UPGRADES AT THE GARDEN OBSERVATORY, 7 JUNE 2007

While members of a small local club were at the Steam Museum looking at a hastily set up older model glow-in-the-dark plastic POD, scratching their heads and wondering how their 6 foot 5 buddy could squeeze through its little doggy-door opening, I was observing at the Garden observatory.

Harvey Garden redesigned his observatory to hold a much larger Schmidt Cassegrain telescope on a permanent pier / wedge assembly in his back yard near Binbrook. We observed a number of objects tonight with a high-end binoviewer that he really liked. Of course, Harvey’s new telescope is an older “go-to” model… meaning he is getting very accurate using its setting circles to find objects. It’s great to have a permanently aligned telescope in a backyard observatory at a dark site, eh, Harvey?

So unlike a few others, I had beautiful views of Venus, Saturn and Jupiter tonight without having to squeeze my head through a small doggy-door into a humid glow-in-the-dark plastic POD at the Steam Museum.

RE-WORKING IMAGES AFTER TIM’S CLINIC

The software Tim suggested is challenging, but it certainly does help improve images, here’s a re-worked M42 from winter, diminished to 450 pixcels in jpg format:

I’ve put a wider angle version of my M101 shot from Spectacle Lake that I took on May 6, 2007, in my HAA Gallery page, as well as an image of M67 I took the same night. They’re now the first two entries in my album.

Another excellent night up in Tobermory. This time I started by imaging the setting moon and Venus while my dad and brother toured the sky with my GoTo.

Then I decided to do some visual observing for awhile too – such clear dark skies. Before packing up I shot 3 five minute and 1 ten minute exposure of a portion of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. On the full sized original I can make out over 30 positive matches for galaxies and about a dozen or so maybe’s.

Virgo Galaxy Cluster (Widefield)

Virgo Galaxy Cluster (Widefield) – labelled – see my gallery for large format image.

Ideal conditions greeted the 8 observers who came out to Binbrook last night. After turning away some May 2-4 campers, we set up in the parking lot by the boat launch and used the dwindling daylight to check out everyone’s equipment.

Ron Kitchen had recently finished building his 12″ truss-dob and treated me to excellent views of M3 and M13. New members Gary and Cathy Krevenky didn’t take long to assemble their SCT but needed a little help with alignment stars.

Steve Germann was trying out one of Mike Spicer’s loaner scopes, and guest Dean Inglis brought an 8″ Meade LX90. Rounding out the optics were Don Pullen’s 7″ Maksutov, Gail’s Starblast, and my 6″ dobsonian which provided the first views of the night when I spotted Mercury sitting in the haze above Hamilton airport.

It would be a good night for planets as we would also turn our glass to Venus, Saturn, and eventually Jupiter. We caught Io just before it transited the planet and, apparently, Mike Spicer caught it just after it was done. Other targets such as galaxies M65/66, M63, M94, planetaries NGC 6543 & 6210, and globular clusters M92 and NGC 6229 were found and enjoyed.

Just before midnight, Dean reported his scope had dewed up and we decided that it was as good a time as any to call it a night. Several satellites had been spotted and a coyote chorus had intermittently serenaded us. The temperature remained comfortable, the seeing and transparency had been in the upper range of good, and there were no bugs – that’s about as good as it gets at Binbrook and I’m glad we could take advantage.

Oh yeah, we also discovered a brand new, and very civilized, porta-john located by the pavilion at viewing area “B”. Could you ask anything more of a great observing site 🙂

From Dean Inglis;

Hi Glenn,

Many thanks for inviting me to the HAA dark site: well worth the drive, which incidently is 35 min from home contrary to my reported underestimate! I greatly appreciated your hospitality as Chair of the HAA and as a fellow observer.
Having a GOTO is fun and quick, but I was really quite amazed at your detailed charts and pointing out that planetary neb to me with your scope! Last night held several firsts for me: Mercury,Cassini’s division, the Leo triplet +++

Best regards,
Dean

Today was one of those rare occassions where I had a quiet day at work and the sky was clear. I decided to bring along my 100mm refractor, camera tripod and a solar filter. I had in mind to do a little solar viewing from the office parking lot.

Around 2:30pm I took a break from work and set up in the parking lot. I had seen some scattered clouds in the west and I didn’t want to wait until the sun set low enough to be affected by them. So with the sun still high, I set up the scope in the lot and took a look at the sun (thank goodness for the diagonal or my neck would be really sore).

The sky was pretty steady for mid-day which was nice and the breeze was light. I was very pleased to see a cluster of sunspots just off the equator. There were 2 medium spots and 3 or 4 smaller ones all grouped together. I started with my Skywatcher (Synta) 20mm LET eyepiece to give me a wide view. I then tried to zoom in on the spots with my 9mm LET, but I couldn’t get a good focus. I remembered I had borrowed a 12mm Xcel from Mike Spicer so I gave that a try. It did a great job of bringing up the spots in more detail. I could see some detail of the spot edges which was great considering the camera tripod isn’t the most steady mount I own.

I pulled out my camera to try and take some photos through the eyepiece by hand. Unfortunately I forgot to bring the transfer cable, so if the photos worked out, I’ll have to post them later. Maybe some other intrepid club member had the same idea and might have a few good photos to share.

Cluster of sunspots

A few curious people stopped by to take a look while I was observing. They were surprised that someone would look at the sun. And without exception, when they saw the sunspots, they asked if it was dirt on the lens. (I eventually got paranoid and had to double-check to make sure I wasn’t seeing things >just kidding.)

Eventually the work called me back to reality and I packed up. It was a nice afternoon break from work. I hope this evening at Binbrook will be just as rewarding.

The sky was hazy and very unsteady when I set up last night – I thought the CSC may have been wrong again – but by the time I finished aligning things had settled down considerably and the haze was mostly moved to the distant horizon. I only imaged M101 (Spindle Galaxy) and M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy) – although actually both widefield images yielded about 6 or so positive’s for other small gallaxies. I then decided to snap of an image of the setting Venus – it was casting a bright beam across the water. The beam was actually about twice as bright earlier but my camera was busy on my main scope and I didn’t want to disturb it.

Spindle (Widefield) – 3 x 4min and 1 x 5min @ ISO1600 on 80mm APO

Spindle (Cropped)

Whirlpool (Widefield) – 3 x 5min @ ISO1600 on 80mm APO

Whirlpool (Cropped)

Last night I figured I should do a little bit of stargazing since I may not have much time to do it in the next couple of days. Skies looked reasonably clear so I popped my Equinox 80mm APO on my camera tripod and attached my Rigel Quickfinder base to the scope by means of 3 elastic bands (oh horrors). After easily collimating the quickfinder I was on my way to finding several deep sky objects.

M13 globular – showed itself very easily in the 32mm EP. Could not resolve any stars even in the 10mm. I should have tried a higher power …
M82/81 galaxies – nice to look at.. but obviously doesn’t beat the 6in view
M92 globular – nice and bright. Much smaller than M13
M57 planetary nebula- took me a little while to find this because I wasn’t expecting it to be so small. It was easily mistaken for a slightly out of focus star (I was hunting it down with my 32mm EP at the time)
M65/66 (leo trio galaxies) – I was surprised to see these. I popped in the 10mm EP and the view was better. You could sort of make out the shapes. After, I must have spent the rest of my time out looking for the NGC friend but could barely make it out. I may have been imagining things! I guess this is where you need more aperture or even darker skies.

As you can see my list was very random. I was happy to see these objects since you wouldn’t expect an 80mm scope to be much of a deep sky hunter but it’s not too bad. I got a lot of satisfaction in finding them with minimal equipment (no GOTO). I was also so surprised that I was able to find them relatively quickly with the aid of the rigel quickfinder. They don’t call it quick for nothing… where was this invention when I was an 11 year old with my 4.5 in newt. Back then it took me an entire night to find a couple of objects.

I can see myself (maybe) using this set up for the messier marathon next year.

Anyway take care for now and have fun this weekend.

KerryLH

I posted three new pictures of the Antares / M4 area, the Leo Trio (M65, M66 and NGC 3628), and the M106 area (they’re the first three pics at the top row of my HAA album). I took these during my May 6 –> May 11, 2007 trip to Spectacle Lake.

Photo submitted by Peter McHugh.

My backyard view of the northern sky somewhere around 10:00 pm a week ago. I’ve marked the constellations and the pole star. I cropped out the house which was on right near the top. Image is 1.7 Megs. I know there is noise; I made no effort to remove it, but it still looks pretty good. It’s not too hard to visualize or imagine where Andromeda is and roughly when it will emerge in the north eastern morning sky – am I wrong?

The image is a very short focal length (14 mm / 28 mm equivalent in 35 mm format ) the stars would probably get lost if the image were to be reduced in size and resolution for our site. If you look closely at the stars nearer the end of the handle of the Big Dipper I have a problem (they are twinned – I can’t account for this; the shot was not perfectly tracked, but that wouldn’t cause the twinning). The effect extends down into the image a little and gradually disappears. Oh well.

Corrections were confined to exposure, curves, gamma, saturation, and gradient filter to reduce the bright glare from the city. My vantage is from the Hamilton Central Mountain area.

Note the very faint aircraft trail through the cup of the little dipper (roughly horizontal). You’ll have to really zoom in to see it.