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...

Picture of Uranus and Jupiter

Here are two different pictures put into one by Dave of Uranus and Jupiter. They were both taken with the same magnification, which really shows the size difference from our perspective (obviously size and distance are a factor). I was really happy to finally see Uranus. And to actually get a picture of it was really satisfying.

Both of these images were taken through my 8" reflector using Dave's Cannon DSLR. We are both fairly new to imaging celestial objects and found it difficult to get the image to focus. First we found the planet using an eyepiece, which is pretty tough in itself where the object is so small and faint like Uranus(Jupiter is no problem because it is so big in the sky!). Then we removed the eyepiece and attached the camera. The camera is heavy enough that it throws the balance of the telescope off, so it is necessary to balance the scope again. And hopefully the object hasn't moved out of view while doing so, because it can be difficult to find the object again through the camera's view screen.
So if you are lucky enough to still have the object in view, the next step is to achieve focus. This step is also very tough because you simply have to guess whether or not you are focusing in the right direction until you get a crisp picture. Once focus is achieved, you want to try a short exposure of maybe 15 seconds to see how well the mount is tracking the object. If drifting occurs at 15 seconds than the tracking needs to be fixed. This essentially means the camera needs to come back off and a new alignment needs to be performed again. I mentioned the 'drift alignment" method in an earlier post. The whole 'drift alignment' method can take all night if you are a newbie(like me).
Let me know if you have any comments or questions. I would love to hear them!

Any astronomers close by?

There just doesn't seem to be many astronomers out there. I know that performing a web search will show thousands of people whom all love to star gaze. But in my day to day life I just don't meet them.
I live in Vandalia, Ohio, which is near Dayton and I love to star gaze. If you live relatively close and would like to chat, send me an email! mbanta@bantacomputers.com.

Late year scoping

I was able to get my 8" Skywatcher out last weekend(12-03-2011). The temp was around 50 deg F and mostly clear. Not bad for so late in the year. I only viewed a few different objects that night but it was fun none the less.
Jupiter was the first object I went for. It comes out early and dominates the sky(here in Vandalia, Ohio). Next I went for The Orion Nebula which showed itself pretty well. I must say that I just love when Betelgeuse pops up over the horizon, burning red-orange color.
I also viewed the Pleiades, which always disappoints in my telescope. I would like to know what it takes to view some nebulosity there.

Passing of a friend

My best friend and favorite astronomy buddy died a little over a month ago from a heart attack. I will greatly miss him and the long nights in the back yard or at Hueston Woods staring at the sky. Every time I go out to scope I will be thinking of you. Take care Dave.

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!