Observing Report -- April 1, 2016

02 Apr 2016

April 1 was a busy day: second day of the semi-annual OpenDNS Hackathon (Team Sales Grenade represent!), and Clara's and I's 10th Housiversary. But despite being tired, and the forecast going back and forth, I went out to Boundary Bay to tackle the Virgo galaxies again. In fact, it'd been so long since I'd been able to go out that I had the time to think hard about what I wanted to do. Here's what I came up with:

• Compare the XT10i (10" push-to Dob) and the Meade LX10 (8" Schmidt-Cass). I haven't used the LX10 in a while, and maybe I need to think about passing it on to a new owner -- but I wanted a chance to evaluate each one first.

• VIRGO GALAXIES MOTHERFUCKER. Seriously, every spring it seems like there's a 90% chance I'll wake up one day and say "Crap, there goes Virgo...maybe next year." I really wanted to see Markarian's Chain, and between the trees on the horizon and light pollution at my usual location (suburban park), I figured this was my chance this year.

• A fun, long night observing. Later the better, amirite?

• Didn't have this on the list but should've: I broke down recently and bought a Televue 6mm Radian. It was time to try it out.

I arrived about 8.20pm and started getting set up. I had a nice talk with a birdwatcher while waiting for darkness to fall; he told me that the big hawklike birds I'd spotted on the drive in were almost certainly juvenile bald eagles, and I showed him Jupiter. We were both happy.

Comparison first: I looked at M42, both when the sky was still light (who can wait to look at M42?) and when it was darker, and Jupiter. M42 was much brighter than the Meade. This shouldn't surprise me, since the Dob gathers ~ 1.5x more light than the Meade (not even thinking about the central obstruction)...but I was. It made the difference between seeing subtle details in M42 quite easily (or is that a contradiction? whatever) with direct vision, and only being able to see them with effort and averted vision. M43 was also a DV object, though faint, in the Dob. Not only that, with the 6mm Radian in the Dob I was able to resolve the E component of the Trap. The Meade, though, showed no sign of the E with the Radian.

This brings up something about the Meade: higher magnifications just leave things fuzzy, with a real loss of contrast and an inability to focus cleanly. I have adjusted collimation once before, but my impression is that Cats are meant to hold collimation much longer -- I'm not sure what's going on here.

This became quite apparent with Jupiter. The 6mm was high mag on the Dob, to be sure, but it held -- moments of clarity with the zones & belts (swear I saw some kind of triple banding on the South Equatorial Belt), and Callisto and Ganymede clearly resolved as disks -- tiny, but disks nonetheless. The Meade showed markedly less contrast (central obstruction?) and as mentioned didn't hold up to the increased magnification. Backing off to the 12mm helped, but focus was still hard and the contrast was still noticeably less.

Objections, accusations & fixmes:

• Having tracking is nice -- very nice. So is the fine adjustment. There's no question that the bump-bump-bump in the Dob can be a pain, particularly when swapping in a higher-powered eyepiece -- it's easy to lose your target and have to back out to find it again.

• I really should look into the collimation.

Two objects obviously isn't enough to do a thorough comparison. But...I didn't feel the need to keep going. I stuck with the Dob the rest of the night and don't regret it at all. The extra aperture does wonders, and despite being fast held up to the added magnification of the Radian well.

Speaking of which...OMG this eyepiece is wonderful. Comparing it to the 6mm Expanse I've got, it's got practically zero CA, and resolution of stars is pin-fucking-point. It's amazing. Eye placement is a bit of a problem -- kidney-beaning happens pretty easily if you shift your head to the wrong place -- but by the end of the night I was pretty comfortable with it. It is very, very nice, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be spoiled for other eyepieces.

So -- settled on the Dob, and I like the Radian. What else did I do?

First off, I observed the ISS through the Dob for the first time. It did a flyby low in the sky (right by Sirius) early in the night, and I was able to follow it relatively easily with the 17mm (1.2 degree FOV). And WOW -- WOW. Detail was apparent -- this was very obviously an H-shaped object. The stars flying by as I followed it gave a wonderful impression of its speed -- it was amazing to see it zoom across the sky like this. And on top of everything else, it went right by Jupiter -- within an eyepiece view of it. Truly amazing.

I went to M81 and M82, which were way high up in the sky. (I tripped over another faint fuzzy getting here -- I'm guessing one of NGC 3307 or NGC 2976.) It was interesting to compare the view with last week's session in the park; the 6mm showed detail in M82 that I simply wasn't able to see previously. I tried sketching it and am not happy with the results, but it was a good exercise in bringing out what I could see: two knots of brightness near the center of the galaxy, with maybe a dark lane between them -- something like what was sketched here or here. It's 12 million light years away, and is 5x more luminous than my own galaxy. I love this hobby.

M51, by contrast, was hard to find (the Intelliscope was a little off in this area of the sky), and didn't show much detail at all. I saw two faint but distinct blobs, with maybe a hint of a larger area of fuzziness around the larger galaxy. I certainly didn't see any connection between the two.

I decided it was time to head over to Markarian's Chain. The Intelliscope took me there without any problem. Following along with both Turn Left At Orion (God, I love that book) and a photo I'd printed out from Cartes du Ciel, I was able to pick up a lot with just the 17mm (71X). M84 and M86 were obvious; NGC 4438 and NGC 4435 took a bit more effort, but not much. I also saw NGC 4461, NGC 4473 and NGC 4477, to give me the tail (?) of the chain. NGC 4458 came out, but only with averted vision. By putting in the Radian and then using AV and jiggling the scope, I was able to pick up NGC 4388 -- a thin slash, and obviously elongated. I might have picked up NGC 4413 with AV, but can't say for sure. I couldn't find any sign of NGC 4402 or NGC 4387. I sketched it all -- not a great sketch, but a great souvenir.

I swapped in my 30mm Antares Erfle for a broader view (40X, 1.85 degrees). M84 and 86 were there, of course; 4438 and 4435 were ghostly and barely visible. (Thin, patchy clouds were starting to roll through, so that may have contributed to their faintness here.) 4461 was only visible with AV, and 4458 not at all; 4473 was an easy catch The FOV stretched from M84 all the way over to 4473 in one go -- five galaxies (may have been more, but my notes don't record it; must revisit this again) all in one look, 50-60 million light years away. Amazing.

I switched up to M87 for a closer look; since tripping over it in 2013, I've had a chart from Cartes du Ciel ready for a return visit. M87 was obvious, of course, but so was NGC 4478 in the 17mm. Throwing in the 6mm Radian brought out NGC 4476 was well; after that, I tried for it in the 17mm again, but couldn't see it.

M89 was an easy find, just by panning over. M90 was easy as well, but very faint.

Over to M66 and M67, which surprised me with how obvious they were -- they've given me problems in the past (though not at Boundary Bay...I need to re-read my posts more often). NGC 3628 was barely visible in the 18mm -- very faint. But hey, got the triplet!

At this point I decided to pull out the list of Messiers I haven't observed yet, and start going through them. I got to M105 without problems and picked up NGC 3384 as well; no sign of 3389. I sketched them and used my new blending stump. (Everything I sketch is now a faint, featureless blur.) M95 and M96 were nearby, so why not? They were both obvious in the 17mm.

Back over to M49 -- quite obvious. I picked up NGC 4469 (though it was quite faint) and NGC 4526; no sign of 4535.

M53 was a change -- a glob rather than a faint fuzzy. Not that I could tell it from a faint fuzzy in the 12mm -- there was maybe a hint of resolution with AV, but honestly it felt like another Virgo elliptical. But oh, when I put in the 6mm, there was that beautiful sparkling around the edges that I love in globs. It looked like maybe there was a brighter star, or a detached section, in the NE corner.

I switched back to Jupiter, briefly trying the 6mm with the TeleVue Barlow. It was too much; Jupiter wouldn't come into focus, but Ganymede and Callisto seemed to be obvious disks.

One more before packing up: either M61 or M64. I labelled it in my notebook as 61, but the sketch I did resembles 64, the Black Eye Galaxy, more -- and it was on a page in TL@O that I was looking at earlier.

Obviously I was getting quite tired. Clouds were starting to seriously roll in, and I decided to pack it in at 1.20am; an hour later, I was home, reviewing my notes and nodding off on the couch.

Post-mortem:

• I'm really, really glad I went out. The forecast had been all over the map all week, and I wasn't sure it would be worth going out. But the clouds held out 'til about 1am, and it was an amazingly fun night.

• I don't think I want to hang on to the Meade; it's time to pass it on to someone else. I'm sure I'll reconsider a Cat at some point in the future, but for right now I'm happy with the Dob. (Might trade for a refractor...we'll see.)

• OMG the Radian. That is one sweet eyepiece. I stuck to that, the 17mm and the 30mm Erfle pretty much the whole night.

• Met all my goals, hurrah!

• New Messiers: M49, M53, M61, M90, M95, M96 and M105. Total is now 78.

• Having the printed charts from Cartes du Ciel really, really helps. The best part is being able to download photos from the ESO's Digital Sky Survey; this helps immensely when looking at a particular area -- 1 x 2 degrees, say, or 2 x 2.5. Even with the C-series of the TriAtlas pages for (say) the Virgo cluster, it is just immensely crowded, and really hard to pick out everything I can see in the eyepice. I love the Triatlas series -- I've got the B series and bring it with me when I observe. But I would seriously consider bringing along a cheap laptop (this Chromebook, say), and using it out in the field to fetch images for things I'm looking at. Hm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

All in all, a fun, fun night. I'm immensely happy with how this all worked out.