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Old 02-05-2008, 02:06 AM
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AlexN
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Observation Report 2nd May

Thought I'd compile a little list of the Highlights of my evening tonight whilst enjoying my new toy. An Astronomik UHC-E - Purchased from 'Alchemy' (cheers!!!)

These were highlights for a few reasons, but mostly because I've never seen them before with my own eyes...

1: M104. The Sombrero Galaxy.

Viewed through a variety of ep's with and without barlows.
I found the best combination to be my 25mm with a 2x barlow, and also found myself itching for more apeture (already.. eeek!!!!)

2: M20 - The Trifid Nebula.

Stumbled across this rather luckily, Whilst using my 30mm ep with the UHC-E, I was just slowly scanning through the sky and it hit me like a ton of bricks... After a brief look I decided that a closer inspection with the 4x barlow was needed. This revealed a bit more of nebula, but also brought to my attention the semi-close double star towards the bottom.. I ducked inside to make a 'victory coffee' and to hit up starry night to find out what I was actually looking at... After finding that I was in fact looking at M20, I noticed that should I turn my scope a bit to the left.....

3. M8 - The Lagoon Nebula.

Again with the 30mm, UHC and 4x barlow, the nebula and what seemed to be a surrounding open cluster were very bright and clear, and even better, they filled the FOV. Nothing pleases me more than a field of view full of something I've never seen..

4. M22.

Back to just the 30mm ep, no filters or barlows... Good old wide field action, Using the trusty eyes in my head, I spotted the cluster with the naked eye. pondered for a moment on what it was, the figured... one way to find out... Lined up the little red dot with the moderately large fuzzy patch, put the eye to the Ep and was instantly stunned by the brightness, density and apparent colors coming from the cluster... To my somewhat defective [Read: colorblind] eyes M22 is more colorful than Omega Cent..

4. Im a bit stuck with this one.... Celestron 'The Sky' software tells me its NCG6629, Starry Night Pro Plus (6.2) tells me there is no such object....

Going on what I saw, its very hard to tell what it was, Perhaps a small planetary nebula or a distant galaxy.. its really hard to tell and the wonderful thing about that is that the celestron software said the same thing, either or. This object was found once again by blindly slewing the scope around with the 30mm ep. Adding the UHC-E into the mix definitely made it stand out more. however I could still not make out enough detail to even have an educated guess at what it was...


Following those, I made the mandatory stops at Eta Carinae, The jewel box, Omega Cent. Split a few doubles before coming back in... Finally succumbing to the chilly temps...

Thats it..

Cheers for reading.
Alex..
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Old 02-05-2008, 07:42 AM
Karlsson
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexN View Post
4. Im a bit stuck with this one.... Celestron 'The Sky' software tells me its NCG6629, Starry Night Pro Plus (6.2) tells me there is no such object....

Going on what I saw, its very hard to tell what it was, Perhaps a small planetary nebula or a distant galaxy.. its really hard to tell and the wonderful thing about that is that the celestron software said the same thing, either or. This object was found once again by blindly slewing the scope around with the 30mm ep. Adding the UHC-E into the mix definitely made it stand out more. however I could still not make out enough detail to even have an educated guess at what it was...
Interesting reading Alex

NGC 6629 is indeed a planetary nebula, with a magnitude of around 11, depending on the source. It is listed as such in many catalogues (SIMBAD gives 21 identifiers). The fact that the UHC-E filter made it stand out more is a pretty reliable indication that what you were looking at was a PN as opposed to a galaxy, since galaxies are usually continuum emitters (they emit many wavelengths across the spectrum) and do not benefit much from UHC type filters.
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Old 03-05-2008, 11:23 PM
§AB
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good stuff dude, I also seem to find myself at Eta Carina aswell!
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Old 03-05-2008, 11:57 PM
Alchemy (Clive)
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great to see the new filters getting good use.

i cant do the visual observing myself but love reading the passion that those who do, have

Cheers Clive
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Old 04-05-2008, 03:08 AM
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Just got home from a dark sky night.... Boy was the UHC worth it up there... M42 + M43 in the most detail I've seen, and all squeezed into the FOV (a few little tendrils hanging out here and there)

Awesome stuff...
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Old 05-05-2008, 12:59 PM
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Good Report

Hi Alex,

Good report mate -- a nice read much enjoyed.

Alex wrote:

"1: M104. The Sombrero Galaxy.

Viewed through a variety of ep's with and without barlows.
I found the best combination to be my 25mm with a 2x barlow, and also found myself itching for more apeture (already.. eeek!!!!)"

You've serendipitously stumbled across something important here -- the 2mm exit pupil "rule".

For small low-contrast objects (like galaxies, globulars and most planetary nebulae), as a rule-of-thumb, a telescope will produce best possible contrast when you use an exit pupil of about 2mm.

In this case 1200mm / 25mm ep = x48 magnification plus the 2x barlow = x96.

200mm aperture / x96 = 2.08mm exit pupil = best contrast!

Best,

Les D
Contributing Editor
AS&T
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Old 05-05-2008, 01:58 PM
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AlexN
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Thanks Les,

I suppose I just reconfirmed the rule... And since I have used the combination of EP and barlow to re-view a few things and have had nice results... Just need to get a 1.25" UCH-S or O3 to help with nebs.
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