the company of the great group of people from the HAA. Some of them will have astrophotos from the beautiful skies of Cherry Springs, but here are a few daytime images.

Welcome to the Cherry Springs Star Party!

HAA members Steve, Jackie, Jim, Ed, Ann, Glenn, Gail and Kerry. Visitor Roger has joined the best group at the star party, and John can be seen behind the camera. Oh, wait...

We were treated to a beautiful solar halo on Friday morning.

The beautiful Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania, home of the Cherry Springs Star Party.

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Update By KerryLH

What a wonderful opportunity to observe at this very dark sky site with some fantastic members of the HAA. I arrived early because I wanted to take advantage of the clear weather during the mid-week. I brought along my entire AP office, the 12in LB (FFI) and all my camping gear. I attached a few picks below of targets that I have really longed to image under really dark skies. With the help of my Astronomik CLS clip filter on my unmodded DSLR, I was able to bring out some really faint red Hydrogen Alpha.

Elephant trunk Nebula (IC 1396), Garnet Star Nebula: A large faint emission nebula in Cepheus imaged with the 80mm scope (425mm fl @f5)

...with a crop showing the elephant trunk

Rho Ophuchus: a large region of very colourful nebulosity around Antares and M4 in Scorpio. I imaged this on the second night with my 100mm lens.

Trifid Nebula (M20): only 4x5min taken with the c6 SCT.

Iris Nebula (NGC7023) : This one is very very faint. I will probably add more stacks to it over time so that I can show the very large and interesting dust cloud surrounding this star.

Link to higher resolution versions are in my latest image gallery
http://www.weatherandsky.com/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=101&g2_enterAlbum=1

Well last night was supposed to be very hopeful for observing. I had some HAA friends/regulars come over to do some observing on my driveway. I had the 12in LB out and my AP setup ready to go. There was a really nice turn out with three cars, a few extra scopes and 6 amateur astronomers (including me). Unfortunately we only had about about an hours worth of viewing before unexpected clouds developed over us. Even with the shortened observing session, we still enjoyed ourselves with great stories, cookies and hot chocolate.

IC405 and IC410

I managed to get this image of a faint HA region in Auriga (IC410 and IC405 flaming star nebula). I was very happy with the nebulosity that I was able to squeeze out of this considering I only had 4x4 minute frames (16min) with my unmodded camera and the celestron UHC/LPR filter. This filter is great!!! and I think it (or something similar) is a must have for unmodded cameras. I have tried this region without the filter and the red portions barely show and end up looking more of a dark burgandy colour. Originally I was hoping to get about 1.5 hrs of this target last night. Hopefully I will have more opportunities before it starts to set behind our tall trees.

KerryLH