Saturn-by-Chance

HST Image - NASA

Friday night I ventured out to my semi-dark site at Bar-X for our monthly club stargaze. While it was a disappointing show for the club, with only one other member attending, it was a good night for sky watching.

The "star" of the night was Saturn. Those that know me, know that I am not a big planetary observer. However, I always turn the scope to one or two of these heavenly orbs every time out, usually during the alignment process or just while waiting for full darkness to arrive.

Towards the end of the night, Saturn was positioned  with Virgo, high in the sky in an area where there was absolutely fantastic seeing conditions. I turn the scope onto it just to check it out before packing up for the night. Wow!

60mm Refractor

The view in the eyepiece took me back to the first time I saw Saturn through a telescope, probably 35 years ago. The scope was a 60mm refractor that I had begged my parents for weeks prior to one Christmas. Mom and Dad came through and that scope launched my life long interest in the hobby.


Friday was the first time that I had seen the ringed gas giant through my new scope, the Celestron CPC800. The image was incredibly crisp. I pushed the magnification up to 330X with my 12.5 mm eyepiece and a 2X barlow. The detail of the rings was amazing! The dark division in the ring was clearly visible and the planet took up nearly 30 percent of the field of view in the eyepiece.

 Never before, has the image of Saturn been as big in the eyepiece as it was Friday night, nor was it as clear.  This was a true testament to the quality of my new Celestron. In the future, when the sky conditions permit, I will definitely make more time in my observing plan for Saturn and its heavenly siblings.

Clear skies;
rw

Texas Star Party - 2012

Well, it has been some time since I have blogged here, Some of that has been the rather poor observing conditions we had in February and March, but some of the reason is I just got plain lazy. Well I am going to pay for that as I have a couple of star parties to catch you up on.

The first I want to tell you about is the Texas Star Party held April 15th through 22nd. I departed for this year's TSP on Saturday with a planned stop over at the North Llano River RV Park in Junction Texas. This was about a six hour drive and left me a four hour drive on Sunday. This looked like it would worked out perfectly as the gates at the Prude Ranch would not open until noon, and I would be able to get a good night sleep. Well, that was before a storm front blew through that night with 40 mph wind gusts that kept up until the wee hours of the morning. In reality, I only got a few few hours of sleep before sunrise. Sunday would prove to be a long day.

Sunday brought more wind as I headed west towards Fort Davis, however, the skies took on that royal blue color that comes as the air dries. The clouds were gone and it was looking like a good start to the week.

I arrived at the ranch around 1pm and went through their efficient registration process. I made my way up to the upper observing field and found a spot for my tent on the south-east side. With my tent and scope all set up, I sat back and relaxed with a cold malt beverage.

Sunset was not until after 8 o'clock and so it gave me some time to plan the night's observing run. The plan was to concentrate on John Wagoner's TSP 2012 list and if possible, to complete it before turning in.

The really cool thing this time at TSP was the fact that I had my laptop connected directly to my Celestron scope through a USB/serial adapter. This allowed my to select the object in Skytools and the scope would automatically slew to it. The scope's goto functioned flawlessly. Kudos to Celestron for such a great product!

So, I progressed with the list pretty efficiently completing all but the last four objects before midnight. The remaining four objects were all globular clusters in Ophiuchus. They would not be above the horizon until after 1:30. So, I had some time to kill. Time for one of those famous brisket burritos at the snack hut operated by the ranch. One of these would give me the necessary energy to push through the next two hours.

The globs finally made their appearance and I shut down the scope at 2AM with 34 objects logged. Showpieces of the night were: M13, M82, M90, and M100. Here is M90 from the DSS database.

With temperatures dropping into the low thirties, I crawled into my sleeping bag thankful that I had brought my Canadian Winter sleeping bag.

Monday morning came with crisp cool air. I waited until the sun was above the local horizon before I ventured outside. The day quickly warmed up to a comfortable low 70's with another cloudless royal blue sky.

After a hearty Prude Ranch lunch, I wandered over to the activity hall where the TSP was conducting their registration. As usual, John Wagoner was perched outside the door to hand out pins to the successful candidates who had completed the observation lists. I gave John some good humor trouble for including objects with such a late rise time, complaining that he kept me up too late. He smiled a little devilish smile and offered a sarcastic apology. Pin in hand, I completed the registration process and headed back to my tent to try and get some shut eye.

Monday night remained clear, but not so cold as the previous night.  With the TSP 2012 list completed, I concentrated on making progress on my Herschel 400 list. I worked on the faint fuzzies of UMa, CVn, Com,  Leo and Vir. The night ended shortly after 1AM with another 33 objects logged.

The best view of the night was NGC 4565. This is a beautiful edge on galaxy in Comma Bernenices.  Here is the DSS image and my eyepiece impression:


Sirius Plössl 40mm, 51x
Large, edge on, 15' long, definite brightening towards non-stellar core.
Smart Astronomy EF 16, 127x
Very nice, fills up over half fov (>14'), nucleus is non-stellar, bright halo, visible dark lane along the disc.


I will save the remainder of the week for the next edition of my blog. Check back next week!


Clear skies
rw 

An Evening with the Hunter's Sword

Well the weekend of the New Moon in January was a total washout. It was totally clouded over so by the time of the first quarter, I was itching to get the scope out even if it was under less than ideal conditions.

Thursday evening looked like it was going to be good but it had been a really long week at work and so I was reluctant to load up all the gear and make the trek out to the dark site. So, I decided to just set up in the back yard and enjoy some of the show pieces of the urban sky.

My target for the night was M42 - The Orion Nebula. Just about anyone who has looked through a telescope will instantly recognize this nebula. It is probably the most photographed deep sky object. I never lose interest in this object as it has a lot of detail and no matter what the sky conditions are it is always an eye-pleaser.

Seeing that I was observing from the backyard under less than ideal conditions, I decided that I would take the time to sketch this wonderful object. Sketching is a fantastic way to make the observer to take their time in observing the details. Case in point, I spent about an hour observing and sketching.

Now I am the first to admit that I am a little short on artistic ability, however, I was never the less pleased with the product of my sketch pad.

For those that have never seen this object through the telescope, be careful. You might just find yourself  with an inexplicable urge to invest in a scope and spend long moonless nights in remote areas looking for that elusive faint fuzzy.

Clear skies

rw

2011 - A Year in Review

Well, 2011 has come to a close and it is time to take stock of my endeavors in this hobby. I think it is useful to look back at the year and review what was accomplished. This is an exercise that I find very helpful to understand where I am going in the hobby and to assist me in setting direction and plans for the new year. Just like the resolutions we declare in our New Year celebrations, my plans I set out at the start of the year can sometimes fall along the wayside as the year marches on. However, planning is an integral part of my professional life and it has permeated into my recreational life as well. So how did I do on 2011? Well let's review...

I had a total of 21 observing nights in 2011. This is a 25% increase over 2010. I split these nights just about evenly between my local dark site and the three star parties I attended in 2011. With the exception of the star parties, It looks like I average about once per month observing at my local dark site.

In April, I attended the Hodges Garden Star Party hosted by the Baton Rouge Astronomy Club. While I would not describe the skies as extremely dark, the laid back and friendly style of the hosts and the beauty of the gardens is enough to place this party on my schedule this year, and with any luck I will be accompanied by my wife, Cindy, for her first star party attendance.

May 2011 brought the the Texas Star Party. This was my third trip to dark skies of Fort Davis Texas. This is usually the premier event for the year, however, the cloudy skies and area grass fires made the observing the poorest of my three trips out there. I am not one to be discouraged as this was certainly an "outlier" year for TSP and I plan on returning in April of this year. Hopefully the earlier time and wetter winter conditions will be more conducive to observing.

The highlight of the year had to be the Eldorado Star Party hosted by the Austin and San Antonio clubs.  I was able to observe four out of the five nights I was there. The skies for two of the nights were near perfect. This party is quickly becoming one of my favorites as the skies are usually really good and the drive is tolerable. It is on my schedule for October this year.

My log book shows that I logged 250 objects in 2011. This is an increase of 65% over 2010. So with only a 25% increase in the number of observing nights, I conclude that I am being more efficient with my observing time. I owe some of this to the voice recorder that I started to use last year, and some of it to the use of setting circles on my  Dob. I am finding it easier to find objects now. I expect to see another increase in productivity in 2012 with the CPC800's GOTO capabilities.

I logged 94 Herschel 400 objects in 2011. This brings me up to 40% complete on my H400 project. I suspect that with the CPC800, I may be able to double this number in 2012. With any luck I should be 75% complete by the end of the year.

Galaxies made up 40% of the objects that were observed in 2011. While galaxies held a lot of interest for me in 2011, I find that I am being drawn more to the beauty of globular clusters and the peculiarities of planetary nebulae. It will be interesting to see the distribution in 2012.

2011 also brought the opportunity to give a couple of presentations to my local club.  Beyond the Messier List was a presentation to introduce novice observers to additional observing lists like the Caldwell and Herschel lists.

The second presentation was entitled Halton Arp - Challenging Paradigms. This was a discussion of some of Arp's observations of peculiar galaxies and the uncomfortable theories he has espoused regarding the origin of red shift and the non-expansion of the universe.

So what will 2012 bring? Well I am looking forward to observing with the CPC800. I think that this will bring a whole new level to my observing by providing me with more time to observe as I will be spending less time "finding"

What about Zoe, my 10" light bucket? Well there is still room for her in my heart. I see a special place for Zoe in observing those fainter galaxies, galaxy groups and clusters where aperture and  field of view are king. Just as a golfer has different clubs in their bag for different situations, so does the serious amateur astronomer need different scopes for different situations. Cindy might be a little concerned with this analogy as she knows how many clubs are typically in a golf bag and I am certain she would bristle at the suggestion that I needed more scopes to adorn our living room!



Happy New Year and Clear Skies!
rw