Seeking the Crab Nebula

I finally crawled out of bed this morning after many resets of my alarm clock, at about 4:00 am. My 8" Skywatcher reflector was ready to go because I set it up before I went to bed.

The goal was to find and view the Crab Nebula, which I had never seen before. My scoping partner Dave had talked about it many times but we had never gone after it. He stopped by at 4:00 am and the search was on...

Dave scanned the sky for about 10 minutes with no luck. I then took my turn and thought for sure that I could find it. I could not find it either. It is a magnitude 8.4, which should be a little brighter than the Ring Nebula (M57) in the constellation Lyra, so I expected it to be pretty easy to fine. Wrong. We both tried a few more times with no luck. I had to go to work soon so I was ready to give up. With one more try before heading out, a very faint smudge came into the eye piece. The Crab Nebula is so faint in my 8" scope that it was almost undetectable! I had no idea it was going to be so faint. We slowly worked up to more powerful eyepieces and also tried Dave's shorty 2x barlow. That just made the view worse and it becomes very difficult to focus at these magnifications.

I read after work that at least a 16" telescope is necessary to actually see any detail (and I believe that!). I find it strange that it should be a little brighter than the Ring Nebula because of its lower magnitude. The Ring Nebula is much easier than the Crab(if you know why please fill me in). So until I get a bigger scope the Crab is will just remain a smudge...

The next step will be to try to photograph it using a minute or so exposure. This will help to bring out some detail.

But at least we found it and now have first hand knowledge about how hard it is to see. I hope this gives somebody out there some insight on what is required to see the elusive Crab Nebula.

Mike

Some success with drift alignment

I was able to to achieve 3 minutes of perfect alignment the other night! Jupiter stayed perfectly centered in the circle of my special alignment eyepiece, with no visible drift until shortly after 3 minutes. The longest exposure time so far that my friend Dave and I have attempted is about 40 seconds, so 3 mins would have produced some fairly decent results. Unfortunately Dave was not here(camera boy), so I was unable to do so.
What made this latest attempt more successful I believe was that after performing the drift alignment to the south(azimuth adjustment to the mouth) and then to the east(altitude adjustment to the mount), I repeated the south drift alignment again. I have read that after performing the second step, it throws the first step off a little. That seems perfectly logical to me because you are changing the location of the polar axis on your mount by adjusting either the azimuth or altitude.

New Meade 12mm Illuminated Reticle

I just purchased this new Meade eyepiece with double cross-hairs for drift alignment imprinted on the reticule. It has several other lines and graphs but I will deal with those later.

I setup last night in my backyard, first performing a polar alignment using my mounts polarscope. I use to think using the polarscope alone with sufficient for astro-photography. Over 2 whole wasted nights of streaked pictures, I learned this was not so. Using just a polarscope for general observing is ok, but not for pictures! I did not have much luck using the drift alignment method last night. I started by looking for a decently bright star at my southern horizon. Because of trees and my house I have a limited area to pull off a polar alignment using the NCP and getting a decent look to my south because of the house. I was able to find a few faint stars to try with the new eyepiece somewhere around the celestial equator and the southern meridian. So with the RA tracking motor turned off, I let the star drift through the eyepiece and adjusted the eyepiece so that the star ran parallel between the cross-hair. It didn't take long, maybe 2-3 minutes, to see the star drift off to one side. I made an adjustment to my azimuth(can't remember which direction), and tried again. I tried a few more times with no real big success. It got rather late so I gave up after about an hour. All is not lost though and spirits are still high because I came away with some real experience in drift alignment.

I don't mind cloudy nights as much right now because with even a few breaks in the clouds I am able to practice aligning the mount and scope!