Early July 2016 Objects

List of objects seen by myself and Doug in both the 8" and 10" telescopes:


Ring Nebula
Owl Nebula
Cooling Tower
Fox Head Cluster
Omega
Great Cluster in Hercules
Dumbbell Nebula
Saturn
Jupiter
Mars
M106
Pinwheel Nebula
Whirlpool and companion Galaxy

Viewing location: Hueston Woods State Park,  Oxford Ohio, Archery Range parking lot

My Eyepiece Collection and Accessories

This is just a quick video of some of my eyepieces and accessories.   It was done on the fly and hopefully does not contain too many errors...

I did notice a few errors while watching the video.  But overall not too bad :)

Webcam Pic of Jupiter

JUPITER!

Pics by Mike Banta and Doug Elick

Original stacked picture

 Brighter version

This photo of Jupiter started as approximately 1200 frames of video in AVI format captured by a cheap Philips 700 model webcam.  The webcam was disassembled and had the focusing lens and LED removed.  The lens was very easy... the LED was a not so easy.  The webcam had a 35mm film canister attached, which allows it mate with the telescope(see pic below).

Modified webcam

The video was captured and saved via free webcam software (Free 2x Webcam Recorder), and then processed (stacked) by another free piece of software called Registax 6.  The stacked process takes all frames from the video and uses the best still frames to make one complete and hopefully better picture.

This isn't the best picture but it was really cold outside and we had a really late start because of the webcam preparations.  You can clearly see the two main bands and it sure looks like the Great Red Spot is visible.  Here is a much better pic taken by someone much more capable for comparison:

The goal was just to get the webcam ready and do a test run.  Success.

2016 Observed Celestial Objects

This is just a list of objects that I have seen through my scope for 2016

 

(Not my pic, nor me :p)

 

I will update this throughout the year.

 

MESSIER # / NCG #                   COMMON NAME

108                                               The Surfboard Galaxy

 97                                                The Owl Nebula

 51                                                The Whirlpool Galaxy

                     5195                        An interacting galaxy

 42                                                Orion Nebula

 81                                                Bode's Nebula

 82                                                Cigar Galaxy

 38                                                Starfish Cluster

 36                                                Open Star Cluster

A Trip Around The Big Dipper

The Big Dipper (Not my pic)

This post covers a night of scoping with my friend Jason at Hueston Woods the evening of 3/26/2016.  This objects of interest are as follows:

Messier #97    - The Owl Nebula
Messier #51a  - The Whirlpool Galaxy
Messier #108 -  The Surfboard Galaxy

The Big Dipper is not a constellation, rather something called an asterism, which is a  prominent pattern or group of stars, typically having a popular name but smaller than a constellation.  In this case the Big Dipper makes up the larger constellation known as Ursa Major, or the Great Bear.   Ursa Major is a circumpolar constellation, meaning it rotates closely around Polaris (the North Star) and therefore is always visible in the sky all year long.

The goal was to see how many objects were visible using my 8" Newtonian reflector.   All 3 objects listed above were pretty faint on a night with a pretty clear sky.  They appear as faint, colorless 'ghosts' which is no surprise since all 3 have a surface brightness of 13 or fainter.  A bonus object was seen in the same FOV as the Whirlpool Galaxy, an NGC object.  

I plan to get pictures next time I'm out.