Refresher Training on the 200mm Clark/Brandt Refractor and Quick Observing Session

On Saturday I got out to SPOC, the Stansbury Park Observatory Complex, the home of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society for a refresher training on the 200mm/8 inch Clark/Brandt Refractor (seen above). As you may recall, I finished training on the 16 inch Ealing Reflector. The only scope there that I need to train on is the 32 inch Reflector called the Grim. That I will do next year after giving the Ealing a good go this year and the Clark/Brandt. I set up to cool down before the training and went through the refresher training in about 40 minutes. I have to say that using the 200mm/8inch, the 16 inch and the 32 inch Reflector is a wonderful addition to one's membership in SLAS.

I then finished setting up and waited for dark. Venus was the first object and in the atmosphere was dancing around. I then turned to Saturn and the viewing wasn't that good at 240x. Finally, I just laid back on the sleeping bag pad I have to kneel and lay on, and propped the head and let myself dark adapt. I focused on seeing Leo Minor as that was the object tonight, and I wanted to go as soon as possible as the forecast was for clouds to move in.

NGC 3294 Spiral Galaxy in Leo Minor
5/8/2010
9:37pm.
Seeing III Antoniadi Scale; Mostly Clear, Cirrus clouds building
Mag. 11.7
Size: 3.5' x 3.7'
RA 10h 26m 3s
Dec +37 20'
XT10
13mm Stratus

This is a very, very faint galaxy. It is brighter on the inner halo or portion than on the outer shell or halo. The outer edges are diffused. No core is discernible though I do get a hint of some possible dark/dust(?) lanes. The sketch tries to really make how faint this galaxy is, I hope I succeeded in that somewhat.





































NGC 3395 (and NGC 3396) Mixed Spiral Galaxy in Leo Minor
5/8/2010
10:12p.m.
SPOC, Stansbury Park, Utah
Seeing: III Antoniadi Scale; Fair, Cool, some cirrus clouds building
Mag.: 12.1
Size: 1.6' x 0.9'
RA: 10h 49m 8 s
Dec: +32 59'
XT10
13mm Stratus @ 92x

This is a very faint galaxy that is paired with NGC 3996 which is also visible. It took averted vision to see it at first, then with patience both galaxies came into view. My home is close to the conditions at SPOC and it is the outer limits of viewing for this object. The galaxies are less than 1 degree apart. Averted vision as I have mentioned are needed and using breathing really helps to make out shapes and details. The core in NGC 3995 is stellar,though no actual center is visible; the halo is much dimmer and without breathing the halo is brighter than the core region, with the core visible only through averted vision. Breathing makes the core brighter also. A fun object to hunt down, I would like to see it from one of my darker sites. No core is evident in NGC 3396. This was confirmed by a fellow club member.






































NGC 3432 Barred Spiral Galaxy in Leo Minor
5/8/2010
Location: SPOC, Stansbury Park, Utah
Seeing: III, Mostly clear cool.
RA 10h 52m 5s
Dec +36 37'
Mag: 11.2
Size: 6.9' x 1.9'
XT10
13mm Stratus @ 92x

Relatively bright galaxy after the last two. It is elongated and diffused patch of light. If your patient and use averted vision with some brightening toward the core is evident. No discernable core is viewable. Two faint field stars seem to be embedded in the diffused halo. The clouds really came in on this object and it was the last object of the night. After packing up we went to "advance training" at a local Denny's to socialize (I just had a diet coke due to my celiac disease).

Missed Opportunity or a Good Night Out

The skies were pretty clear, and I knew they would clear more as we got into the evening hours. A star party at a school that was on the route toward one of my dark sites was occurring that night. I had signed up to participate and had taken my 16 year old son with me. We drove around trying to follow the directions and got lost. After about a half an hour, we both were about to give up and go to the dark site to observe on our own when we found the street. When we got to the school, there was no one there. One guy was walking around, and after waiting for 30 minutes we found approached him and he said this was the location. Based on this and conducting a star party once a month for my own program I offer the follow suggestions for schools hosting a star party. These are only suggestions and they are mine, so feel free to disregard or adapt what you want.

1. Provide a map with clear directions. People will support the star party but not if they can't get there.
2. Have a list of what time to arrive at. Since some will have dobs, please give them 1 hour to cool down. You as a school worker need to be there to direct them where to set up.
3. Have a designated area picked out, and have the parking lot lights shut off for the event AND if on grass during watering months, have the sprinklers turned off for that night.
4. Let observers and viewers know the time frame. Often after viewers leave the astronomers may want to stay to try out equipment, compare views etc. A closing time allows them to do this, and gives those who want to leave a time to pack and drive away.

Anyway, it was fun to watch my son show off Saturn, Mars, Regulus , M13 and a few other items. He only needed help one time and that was with finding the keystone.

I showed Mars, M66 and M65 and M97 that with the Ultrablock Filter, popped right off (an experience eye could see it without though rather easily). The cool thing this night is as twilight evolved into the night, I was on M66 and M65 and NGC 3628 popped out just like stars. It was a cool experience to watch the detail emerge from them.

So I traded a night of observing and sketching for a night of outreach. Was this a missed opportunity? Probably in the sense there just haven't been too many clear nights and may not be for a while. Was it a good night out? Definetly as the students, teachers, and the members of the club there all enjoyed ourselves and each other's company. Also, I got to look through some really good eyepieces, Nagler etc. and formed some opinions on them versus other eyepieces. That will be for another post. Hope the skies are clear for me and you tonight! No sketches though and I forgot my digital camera.

Edit: I guess I should mention what scopes I saw there. There was a Skywatcher 12 inch, an Orion 8 inch Reflector F4.0 on a mount, a 18 inch Obsession and two more SCT scopes that I didn't view through, then my 8 and 10 inch dobs. I looked through the SkyWatcher and liked the view and how the scope works. It was very interesting. The Obsession I mentioned, love the mirror and the setup, very good view.

If your new to astronomy, the editors over at TheOneMinuteAstronomer have a page for beginners. It is the Crash Course in Basic Night Time Observ

Publish Post

ing. The link above will take you there. They cover Day 1: What can you see up there. Day 2 How the Sky Moves Day 3: How to Read a Star Char and Mini Tour of the Night Sky. Day 4: Binoculars and Telescopes. Day 5: How to See Faint Celestial Objects/What to do Next. If your new I invite you to take a look at their site, they have some good information on it and this is a pretty good site for information. If your experience, but know a beginner, you may want to pass the link to them. Or you may choose to ignore. By the way, the weather isn't looking too good right now here. Sigh. I'm tired of clouds (first verse).

May 6, 2010 Quick Session; Saturn, NGC 3486, NGC 3405

Well the skies were clear though the jet stream was right above. I knew I needed to take advantage of the sky so I went out tonight. Over the last several days I have done some mods to my XT10. I added the milk jug washers to improve my azimuth motion and since then I just haven't been happy with the readjustment. So tonight I played around with it some more and think I got the scope finally where I want it. I'll take pictures when I do this to the XT8 and post them here this weekend, unless I'm observing.

After tweaking that mod, I am grateful I haven't flocked my tube yet. I have the material, just not the time to do that mod, though the weather has been more than favorable.. I will take pictures of that process and post them here. So after cooling ad playing around, I zeroed in on my first target, Saturn. I was able to barlow and go to 480x tonight and I sketched the gas giant, but won't be posting it here quite yet. My sketches look like nothing I have seen others as I haven't seen the bands on Saturn yet. Jupiter is easy for me, for Saturn, I have just seen an adjustment in color at three different locations. I'll post that sketch up tomorrow.


I spent a good hour on Saturn and really enjoyed myself there. If you can't tell, I am trying to expand beyond just a DSO observer, though DSO's have my heart.

NGC 3486 Mixed Sprial Galaxy in Leo Minor
May 6, 2010
Herriman UT
Seeing III Antoniadi Scale
RA 11h 00m 4s
Dec: +28 58
Mag: 10.5
Size: 6.6' x 4.7'
XT10 w/13mm Stratus @ 92x

I have to say that I took this one up to 240x, and at 240x I could see more of the size of the galaxy, but details fell off. So back down to 133x and the same thing. 92x showed the best view for me. The galaxy at 92x was dim at first, with a faint stellar core. Averted vision shows a halo around the corethat has some brightening to the west, perhaps a hint of an arm(?). I checked my star positions on both sketches here, and the first one for NGC 3486 is close, but not perfect. The second galaxy, NGC 3405 and surrounding stars was much closer to the mark.




































NGC 3504 Mixed Spiral Galaxy in Leo Minor
May 6, 2010
Seeing: III Antoniadi Scale
RA 11h 03m 2s
Dec +27 58
Mag. 10.9
Size 2.3' x 2.3'

O'Meara's reference directions are spot on. I'll get into specifics of my way later this weekend. I'm really hoping to let the blog go for a few days while I get some great observing time in. I need it to get caught up on my Herschel list. At 92x this is a dim galaxy that has a medium size core that is stellar in the middle. The galaxy is positioned NW to SE with a diffused halo around the core. No hints of structure for me in the halo. Averted vision reveals a bright inner core with a roundish and large outer halo. In March of 1998 a supernova was discovered in NGC 3504. This infra red image shows the galaxy before and when the supernova exploded. We always hear or read that this mighty explosions are as bright if not brighter than the galaxy they reside in. This image really shows this in the infra red. I thought it would be a nice tidbit to include on this object.




































One of the things I hate about my 13mm Stratus is that if my coat bumps it, the rubber eye guard comes flying off. It happened tonight and I noticed the EP Lens needed to be cleaned. I keep a rubber bulb in my eyepiece case and I learned a valuable lesson tonight. It was frozen! I need to keep it inside my jacket on these long and cold spring (and winter nights). I came inside with an eye patch on and got my backup bulb and blew some dust off the inner edge of the eyepiece. Then I carefully put the guard back on. This took about 30 minutes and at that time I decided to come in after just a couple of hours and 3 objects. Not a productive night in terms of objects, but I got the base worked out, and cleaned up my eyepieces after coming in so that made me ready for the weekend!

So not a lot tonight, but I finished up that portion of Leo Minor and am heading out to finish Leo this weekend (I hope) and head into Virgo! Clear skies to you.

Planetary Nebula, shapes and other info, Pease 1 next fall?

Well go figure. I go back to work after two weeks off and what happens tonight? The storms of the last 7 days end, and the skies clear. I spent the evening getting ready to go back . . . . :''o(

Go figure. My entry tonight and I am going to expand upon it tomorrow (or on the next cloudy night as I hope to get some scope time tomorrow evening) is on Planetary Nebula. A Planetary Nebula or PN is my personal favorite object to chase down, though galaxies come a close second. Ninety-five percent of all stars in the universe will end their lives as a Planetary Nebula or PN as I call them. The other five percent, while they just go out with a "big bang" so to speak. In classifying PN's they have often been typized based on their appearance, using the Vorontsov-Velyaminov scheme which is as follows:

1. Stellar Image
2. Smooth Disk (a: brighter toward the center; b: uniform brightness; c: traces of a ring structure)
3. Irregular Disk (a: very irregular brightness distribution; b: traces of ring structure)
4. Ring Structure
5. Irregular form, similar to a diffused nebula.
6. Anomalous form

Now there seems to be additional classification being added with the addition of such wonderful instruments as the Hubble Telescope. There seems to more classification being added to PN's.

Bipolar Planetary Nebulae
Elliptical and Round Planetary Nebulae
The Cat's Eye Nebula

An interesting side note is that per the quote below, many of the PN's have rings and other shapes embedded in them. I guess I need to find out if there is an updated classification to PN's? Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed

that many planetary nebulae have multiple layers, and these are labeled as “shells”
“crowns” and “haloes." These multiple shell structures are the dynamical consequence of
interacting winds and of changing photoionization effects of the evolving central star. Other
minor morphological structures include arcs, rings, jets, ansaes, and multiple lobes and they
probably reflect the episodic and/or direction-changing nature of the stellar winds.



Are you interested in the above informaiton? I am sure some of you are more than aware of this, but others may not be. Here is a link to follow to learn or see more:

Planetary Nebula Overview

Hubble News Releases and PN's Not all are PN's but many are. Check out the 2008 number 4, a white dwarf with a ring around it . . . see above.

Hungry for more, and more cool Hubble images of these objects? Here's one last good site. Just remember, in our scopes visually, we'll never see these objects like this.

HST Archives Hubble Images PN's

I really like the image of M27 in there.

Interested in how they transform an image our eye would see at NASA into a colorful wonder? This article shows how they took images of Pease 1 or Planetary Nebula K648 in Messier 15 and transformed it.

PN K648 in M15 Image Process

As Pegasus comes up, if your up for a very difficult challenge in viewing a DSO, then PN K648 or Pease 1 can provide that for you.

Here is a Finder Chart for Pease 1

Observation Reports of Pease 1

Note some of these individuals have a ton of experience in the deep sky and there are a few reports using ten inch scopes, and I believe one using an 8 inch scope but most were using 14 inch or higher I believe (been awhile since I have read all the reports).

There's a greater challenge for much larger scopes but that can wait for one more month and if you have access to a very large telescope.

If you can't wait to see more, here is a list of the best seasonal planetary nebula by season for both hemispheres:

Seasonal Planetary Nebula

Clear skies I hope to you.

Secret Treasure or Just Junk? Tasco 10x to 25x Astronaut Zoom Spotting Telescope

I think if those of us who are 30 or older, maybe 40 or older actually go through our closets we can find a lot of junk that we have held on to. There are old models I purchased to build, and haven't done anything with them. Coins I bought or were given that may or may not be valuable; old shoes, clothes, jewelry (thinking a few watches I either need to buy a battery for or donate to the Good Will) etc. Then there are those items of junk that connect us to our past, to people or events in our past that have impacted us for our lives. So, because the weather here is still cloudy, rainy and some snow falling every now and then, and I can't observe, I thought I would share a quick story about a secret treasure I have that some may consider junk.

I was born in 1965, so yep, I'm 45, just turned that age in April, within the last two weeks. In 1968 I was 3 when my Dad bought a Tasco Astronaut Zoom Telescope with a 10x to 25x zoom. You can see it in this 1968 Tasco Telescope Ad in the bottom right corner where the name of the scope, the Tasco 10x to 25x Astronaut Zoom 30mm Spotting Telescope for $14.95 is for sale. Now my father, who was in the Navy Reserve at the time, and had served actively in the Air Force, was a shooter and this telescope served as a spotting scope for him to see where he had hit the target while target shooting.

Here is an image. My father-in-law who is living with us, and suffers from moderately severe Alzheimer disease uses it to watch the famous Cooperton/Bingham Mine.


















In 1974 I was nine, and I can remember the moon being out, what I recognize now as just past first quarter and my Dad taking me out in the backyard with this telescope on his camera tripod to show me the moon through it. Now I grew up with the Apollo program and have memories of watching the Apollo landings on the moon, just bits and pieces. My Dad knew this and so on this night, he showed me the moon and a new world opened up to me. My Dad was pretty good about doing that, exposing me and my two sisters to new things, encouraging us to pursue what we were interested in knowing it could become a passion.

The scope on a camera tripod:






















Sadly, on June 22, 1982, as I was going into the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, my father passed away. No need for details, but it was from a heart attack, and he was only 45. At 17 people told me how young 45 is, but at 17 45 doesn't sound young. Now at 45, I realize probably more than ever before how young 45 is. How grateful I am though, that this 40 year old little telescope has survived, is still usable and though not a grand treasure, does act as a connection of me to my father.

On a local email message board, the question was asked, "What dirty little astronomy secret do you have?" I don't think mine is dirty, nor does it embarrass me. There are a few nights each year, that right around first quarter I take out this little gem, and really look at the moon and enjoy the views it has to offer. Magically, sometimes, I can reflect and still hear my father's voice as he pointed out some of the highlights on the moon. I'll even admit, being the sentimental type of guy at times, that a tear in remembrance of my father comes to my eyes, they mist, and for a moment, I truly desire to be able to hold a private star party with my father as we could examine the universe together now as adults.

I don't have my father, but I do have a wife, a son and a daughter. My daughter in the summer comes out and talks while I observe and I often find those conversations the most magical. She shares what is going on in my life, I share a view or two, but most likely in the end, I still on my observing chair and just listen and watch as this 17 year old girl is becoming a young woman. How awesome the views of the universe are, but how much more awesome is it to have been involved in raising my daughter and watching her grow and become her own person. Not always easy, as hunting down some objects aren't easy, but so worth it. My son, my summer observing partner, my star party assistant, will go with me and share in these views. In those moments we bond, and it reminds me to take time to be with him in the things that he values and treasures. My wife, she supports the hobby and takes a view once or twice a year and that's it. She never interferes and she communicates if there is something I need to be at so I don't plan a session or a trip on a certain day. Other than that, 99% of the time, she is fine with me doing my thing. Can't ask for anything better than that eh?

What's the purpose then of this post? I would hope that as you observe, and search and find the treasured objects of our universe, that each of you remember those you love, who mean something to you, and share both your obsessions with them, but also remember to share in their obsessions so that they may have a treasured moment with you after you have sailed forward into the great unknown. May your skies be cleared and the seeing good.

Original Box (the box is sitting on my wife's hobby . . . see why she doesn't complain! Yes, it's a baby grand):

May Herschel Targets Seasonal Planetary Nebula List

Well, I put together my list for May, though I never finished April's list. Let's hope the next two and a half weeks clear up better than the last month. I guess I should feel lucky I got in what I did!

Here is my Google Document for May. Just click on the May Target tab on the bottom:

Google Document May Targets

Here are some highlights:

NGC 4361 Planetary Nebula in Corvus. O'Meara in his book says this about NGC 4361;

"NGC 4361 is one of the finest non-Messier objects of its class."

Excited to view that.

Here's a site that shows the PN (and others with finder charts): NGC 4361 PN

NGC 4038 Irregular Barred Spiral Galaxy in Corvus that is interacting with its companion NGC 4039.

NGC 4594 or M104, The Sombrero. Always fun to look at.

NGC 4699 a Mixed Spiral Galaxy in Virgo that O'Meara describes it as "looking like a old vinyl record. He calls it the Vinyl LP Galaxy."

NGC 4665 Barred Spiral Galaxy in Virgo. O'Meara says "larger scopes may reveal a dim bar that extends north and south from the round core." Probably won't see the core, but then again, why not try?

NGC 4548 Barred Spiral Galaxy in Coma Bernices. Can view it not as a round glow, but with a broad spiral shape with a bright core.

NGC 4216 Mixed Spiral Galaxy inclined. Beautiful Galaxy or so I've heard . . .

Many more but those are the highlights.

Here is a site that I really enjoy as Planetary Nebula are one of my favorite observing targets. When I view a PN, I know I am viewing the future of our own star, the Sun when it ends its red giant phase and throws off its outer shells of gas as it begins to enter the White Dwarf stage, which will happen in about five billion years. This site can be slow to load but it lists by season in the northern and southern hemisphere what PN's are available for observing the the information about it. Enjoy!

Seasonal Planetary Nebula to Observe