Observing session Saturday 27th & Sunday 28th December 2

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 8:04 pm

Hi All,
This is to give advanced notice of a possible observing session this Saturday night, weather permitting.
If its good we'll head up to the Burren, there is no moon so it will be a dark night! our mid winter observing session so to speak.
If we're going ahead and your a club member then you'll receive a text on your mobile phone saying when and where to meet up.
Lets hope it becomes clear.

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Fri Dec 26, 2008 1:36 pm

Dang!
There is a huge bank of nuttin' a comin'!
On the Met.co.uk site it looks like the Ozone hole!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/satpics/latest_VIS.html

Saturday night: Dry with clear spells. Very cold with a widespread sharp to severe frost; lowest air temperatures generally from zero to -5 degrees

-5 ! excellent!
I wish I could go but I have a family thing happening.
If someone on the committee wants to try out the new Skylux
let me know and you can collect it from me in Shannon.

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Fri Dec 26, 2008 2:53 pm

Lads,
if ye care to,
Mimas will be transiting Saturn on Saturday night.
The cool thing about it is that it will ride along the top of the ring system.
Starting a Saturn rise and first contact at 12:30am leaves the planet disk at 3:00am and continues along the line of the ring until 5. It's mag 1 so not exactly blinding but something to try and see all the same along with the
wierd looking edge on ring system.

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Sat Dec 27, 2008 1:26 pm

Last night was awesome and too good to pass up so I took advantage
of the clear spell from Shannon.
(Until 6AM!)
Saturn looks very strange with edge on rings.
Not at all as bright as before.

The visual view I had through the bino viewer was 100 times better than
this pic the sense of 3D was great.

The Burren tonight by the looks of it it is going to be perfect.
I may be able to get up there for around 1AM.
if ye go.

John O'Mahony · Post by **John O'Mahony** » Sat Dec 27, 2008 1:42 pm

Hope you can make it Frank-it should be a great night.

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Sat Dec 27, 2008 1:47 pm

Well guys, the weather gods are on our side, looks like it will be a freezingly clear night

Met at the Ivans carpark at 5pm sharp, we intend been at the Burren for 6pm onwards, we intend getting Venus before it sets.
No hassle if that's too early, come along late if need be,

Wrap up warm, bring soup, its going to be freezing!

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Sun Dec 28, 2008 3:06 pm

Well,
It was an ok night, the wind was just too strong to stay up there for too long, we were home by 11.30, it was so windy that there was zero frost there.
So, we're going to have another go at it tonight, Sunday the 28th, this time up in Boher where there is some good shelter from the wind, we're meeting at 8.30 in the carpak there.
Again, all are welcome.

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 8:56 pm

Well guys, we braved it out in Boher last night, and boy was it worth it.
Frank, John, Pat and I were the poor souls who braved the frost.
The sky was slightly less hazy then it was the previous night in the burren but most importantly the wind was almost non existent thankfully and we lasted until 4.40am when the clouds rolled in. I used the light shroud for the scope and the UTA upper shroud making the scope as dark as possible.
I also got a new filter slide so I could rapidly change between unfiltered/O3/UHC/Hbeta filters without having to remove the eyepiece making filter comparison views easy and very interesting!
Here are some of the highlights.

To start off with some eye candy, we got in NGC869 and 884, the double cluster in Perseus, the 31mm eyepiece fitted in the 2 clusters, I always look out for that red/orange star in between them, but it's such a low mag that I then jumped to a 9mm eyepiece to see those faint stars in the center of each cluster.

M31, andromeda galaxy, very nice in the wide field 31mm eyepiece, on close examination, 3 dark bands were visible in the galaxy, its 2 companion galaxies were easily seen.

NGC891, a super edge on galaxy, photographic like, central bulge with intersecting dark lane, rich star field, always surprises me just how big this galaxy is through the eyepiece.

NGC7662, blue snowball nebula, a nice strikingly blue circular disk.

NGC7640, central halo, an obvious edge on spiral, in a bright star field

M1, crab nebula, bright, non distinct edges,

M42, orion nebula, we spent a sizable portion of the night here switching eyepieces and filters, what can I say, stunningly bright, the entire area around it is full of whisps of nebulosity, 6 star of trapezium seen, 5 other stars within the central core of the nebula were just visible. I experimented with various filters and found that the O3 revealed the most nebula detail but dimmed the image somewhat, the UHC filter showed very slightly less detail especially in the outer areas but the object and stars were substantially brighter, H-beta filter was no benefit.
The detail in the center of the nebula looked like frosted bubble glass that is unevenly illuminated, that's just about the best way I could describe it.
Its worth noting that these filters extinguished the fainter stars visible making the unfiltered view great in its own right.
M43 was photographic, but needed m42 out of the field of view to see it properly as M42 was so bright.
NGC1977/1975/1973, nice bright open cluster with 2 distinct areas of nebulosity separated by a dark rift, neither the O3,UHC,Hbeta filters help with this nebula.

IC434, horsehead, completely invisible except when using a Hbeta filter. The southern edge of the horse outline was distinct but the northern edge was difficult to make out, the "snout" was not decernable. The red nebula was easily seen stretching in either direction from the horse.
NGC2024 above and to the west was photographic, dark lanes easily visible, was visible in O3 and Hbeta. NGC2023 and IC435 were visible nearby.

NGC2129, a small distinct cluster in Gemini, forms 2 distinct lines of stars.

M35, a fine big bright cluster, twinned with ngc2158 which to me always looks like a distant clone and takes high magnification well.

IC443, a very faint SNR only visible with the O3 filter. small and forms a crescent shape.
I suspect that this nebula is alot bigger but mostly beyond the reach of this scope.

NGC2266 was the surprise of the night for me, small but fine and dense cluster, takes on the shape of a wedge, and works well with high magnification. One to look for again.

NGC2371-2372, an uneven double lobbed planetary nebula, very distinct shape, what a faint distant dumbbell nebula might look like.

NGC2389, the center of a group of galaxies in Gemini, took high mag well, counted 4 galaxies.

Abell 21, a fine crescent almost circular shaped nebula, looked alot like its photographic appearance, completely invisible except when using an O3 filter. (I can feel a Abell hunt night coming on soon!)

NGC2420, a nice tight almost circular cluster, bright.

M53, small but resolved globular cluster in Coma Berenecies.

M3, super globular cluster to finish off the DSOs for the night.

We then concentrated on Saturn as it had risen high enough at this stage, it was amazing to see how to rings had almost gone but with high mag from our eyepiece perspective the rings behind the planet were above the rings infront of the planet, in moments of good seeing, it was real nice!! In bad seeing the edge on ring looked like a vibrating string.
We were then going to do abit of imaging with it, but the clouds rolled in and wiped that out.

There were about 10 other non spectacular DSO objects in there but looking back at this list I'm left wondering where all the time went, it seems like a small list of objects for ~7 hours,

Anyway, we finished up and was home for 6am, tired but happy we got a good night in.
Many thanks to the lads who came along and made it a great night.!

John O'Mahony · Post by **John O'Mahony** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:26 am

That was a great night. Nowhere near as cold as in the Burren and psychologically only 20 minutes from the warm house. Nice and comfortable observing night.
I managed to put my C11 and CGE mount through its paces with a guided tour of all the main objects in Orion, Gemini, Auriga and Ursa Major. M42 was just amazing, I could have spent the whole night just looking at this one object. No filters needed to bring out the best of it either. The 27mm panoptic which i picked up at WSP this year really rocks.
I pumped up the magnification to 440x to check out the optics once they had cooled-I could just make out the airy disk on a bright star. The local seeing at home wouldn't allow me to do this. Managed to get home at a nice comfortable 2am.
Looking forward to trying some astrophotography with the CGE when my Canon 450D arrives this week.
ps. Stephen, that adjustable observing chair (ironing chair) was from Atlantic Homecare - it really is the biz (€50).

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 4:29 pm

Jeez I'm only getting over the last few nights.
I feel like how I felt when I got back from Mt. Parnon.
3 nights total and I am wiped.
I've a bunch of images I must process over the coming cloudy spell.
Fab night indeed.

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 3:14 pm

Here is a shot of M35 in Gemini from the night.
It's an alright shot I think, focus was a little out but you
can make out the distant cluster to the bottom right.
I've never noticed this cluster before until Dave pointed it out on the night.

Taken with an ETX125 ota, canon 350d at prime focus on Astrotrac mount.

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 10:13 pm

A grand shot Frank, how long is the exposure, it might have worked out with a longer exposure. the pairing of these 2 clusters is always fab through the eyepiece.

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 10:38 pm

Agreed, the cluster itself is always nice but the second distant one to me
appeared orangey / reddish brown.
I noticed it on the night but for some reason it's not so obvious in the pic I took.
Interestingly in this post on the SPA forum the colour is very vivid due to
RGB processing.
Worth a look
http://www.popastro.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10947