The Orion Nebula - M42

This is my first picture of The Orion Nebula - M42, taken by myself and Doug Elick at Hueston Woods this past evening.

The sky conditions were not the best.  There were a few clouds around at times and the atmosphere was a little turbulent.  We used Doug's camera at about a 15 second exposure to capture this image.  The Orion Nebula is probably the easiest nebula to find in the night sky.  If you look below the 3 belt stars of the Constellation Orion(depending on it's position in the sky), you should be able to see the faint glow of the nebula on a clear night.  I am able to see it from my backyard with less than idea conditions on most clear nights.  The nebula is classified as a magnitude 4.00 object making it extremely bright as nebula go.

Over all I am very happy with this picture and hope to snap another when the sky conditions are much more clear.  Since the Constellation of Orion is a winter constellation,  there should be plenty of crisp, cool, turbulent free nights coming.

Near Full Moon Capture

 JUST PAST FULL MOON - JUNE 2012

I took this photo of the moon this past summer using my Skywatcher 8" reflector telescope and a Cannon Powershot A2200 14.1MP camera.  I shot this picture looking straight into a 20mm eyepiece using the camera.   This type of astrophotography is called the 'afocal' method.  Almost any type of digital camera can be used.  Simply hold the camera lens up to the eyepiece, make sure you are in focus, and fire away.  It can be a little tricky to get the object centered in the camera preview screen and to keep it steady.  So patience is necessary.  Camera holders can be purchased to hold it at the eyepiece for you.  I don't own one myself but may buy one in the future.

This picture of the moon was taken just past full moon, about less than a day I suspect.  You can see on the left side it is just slightly cutoff, waning its way to a 'new moon'.  I was surprised at how good the quality was for my first moon shot with this camera.

I'm not sure what the correct orientation of the moon is, but I'm pretty sure that it is not as it appears if you look with the naked eye.  I would have to flip my picture top to bottom and left to right to match most pictures I viewed on Google.  I'll double check the next time I see the moon ;)

My Telescope And Gear

I realized that I have not posted any pictures of my telescope and gear.

 This is my 8" Skywatcher reflector scope with an EQ5 mount.  The focal length of the tube is 1000mm and the primary mirror aperture is 200mm, making this an F/5 telescope.  I added an Orion Duel Axis controller afterwards for about $125.  Two Plossl eyepieces came with it:  a 20mm and a 7.5mm.  Also purchased separately is a 2x Orion Shorty barlow lens.





I have owned this setup for about 3 years and I thoroughly enjoy using it.  The shipping weight was somewhere around 65 lbs, which makes it fairly difficult to move around when fully assembled.  I was completely lost on how to operate the equatorial mount the first time I attempted to do so.  It doesn't have free range of motion, but moves along the declination axis and right ascension axis.  This was a little tricky for me as a beginner.

The eyepieces are decent quality Plossl style and are pictured below.  They are both 1.25" and fully coated.  Calculating the magnification that each eyepiece with deliver is pretty simple.  Just divide the focal length of the telescope(in mm) by the focal length of the eyepiece(in mm).  So for my 20mm eyepiece I divide by the focal length (1000mm):  1000mm / 20mm = 50.  My 20mm eyepiece with magnify objects 50 times bigger than the naked eye.  My other eyepiece is 7.5mm.  1000mm / 7.5mm = 133x.  This makes objects appear 133 times bigger than the naked eye.  Using my 2x Shorty barlow will double the magnification of both eyepieces.  This sounds good but a lot of light is lost at these high magnifications.  I tend tend to only use the barlow when looking at brighter objects.

7.5mm and 20mm Plossl eyepieces.



Object tracking was something I realized right away that I really wanted.  Not only is it nice to have an object stay centered in the eyepiece, but I wanted to take pictures also.  I bought this Orion Dual Axis device:

  Orion True Track Electronic Drive

Powered by 4 D size batteries or an AC to DC adapter, this unit controls the declination and right ascension motors attached to the scope via two cables.  While tracking, only the RA motor is utilized to follow an object across the sky.  The DEC motor is only used to slew the scope to the desired position.
Of course the only way to get decent tracking is to have a properly aligned and leveled mount.  Doing so will provide up to 15 to 20 seconds of tracking good enough for a little astrophotography.  If you simply want tracking good enough to share the view with friends without having to constantly adjust the scope, this works very well.






 That's my brief introduction to my telescope and gear.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment.

Apertura AD10 Dobsonian Reflector Telescope

      10/20/2012

      My buddy Doug from Cincinnati came up this weekend with his new 10" Dobsonian "in hand".  This type of scope was new to both of us and I was excited to check it out.  Here is a pic...

Here are the specs for it copied off Apetura's website:

Technical Specifications and Dimensions

Primary Mirror Diameter:	10"
Primary Mirror Details:	34.2mm, Parabolic, 1/12 wave
Primary Mirror Coating:	Aluminum and silicone dioxide (SiO2); reflectivity=93 %
Optical Design:	Newtonian Reflector
Mount Design:	Dobsonian, clutch mounting with tension knobs
Focal Length:	1250mm
Focal Ratio:	f/4.92
Focuser:	2 inch, dual speed Micro 10:1 Crayford style
Eyepiece 1:	2", Superview 30mm, 68 degree FOV, Eye-relief=22mm
Eyepiece 2:	1.25", Super-Plossl 9mm, 52 degree FOV, Eye-relief=6mm
Finderscope:	Right-Angle, Correct-Image 8 x 50 viewer
Star Diagonal:	1.25 inch
Limiting Stellar Magnitude:	14.5
Optical Tube Length:	48.5"
Fully Assembled Height:	54"
Optical Tube Assembly Weight:	34.8 lbs
Base Height:	25.625"
Base Diameter:	22"
Base Weight:	31.4 lbs
Fully Assembled Weight:	66.2 lbs
WARRANTY	1 year for materials and workmanship

    

I was not involved in setting it up out of the box but Doug said it was not too difficult.  I was surprised by how long the tube was:  4' .5".  A little difficult for one person to load and unload from a vehicle.  Another issue was moving it around the yard once it was setup.  It took both of us to pick it up(fully assembled) to move it.  My backyard has a few trees in it so moving the scope is necessary to gain access to different parts of the sky.

It wasn't the best night for stargazing.  Clouds rolled in and out and the atmosphere was very turbulent.  We did view many objects though, but I can't give a good report on the optical quality of the scope because of the conditions.  Also, Doug found out that his eyepiece tube is out of square so every time we switched from a 1.25" eyepiece to a 2" eyepiece, the collimation would be off.  This seemed to effect the quality of the image through the scope.

I will post more about this scope in time when it gets a proper break-in.

Ring Nebula Photo

Ring Nebula - Taken on 09-08-2012 with Doug Elick.

This is a pic of the Ring Nebula (M57) taken at Hueston Woods in Ohio.  It was taken using my friends DSLR camera.

It was color enhanced just a bit in Photoshop.  I think we got lucky with the tracking because the scope was never polar aligned properly.  We basically just pointed the north leg on the tripod north and leveled the mount.  The tracking held up nicely for upto about 15 secs or so.

Little Update

I did some stargazing on this crisp night in Vandalia.  Lot's of stars and a few planets were out.

The first object I looked at was Jupiter and it's moons.  Three of the 4 moons were clearly visible while the fourth was hiding on the backside of Jupe.  Jupiter in my scope shows a fair amount of detail.  On the clearest nights the different atmospheric bands show up pretty distinctly.  I have also seen one of the moons cast it's shadow upon Jupiter.  At first I thought it a piece of dirt on the eyepiece, but then realized it was a shadow.  I've only seen this happen once and it was truely kickass.
The 4 easily seen moons of Jupiter are called the Galilean moons, named after their discoverer Galileo Galilei.  They are:  IO, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

The next object I searched out was Orion.  More specifically the Orion Nebula, located in the constellation Orion The Hunter.  Anyone can find the constellation Orion with ease, and the nebula itself is pretty easy also.  It can be located with the naked eye most of the time.  I would like to snap a pic of the nebula, but I need to hookup with my friend Doug, the DSLR owner.

I tried once again to find M1, the Crab Nebula.  Epic fail.  Kind of got too cold and tired.  I suck.  Plus it's sort of hard to find with my 8" scope.

I found a good amount of the Messier objects this past summer, but not all of them.  I need to make a list of which ones I've seen now.  Maybe later.

Till next time...

Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon

The sky tonight is cold and clear, and filled with stars, planets, and moons. I setup the scope out back just a while ago to get a glimpse of Venus especially, because Venus disappears quickly out of the sky being nearer the sun than most other objects.

Venus is pretty bright and makes a pretty good glare on my eyepiece. I assume that a filter of some sort would provide a better image. I didn't give the scope very much time to equalize its temperature to the cold outdoors, which was probably attributing to the bad image.

Jupiter was bright was always, and it's four Galilean moons were aligned perfectly. Two on each side of the planet, equally spaced. Sometimes you see less of them because one or more may be hidden behind Jupiter. Once I saw one of the moons casting a black shadow on the face of Jupiter. It was a small black dot that I could just barely make out in my 8" reflector.

The crescent moon looked neat, but I forgot to look at it through the scope. Oh well.

Goal for 2012

My goal for 2012 is to locate all 110 Messier objects in the night sky. What is a Messier object? Charles Messier was a French astronomer who sought comets but became frustrated by lots of 'fuzzy' objects that were not comets. He compiled these objects into a list now called Messier Objects. Examples are: Galaxies, Nebula, Globular Clusters.

I have already seen a few of these objects, but the plan is to start with M1 (The Crab Nebula), and move on through the list. I'm not sure at this point if it would be practical to start with the first object on the list and work my way through, because some of the objects may not be visible in the correct order. I assume I will be jumping around a lot.

I will post entries as I start to view them...