Tag Archives: astronomy

Telescoping: April 11

Posted on by
Reply

We’re having an odd break in the weather here in the Seattle area, and last night the clouds cleared.  (Not to mention it’s beautiful and sunny today, and supposed to hit the low 70’s!)  Diann & I went out to Rattlesnake Lake, where the temps were hovering in the mid-40’s.  The moon was up in it’s last quarter, so that definitely put a damper on finding some of the fainter objects, but there were still galaxies to be found.  Further complicating things was the gusty wind and the turbulent atmosphere – it’s difficult focusing in on tiny points of light when your telescope is jumping around because of the wind.

Last night’s viewing included Saturn (with Titan, Tethys, and Rhea just barely visible), Mars, M109, M108, M106, M105, and M51 (as well as NGC5195) again.  Mars was a particularly interesting view – it was about a degree away from the moon, so looking at it looked as though you were looking at an orange ball in a white mist.  We also took a peek at the moon once we were ready to kill our night vision, and I started putting some of my planetary filters to use.  I used the Meade #38A Dark Blue filter to look at the moon – which is great, because it cuts out about 80% of the light that comes through it.  If you’ve never seen the moon through a telescope, you’d be shocked at how bright it really is.

We also were able to catch an Iridium Flare – our first view of that.  Overall, I’d call that anti-climactic, but I guess it was worth taking the eyes off the telescope for a few minutes to catch.  It really is amazing how much space junk is up there: I saw satellites and/or debris shoot through my field of view several times while looking through the scope at galaxies and the moon.

After about an hour and a half of fighting the wind, we decided to pack it up and go home.

Telescoping in the Cold

Posted on by
Reply

M51 and NGC5195 Last night we had some clear skies, and the Seattle Astronomical Society called an impromptu star party at Rattlesnake Lake.  Rattlesnake is much closer to the Cascade Mountain range, and farther away from the bright city lights of Seattle.  Since it’s closer to the mountains, it’s also a lot colder than the low-lands: it was about 40°F when I arrived at 7pm, and had dropped to 32°F when I left at midnight.  There were about 6 telescopes setup at peak (I remember seeing a TeleVue 76, Vixen ED100, a vintage Celestron C8, my Meade LX50, a 10” dobsonian, the behemoth: a 20” Obsession Dobsonian) and a bunch of super-friendly amateur astronomers that were happy to help those of us that were newer to the field.

I was one of only three people not using either digital setting circles or a go-to mount, and things were complicated for me around 11:15pm when my motor drive stopped working for some reason.  I was able to knock out 15 Messier objects all by hand (using RA+Dec or star-hopping), including: M3, M36, M37, M38, M42, M43, M44, M45, M51 (and its companion galaxy, NGC5195), M58, M67, M81, M82, M86, M99, NGC4438 (Eyes Galaxy).  Favorite view of the night has to be M3, my first globular cluster.  Second favorite view of the night was M81/M82 within the same field of view: my first galaxies.

We also were treated to some phenomenal views of the ISS flying overhead twice: once just after sunset, and once around 9:50pm.  The second fly-by was amazing: pitch dark skies, and the bright ISS flying overhead – and then I noticed something much smaller following it at a distance of about 20°- the Jules Verne ATV, which just docked at the ISS this morning.  Lots of satellites/space debris flying by, including several at polar orbits.

Great night of observing, overall.

This weekend’s observations

Posted on by
Reply

It’s gonna get a little monotonous here, but I figure since I’ve posted all my other telescoping hijinx, I might as well keep up with that. 

Saturday, we drove up to Anacortes to visit Anacortes Telescope & Wild Bird.  I chatted with the owner of the store for a bit on what my equipment is, and asked him for recommendations for what I should do next.  His first suggestion was to upgrade to 2" eyepieces, but that would cost me a pretty penny right now.  I decided to wait on that, and followed his suggestion on a Tele Vue 32mm Plossl eyepiece, as well as some miscellaneous other parts to improve my scoping.

Since I bought a new eyepiece, I figured Saturday night would bring clouds.  However, I stepped outside at about 8pm, and lo and behold, the stars were out.  I quickly hauled all the telescope gear upstairs and set up on the deck.  I aligned my finder, threw on the new eyepiece, and … Wow, the eyepiece is truly amazing when compared to the Meade Series 4000 eyepieces I’ve been using.  I’m really about ready to put the 26mm, 15mm, and 9.7mm Plossls I have now on eBay to fund getting to 2" eyepieces.  The problem is that these Meade eyepieces are going for about $25 each on eBay, which doesn’t get me near my goal.  Why do I always end up with the expensive hobbies?

I spent a few hours with a friend on the porch staring at Saturn (Titan, Rhea, and Iapetus visible as well), Mars, M42, M45, and M35.  Most of these I’ve looked at before, but I wanted to get a good comparison to previous eyepieces.  M35, however, was new to my eyes.  An amazing starfield, and conveniently easy to find when I looked at it – about 4° away from Mars.

Saturn

Posted on by
Reply

The weather report says it’s about 37°F outside, and it’s nice and clear.  I decided to subject myself to the cold and go gazing upwards.

I decided to do a bit of experimenting this time around with AstroPlanner, a piece of software that was demo’d at a recent Seattle Astronomical Society meeting.  Turning on AstroPlanner let me know that Saturn was visible, as I expected, and seeing as it’s already fairly late I decided to focus on that.  Oddly, I’d never taken the opportunity to point the telescope at Saturn.

Since the big telescope is still packed away from our recent roadtrip to the Washington coast (that I still need to blog about), I dragged out the little guy: a Meade ETX-90, a 3.5" f/13.8 Maksutov-Cassegrain.  I haven’t used the little guy very much (cause the LX-50 is superior), and I had to haul out the external DC power cord for it (note to self: re-solder the battery wire in the base of the telescope to fix that).

I pointed it at Saturn, and was presented with a clear view of the planet, her rings, and Saturn’s two largest moons Rhea and Titan just barely visible.  Rhea is showing up at magnitude 9.99, and I couldn’t make it Dione at magnitude 10.51, so that gives me a pretty good idea of what I can see with the ETX-90 from my deck and the suburban lighting.

According to Stellarium, this is what I should see, and I’ve gotta say, it’s pretty much spot-on:

image

If the weather holds out tomorrow night, I think I’m going to haul the big telescope upstairs.

New Telescope Parts

Posted on by
Reply

It’s 24.5°F outside, which means I must have spent the last three hours outdoors with the telescope.  I can’t determine if the cold makes me go outside, or if it’s cold because I go outside.  :)

I received a small shipment of parts from Anacortes Telescope today, which brought me parts to be able to mount my digital camera to the telescope.  I will say that my major lesson learned is that focusing is a bear.

image I went straight for M42, and couldn’t see it at all through the viewfinder in the camera.  This made focusing a challenge.  I would take a 5 second exposure, review the results, tweak the focus, and repeat.  After about 20 minutes, I got some decent pictures, but nothing great.  You can clearly see the dust cloud from the nebula, though, as well as the Trapezium cluster. 

After a while, I pointed the scope at Rigel and was able to focus the camera relatively well.  I’ve noticed some problems with the Meade T-Adapter for the LX50, though, and it results in the camera not sitting straight on the back of the telescope.  This means that the film plane in the camera isn’t sitting straight, which results in fairly bad focus overall.  I’ve got some ideas on how to solve this, and will work on that the next time the clouds are clear.  Of course, now that I’m sitting inside in the warmth with the telescope, I realize I forgot to attach the f/6.3 reducer to the telescope, which may have grabbed me some better photos.  Oh well, there’s always next time!

I spent the next hour or so trying to see M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy.  I could just make it out in the sky with my eyes if I could keep the streetlights out of my view, but I couldn’t get the telescope on it because the streetlights were interfering with my spotting scope.  No such luck.

Not much else exciting in the sky tonight, so I packed it up around 10:30pm.

Looking Up

Posted on by
Reply

26°F outside tonight, but still no clouds.  Amazing.

Our friends Boaz and Charlotte came over tonight for the purpose of moon/stargazing.  Out came the LX50 again.

Spotting scope got quickly tuned in using a very twinkling Sirius low in the sky, and then we turned our gaze back to M42 in Orion.  I used the spotting scope to point at Orion’s sword, looked through the eyepiece, and focused.  Without budging the telescope, I was focused on the trapezium cluster.  Full moon tonight, so we could only make out 4 of the stars – but we could clearly see the M42 nebula clouds surrounding it.  We ended up going back to look at M42 several times through the course of the night.  It’s really amazing to look at something 1300 light years away and be able to see "detail" in it.

We also took a glance at the Pleiades again, as well as some more viewing of Orion’s various well-known stars: Betelgeuse and Rigel.  We ended the night wondering if a reddish object was Aldebaran or Mars, as these two bodies were fairly close to each other tonight.  I slewed the telescope over, and threw on the 26mm eyepiece (widest angle I have).  It was definitely not a point, but clearly a disc.  The 9mm eyepiece confirmed what I expected: Mars.

Telescoping in January, again!

Posted on by
Reply

Seattle’s getting some bizarre weather this month.  The other day, I was able to drag out the little telescope (Meade ETX90) and tonight the clouds cleared again.

image Today, I yanked out the big scope (Meade LX50).  It’s 28°F outside again, and I spent the first hour and a half or so setting up the scope.  I haven’t really had a good chance to use this telescope yet, so it took me a while to figure out what went where, and what parts I was missing and needed to search the house for.

Nearly full moon tonight, so most of the viewing wasn’t that great, but I did get a good close-up look at the Pleiades (M45), a fair amount of the moon, and a brief stab at Mars.  I need to get the spotting scope tuned in better before I do any significant viewing.

Cold and on the ground

Posted on by
1

According to Weather Underground, it’s currently 28°F outside.  It snowed a fair amount last night, and now the snow that thawed most of the day is turning to ice.  It’s been interesting watching people try to drive up the hill into our neighborhood.

I heard tires spinning about 2 hours ago, so I decided to peek outside.  Turns out that someone had abandoned their car a while back and was now trying to get it out of the middle of the road.  Fun stuff.  I then noticed that the moon was out, and Orion was out.  The ever-present winter clouds had pulled back.  This means two things: it’s gonna be cold tonight, and I had a great opportunity to take some pictures.

DSC_4760 (2)I grabbed the camera, threw on the 70-300mm lens, and unpacked the tripod.  It was in one of the few boxes that we decided not to unpack.  Out I went, shooting pictures of the moon and Orion with varying degrees of success.

The moon is easy enough to capture. It’s actually really bright – since the sun is reflecting off the moon, it’s actually nearly as bright as the surface of the earth would be.  The rough rule of thumb for moon photography is an aperture of f/8 at 1/125th second exposure.  I took the picture at right at f/8 and 1/100th second at ISO200.  A 300mm camera just captures enough detail to start identifying craters, but a tripod is an absolute necessity.

DSC_4748 Enough with moons: how about stars?  Orion was out, so I pointed my lens that way.  My 70-300mm lens worked again here, just barely fitting Orion into the view at 70mm.  My best picture came out at ISO800 at f/4 with a 13 second exposure.  Unfortunately, there seems to be a big dust bunny on my Nikon’s sensor that I need to clean, but otherwise I’m very pleased with the photo.  Even at the scaled down version here, Orion’s belt, Betelgeuse, and Rigel are easy to make out.  Looking at the full-size picture (click the photo to see it), you can actually make out the Orion Nebula (M42) and some binary star systems at the bottom of the photo.

I decided at this point to drag out the small telescope, a Meade ETX-90.  Using eyepieces between 26mm and 9mm, I watched the moon move around the sky for about a half-hour before I turned towards Orion.  Since I was laying on the ground looking through the scope (no tripod for this one, sadly), it took me quite a while to find anything related to Orion – but eventually, I found what I was looking for: M42.  With the ETX-90, I couldn’t make out the vivid colors of the nebula, but I could make out 5 stars of the trapezium cluster with some of the tell-tale nebula clouds around them.

Unfortunately, about that time our local clouds decided to crowd back in, and that killed my viewing for the night.  Next time it’s this clear at night, I’m going straight for the big telescope.