Observing report - Friday, August 3rd

04 Aug 2012

(Written up on August 8th, backdated to the 4th to confuse.)

I went out to the neighbourhood park near my house where I usually go. It was only a day after full moon, but I didn't care; it's been a long time since I've gone out by myself with a list of stuff to see, and had a fair chance of doing it.

Speaking o' which, I decided to start being a bit more organized when heading out observing, and to see if I could get a good routine going. There are times when I feel like I flail about, and don't get the most out of my time with the scope. There still has to be time for fun, of course, and there are times when I will just pan around to see what I can see. But I want to avoid both having too many things to look at (and getting frustrated as a result; what fun is taking out six of Sue French's columns when I can't get through more than half of one in a night?), and running out of things entirely and thinking "Now what?"

So I'm going to try organizing things into different sections/purposes:

• Housekeeping: record seeing/transparency (something I'm still not very familiar with), answering particular questions (like tonight's sky map)

• Easy/Nice: targets I know and love, or are easy to find (M13, Double Cluster, etc)

• Medium/Project: tracking down and sketching a new Messier, or finding an easy NGC

• Challenge: almost put "hard" but I decided to be like Andy and call them "challenges". Dim objects, difficult to track down...galaxies often fall into this category (at least I think so, given that I'm in a bright suburban location). Not too many, or I'm liable to just get frustrated

While observing, I'll hop between categories to keep it interesting.

So, tonight's target list

Housekeeping:

• Mapping the horizon at the park; there are lots of trees around the south, and I want to be able to predict if/when a target will be obscured.

• Check if Beta Lyrae is in eclipse; compare it to R and Kappa. Yeah, I could look up the time, but I thought this'd be more fun.

• Track down NGC 6823 for an eventual try at determining my limiting magnitude

Easy:

• Double-double (Epsilon Lyrae)

• M11 - Wild Duck Cluster

• M13 - Glob in Hercules

• The gorgeous, wonderful moon

Medium/Project:

• M16 - Eagle nebula. Any nebulosity, or just the OC? (Yeah, big moon, but let's check anyway.)

• M15 - Glob in Pegasus

• M5 - Glob in Ophiucus

• M27 - Dumbbell nebula

• Mu Cephei -- Herschel's Garnet, a carbon star

Challenge:

• IC 4576 and NGC 6633 -- OCs in Serpen Caudens/Ophiucus (pg 191, "Deep Sky Wonders" (DSW))

Observing

Collimated my scope before going out; I guess I'm getting good at this, because it wasn't that hard. Headed out about 9:30pm to wait for dark. Warm night; I didn't use the jacket that I took. Oh, and I greased up the altitude motion with Chapstick, and man is that nicer now.

Horizon map: I had a star map for 10pm printed out, and at the right time started sketching what was obscured. I still need to make a better version of it, but I think I've got enough for a good estimate.

Albireo: Lovely as ever, particularly against the not-yet-dark sky. Definite green tinge to the one, and gold or orange to the other...almost too bright to tell.

Double-Double: split barely at 100x, definitely at 160x. One pair wider; northern pair? Need to get my directions straight one of these days.

M11: Man, this is nice with averted vision; stars winking in and out. Viewed at twilight. Now that I know the sort of hook shape that points to it, it's pretty easy to track down. The V really was evident. Came back to it later at night and was able to resolve it, barely, at 30x; had not been able to do that earlier. At 100x, it almost looks like a starfish, or a Satanic goat head...really.

M13: Again, viewed at twilight; the twinkling is just gorgeous. Came back to it later in the night, and I think I might have left it too long; not sure if it's being lower in the sky, or the moon being up further, or me being tired, but it wasn't as twinkly as before.

M5 was hidden behind a tree, so I didn't view it; came out later, but I was too tired at that point. Star map!

M10: I tracked down this one instead. It took a while to starhop, but I started remembering my way around here from the last time I tried looking at it: last winter, which impresses me no end. A faint blob in 10x50 binos, and at 30x/100x in the scope, but I started to resolve stars at 160x. It was still twilight by this point (10.45pm), and my dark adaptation was nothing to write home about, but it was still quite lovely. I put on the Barlow and went to 200x, and was surprised to find it was not too much; in fact, this helped bring out the twinkling with direct vision. Yes, fainter than M13, but still lovely in its own right.

(My usual technique for tracking down an object, btw, is to figure out where it is with 10x50 binoculars and a star map, then switch to the finder. It's a bit confusing switching between reversed and upright views, but I manage.)

M16: I think I found where this is; I could see a blob in the bino, but very loose in the eyepiece. I did a quick sketch, and compared it later with this one from Jeremy Perez; turns out I got the NW corner of the cluster. Could not see any nebulosity; must try again on a darker night.

M27: Found it! Just visible in binos, and visible at 30x in scope; could not see in the finder though. (I've noticed that things are generally fainter in the 9x50 finder than they are in my 10x50 binos, and I'm assuming it's 'cos I'm viewing with a single eye.) Slight lobe shape at 100x; a little more at 160x, but still faint. I didn't spend a lot of time on this, as I figured this is definitely one for a darker night.

NGC 6823: Tracked down after some effort. It's a loose cluster of stars, with what looks to me like a tobacco pipe in the middle. I compared this with Sue French's description, and yep -- got the right object. Woohoo! Did a quick sketch.

Beta Lyrae: Not in eclipse, as far as I could tell.

M51: For an additional challenge, tried tracking this down to see how it compared to viewing it at my parent's place (very dark skies). Pretty sure I was looking in the right place, but no sign of it.

Luna: Bright, bright, bright, but gorgeous. Found Langrenus, Vendelinus and Petavius along the edge. Wavy viewing at 100x but still found central peak and crack in Petavius. 160x was pretty ridiculous, but found central peak in Langrenus, and some interesting v-shaped bits along the terminator. Sketched Mare Crisium badly, and later identified various bits in it.

Packed up at 1am and came home.

Postmortem

It felt good to be this organized; there was enough to keep the evening filled, but not so much I was crammed. I didn't get everything done I set out to do, but that's fine.

I neglected the challenge objects. I think NGC 6633 was obscured when I went out, so okay. But part of it was leaving them so long. By the time a few hours go by, I'm really quite bagged, and I need to remember that.

I'm quite proud to have found NGC 6823 on my own; it's not that challenging, but it is an NGC object. I'm also quite happy I found M27, M10 and M16; I felt like I was on quite a roll. I think half the trick with these things is to know what to expect in the binos (faint fuzzy, barely visible, better w/averted vision).

I did three sketches (Mare Crisium, M16 and NGC 6823). This was by accidtn; I was just trying out a plastic lid as a template for sketches, and drew three...then I decided to fill them. I think this is a good number for me, and I may roll this into into the challenge/project category.

Overall, a good and fun night, and a good template for the future.