iceman
01-04-2005, 08:26 AM
Last night was the first clear night in what seemed like forever. It was my first real observing session since the SPSP 3 weeks ago, thanks to 3 weeks of persistent rain, clouds and full moon!
I had the scope out to cooldown early, thanks to daylight savings being over, the observing could start earlier. I started at around 7pm and saw that Saturn was still visible before it went behind the trees, so I went inside and got my son Jacob (almost 6 yrs old) up out of bed to come and have a look with me.
We had a look at Saturn with the 9mm GSO plossl @ 138x, seeing was pretty ordinary and could only barely make out the cassini division in glimpses of wobble. Jacob loved the view though and spotted 4 of the moons.
I took the opportunity to try out my new Meade UWA 14mm, and so we had a look at the crux and carina regions.
We viewed the magnificent Eta Carinae nebula which showed the prominent dust lanes and pinpoint stars right to the edges. The homunculus was quite visible on each side of the Eta Carina star.
We then looked at a few open clusters in the area, including NGC3532, NGC3293, NGC2516 and the Jewelbox NGC3755. Jacob loved the open clusters and star fields, "zillions of stars" is what he saw :)
The UWA14 performed very well on these open clusters with sharp views and wide fields. I found that some stars near the edges displayed trails indicative of the cheap widefield eyepieces, but that was only when I was viewing at the center of the eyepiece. If I actually "looked" at the stars on teh edge of the field they can into pinpoint view.
I put the 9mm plossl back in and viewed Jupiter as it was rising over the house. It was still very low in the sky and so the view wasn't that nice but good enough for Jacob. He spotted 3 of the 4 dark bands and of course easily spotted the 4 moons which were grouped 2 on each side, 2 close together on the left and 2 further apart on the right.
By now he was more interested in the green laser pointer and wanting me to turn on the head-lamp on my head, so we finished with that and took him back to bed at around 7:40pm.
I spent some more time out on my own, going over some of the same objects again with the UWA14, waiting for omega centauri and centaurus A to clear the trees but they were taking too long.
I hunted down the blue planetary NGC3918 and at first took some averted vision to see it, but after a short while it stood out with direct vision and the disc of blue/green was really evident.
I moved my scope to a different part of the yard and hunted for the Leo Galaxy triplet M65, M66 and NGC3628. It took a short while to find them in the light polluted northern skies (thanks to Newcastle) but once I found them M65 and M66 stood out reasonably well but showed a distinct lack of contrast from my previous viewing of them under the dark skies at the SPSP. They both showed slight evidence of a spiral structure but mostly they were a lighter grey fuzzy blob against the darker grey background sky. The longer I looked at them the more structure showed through, which was nice to see because it was the first time i'd seen galaxies from my backyard.
NGC3628 was really difficult to spot though because of the lack of contrast. I eventually did spot it, very very faint and no structure visible but the elongated grey shape was definitely there. I could *just* fit all 3 in the FOV of the UWA14, but all 3 were right on the very edges.
It was time to pack it up and head inside, but one last look to the south-east saw NGC5139 (omega centauri) peeking through a gap in the trees so I had a quick look at it, beautiful as usual but certainly lacking the contrast seen at the SPSP. Centaurus A still couldn't be seen from behind the trees so I gave up, packed up and went inside.
All in all it was a great night, albeit short. It was good to be out amongst the stars again after 3 weeks of bad weather. I had a great time viewing with Jacob and testing out the new Meade.
I didn't bother using the DSC's for this session as I wasn't sure how long I was going to be out there for, and knew i'd be moving the scope around the yard a bit.. but next time i'll take the time and align the SC for some more views.
I had the scope out to cooldown early, thanks to daylight savings being over, the observing could start earlier. I started at around 7pm and saw that Saturn was still visible before it went behind the trees, so I went inside and got my son Jacob (almost 6 yrs old) up out of bed to come and have a look with me.
We had a look at Saturn with the 9mm GSO plossl @ 138x, seeing was pretty ordinary and could only barely make out the cassini division in glimpses of wobble. Jacob loved the view though and spotted 4 of the moons.
I took the opportunity to try out my new Meade UWA 14mm, and so we had a look at the crux and carina regions.
We viewed the magnificent Eta Carinae nebula which showed the prominent dust lanes and pinpoint stars right to the edges. The homunculus was quite visible on each side of the Eta Carina star.
We then looked at a few open clusters in the area, including NGC3532, NGC3293, NGC2516 and the Jewelbox NGC3755. Jacob loved the open clusters and star fields, "zillions of stars" is what he saw :)
The UWA14 performed very well on these open clusters with sharp views and wide fields. I found that some stars near the edges displayed trails indicative of the cheap widefield eyepieces, but that was only when I was viewing at the center of the eyepiece. If I actually "looked" at the stars on teh edge of the field they can into pinpoint view.
I put the 9mm plossl back in and viewed Jupiter as it was rising over the house. It was still very low in the sky and so the view wasn't that nice but good enough for Jacob. He spotted 3 of the 4 dark bands and of course easily spotted the 4 moons which were grouped 2 on each side, 2 close together on the left and 2 further apart on the right.
By now he was more interested in the green laser pointer and wanting me to turn on the head-lamp on my head, so we finished with that and took him back to bed at around 7:40pm.
I spent some more time out on my own, going over some of the same objects again with the UWA14, waiting for omega centauri and centaurus A to clear the trees but they were taking too long.
I hunted down the blue planetary NGC3918 and at first took some averted vision to see it, but after a short while it stood out with direct vision and the disc of blue/green was really evident.
I moved my scope to a different part of the yard and hunted for the Leo Galaxy triplet M65, M66 and NGC3628. It took a short while to find them in the light polluted northern skies (thanks to Newcastle) but once I found them M65 and M66 stood out reasonably well but showed a distinct lack of contrast from my previous viewing of them under the dark skies at the SPSP. They both showed slight evidence of a spiral structure but mostly they were a lighter grey fuzzy blob against the darker grey background sky. The longer I looked at them the more structure showed through, which was nice to see because it was the first time i'd seen galaxies from my backyard.
NGC3628 was really difficult to spot though because of the lack of contrast. I eventually did spot it, very very faint and no structure visible but the elongated grey shape was definitely there. I could *just* fit all 3 in the FOV of the UWA14, but all 3 were right on the very edges.
It was time to pack it up and head inside, but one last look to the south-east saw NGC5139 (omega centauri) peeking through a gap in the trees so I had a quick look at it, beautiful as usual but certainly lacking the contrast seen at the SPSP. Centaurus A still couldn't be seen from behind the trees so I gave up, packed up and went inside.
All in all it was a great night, albeit short. It was good to be out amongst the stars again after 3 weeks of bad weather. I had a great time viewing with Jacob and testing out the new Meade.
I didn't bother using the DSC's for this session as I wasn't sure how long I was going to be out there for, and knew i'd be moving the scope around the yard a bit.. but next time i'll take the time and align the SC for some more views.