It was an excellent night until the moon rose but I was able to observe 4 objects tonight.
Object #2: M13
Location: Clarington, ON
Date/Time: Sep. 23, 2013 8:45 PM
Constellation: Hercules
Seeing: Excellent
Telescope: D=305 mm F=1500 mm
Magnification: 83 x @ 82° AFOV
Notes: Dark grey mainly circular ball of stars. Faint but I could resolve two “arms”. I could see individual stars in the cluster.
Messier 13: Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
On September 17, 2013, I officially started the pursuit of my Messier 30 certificate. It is an exciting awards program for astronomy club members and a way for amateur astronomers to keep track of their observations. The Messier 30 is the first milestone in AstronomyForum.net‘s certificate program. The Durham Region Astronomy Association also has one.
Object #1: M45
Location: Oshawa, ON
Date/Time: Sep. 18, 2013 11:45 PM
Constellation: Taurus
Seeing: Below average with a full moon
Telescope: D=305 mm F=1500 mm
Magnification: 24 mm @ 82° AFOV
Notes: Bright white group of stars with a hint of baby blue. Background was too washed out to resolve any wisps. Too big to fit in FOV.
Messier 45: The Pleiades
On September 17, 2013, I officially started the pursuit of my Messier 30 certificate. It is an exciting awards program for astronomy club members and a way for amateur astronomers to keep track of their observations. The Messier 30 is the first milestone in AstronomyForum.net‘s certificate program. The Durham Region Astronomy Association also has one.
My used 12″ Sky-Watcher Flextube pointed at the moon.
I took my 12″ Sky-Watcher Flextube to the Durham Region Astronomical Association’s dark site last night for the first time and found that the location was a few minutes further and more difficult to get to than Long Sault Conservation.
Moon: With a 75% full moon, it lit up the haze so much that I could not even resolve M31. So I put my shades on and observed the moon instead. The details of the moon’s surface at the terminator was spectacular. With a barlowed 7mm (428x), the image was wavering quite a bit, but so incredible. I could resolve the craters and the shadows they cast. It was like hovering over the moon in a spaceship.
Jupiter: I packed up and went to friend’s house to watch a boxing match. By the time it was over, it was already 2 AM and I could see Jupiter already. So I setup my telescope right at my front steps to observe it. At 214x, I could resolve the 2 dark stripes and at least 4 moons but again, it was wavering and not focused. At 428x, it was even worse. I was a little disappointed because the view was only marginally better than my Discovery 8 EQ.
M42 Orion Nebula: By 3 AM, I noticed Orion’s belt was higher and was above a line of haze. Still struggling with my right-angle viewfinder orientation, I pointed it in the general direction of M42 and started panning the area at 62x. It took 30 minutes and I was about ready to give up, until I noticed a glare from the corner of the FOV. I followed the glare as it got more intense, and then it emerged: The Orion Nebula.
I couldn’t believe it that even with all that haze, it was resolving with very good contrast. I noticed at least 2 round voids occupied by stars in the white dust that radiated away from the centre in 180 degree direction. I was so happy that I even woke up my wife to show it to her. Her reaction after seeing it was interesting to me: “you mean that cloud?”
My 12″ Sky-Watcher Flextube at the DRAACO observatory.
Concerns: Significantly heavier and more awkward to transport than the Discovery 8 EQ. Altitude adjustment was sticky and tube is bottom-heavy it wants to slew up quite often by itself. No significant proof of improvement over the Discovery 8 EQ thus far.
At 4 AM I packed it in. What a great ending for a mostly disappointing night.
Tonight was humid but the last cloudless night before several days of cloudiness. So I headed back to Long Sault Conservation Area for a dark sky. I brought the Nightwatch book to reference the objects I wanted to observe tonight in Perseus and Cassiopeia.
It was already pitch black when I got there and was glad to see another stargazer lying down on the grass with his binoculars. His company set me at ease and allowed me to hunt and sketch NGC 663 in a more relaxed manner. Not realizing one of the collimation screws was already backed out all the way, it came lose. It took me 10 minutes to put it back.
My sketch of NGC 663
I was half way through sketching the double cluster when he approached me for some small talk and to say goodbye. After he left, I was once again alone and uneasy so I rushed through the double cluster leaving out a lot of the details. I had been observing for 2 hours and didn’t realize that my OTA and primary was literally dripping in condensation so I packed up.
Once again, it was a very productive night for me. I am no longer questioning my telescope’s optics. It was just a matter of finding a dark sky.
Tonight, I set out to go to a dark site alone at the Long Sault Conservation Area in Clarington, Ontario. I was there scouting the area last night. I brought my gear with me, but it was too cloudy last night. Tonight, was humid with patches of fog, and below average seeing, but the center of the sky was clear enough.
I left 30 minutes after sunset and the site was 20 minutes away, so by the time I was setting up my equipment, it was almost pitch black.
Milky Way Galaxy: I looked up at the sky and found that there was haze near the horizon. And then, what I thought was a strip of haze across the middle of the sky… was actually the Milky Way. Wow! This was the first time I have laid eyes on it! It was spectacular! There were so many stars, I was disoriented at first and didn’t know where the constellations were.
This was my chance to see if I needed to upgrade my telescope! So I aimed my Telrad at the spot where I knew M13 was supposed to be, looked into my eyepiece and… BAM! There it was! I couldn’t believe it! It was a dark circular patch of dim stars!
M13: Out goes my sketching kit and I started sketching away. As the sketching session wore on, my observation skills improved. I started using averted vision and I noticed more fainter stars that ended up in my sketch. I have attached my first sketch of M13.
M31: After that, I aimed at M31 and BAM! There it was: the Andromeda Galaxy and off to the left is what looks like a smaller faint object. But my goal tonight was to sketch M13 only so I just observed it.
So in the end, I really did “upgrade” my telescope just by driving 20 minutes away. This is my most successful outing so far and it wasn’t even a good seeing night. I am really enjoying hunting and sketching. Clear skies!
Last night, I only had a window of less than 2 hours to look for M13 but I still did not find it. Haze had started to form near the horizon and my next door neighbour decided to keep their porch lights on tonight creating a glow in my view. I gave up after 2 hours and set up my alarm to wake me up at 4:30 AM so that I can check out Jupiter and Mars.
Fast forward to 4:30 AM:
My first view of the gas giant through light haze made my jaw drop. Here I am looking at what Galileo first saw 400 years ago. I took the opportunity to line-up my telrad as well. At first, it was just a white disk waving like a flag with 2 moons to the right. After fine-tuning my focuser I noticed 2 faint lines above the equator. After 5 minutes, I noticed a fainter third line near the top pole, and another moon appeared closer to the planet but in a more southern orbital plane. There also appears to be a 4th moon but it seems too far to the left that it might be a star.
I tried to take a picture of it using my phone to no avail. So I quickly looked for a piece of paper and a pen and made a rough sketch of it (attached). This was a lot of fun and self-gratifying!
While I was there, I also looked at Mars, but it was just an unremarkable faint brown dot. The Orion nebula was just to the right so I scanned it but the moon was just too bright and the haze was too much.
Overall, this morning’s experience was an unforgettable one, and I have a sketch I will remember it by.
Last night, I setup my Newt to look for M13, the Hercules globular cluster. My 4th attempt.
Earlier in the day, I had been in contact with another astronomer an hour away to the north. At night fall, he texted me and told me that he’s got M13 in his CPC 800 through 18mm and it was brilliant taking up a third of the frame. That prompted me to quickly setup my gear in the yard: collimated scope, eyepieces, Stellarium, eye patch, towel & coffee… check! Darkness was good (before the moon rose anyway), excellent transparency, good seeing, no wind, normal humidity, and mild temperatures.
After an hour, I still could not find M13. I know where it should be and what it looks like. I tried it with my binoculars and I still can’t find it. I brought out my 90mm refractor and I still cannot find it. I has been 2 hours and the moonlight has started to make the sky glow. So I packed up.
The last thing I brought back inside were my binoculars (Nikon 8×40 Action VII). But before I walked in, I thought of checking out Andromeda with my binos. I slewed towards Cassiopaea then scanned downwards diagonally to where it points. Then, there it was. I noticed a blurry dark grey patch at the corner of my eye. I slewed towards it, past it, back and forth. It was undeniable: that was the Andromeda Galaxy. My first DSO. The feeling was a mix of excitement and awkward fear. Excited because I finally bagged my first DSO ever. Awkward fear was because it was like unveiling a ghost that had been staring at me since birth and all I saw was a tiny portion of it.
My bino’s beat out my telescopes even on a sky with moonlight. I suspect the problem is with my eyepieces. Today, I will be receiving my first real eyepieces (Celestron X-Cel LX). The forecast tonight looks good and will give it another go at M13.
I’m a newbie amateur astronomer from Oshawa, ON (Canada). Tonight, I setup my Discovery 8″ EQ reflector in the middle of an open field in my neighbourhood 200 feet away from the nearest street light. I also used this chance to align my finder. With my limited knowledge of the skies, I was able to observe:
Venus: It was so close to the rooftops by the time I was ready to view it. It was so small and so bright that it was hard to see the disk. It seemed like it was better through my refractor.
Saturn: It was bigger than Venus and sharper in medium magnification. It seemed the same through my refractor. At higher magnification, it got blurry that I thought there was dust in my eyepiece so I took it out and blew at both sides of the lens. Bad newbie move. It fogged up.
Moon: This was the first time I looked at the moon through a telescope ever, and my first reaction was saying “holy f***” in the middle of the field. As I continued to increase the magnification using different eyepieces, I was amazed at the detail. I saw a crater in the middle of a crater! I began to wonder how big these craters were and how could meteors hit the near side of the moon yet missing Earth! I began to wonder how the dark side might be even worse! Then within 3 minutes, my eye began to hurt, so I put on the tube cover and removed the 2 small hole covers to reduce the intensity, but it didn’t help much.
Then I scanned the summer triangle, looking for the one that is supposed to be a double star. I couldn’t find it.
In total, it was 20 mins for setup and tear down, and an hour of observing. I’m loving this new hobby. Now if I can find someone else in my neighbourhood with experience to join me in darker skies, that would be even better so that I don’t look like a creep in the middle of our field. Signing out!
I bought my first telescope today off Kijiji. It was a Meade 90mm Goto Refractor. I’ve always been a fan of astronomy and I watched a lot of astronomy documentaries, but I had no clue where to begin with telescopes. So I scoured the web for telescope basics, how to choose a telescope, and a few telescope reviews. I concluded that my first telescope would be a refractor, and my original budget was $100 for a used scope. So I went a little over my budget and paid $130 for this one, and it was brand new. Not bad.
The telescope had a 90mm aperture and a dew shield. It came with 5 Meade “MA” eyepieces ranging in focal lengths from 24 mm to 6 mm. The tripod came with a built-in tray that conveniently folded along with the legs without it having to be disassembled first. The computer had a control keypad that connected via a telephone coil.
Setup was simple enough that it only took me 30 mins to set it up. The red dot finder was also easy to setup. As with any new telescope gear, it is a well known fact that there will be clouds on the first night of your purchase. However, tonight, I got lucky.
I set it up in my backyard and went through the initial 2-star alignment. It was supposed to orient itself to the nearest bright star. My problem was that I didn’t know what the names of the stars were. So I was lost. At the end of the setup procedure, I followed the tour, but each object was not in the field of view. And whenever something was in it, I didn’t know if it was the correct object. The only recognizable object would have been Saturn, but it was too low that the houses next door were blocking the view.
I just ended up manually slewing the scope using the controller. I was amazed at how may more stars I could see. I even saw a double star, and a couple of satellites passing through the field of view. Overall, the feeling was good. Somehow, something got triggered inside me to continue along this path of amateur astronomy. More to come.
