Saturn: oh yes we did

Get up at oh-dark-early, that is (4.45am), to check out Saturn and try to spot the new storm that was spotted a few days ago.

Apparently, it looks like this:

(photo courtesy of galaxypix)

Quite remarkable, no? Anyway, we'd set up last night, so it was painless when we got up, and Saturn was in quite a good position over the house. Sadly, the seeing wasn't fantastic; it came in and out, which made focusing a bit of a pain. The rings were very obvious, and I think I could see the shadow of the rings on the planet (or it might have been a dark cloud band). We looked for ten minutes; J claims he could see a bright spot near the limb, when the seeing came good briefly. We came inside to get away from a couple of annoying mozzies for ten minutes, giving the planet time to revolve a bit and give us a better chance of seeing the storm. The seeing was no better when we went back. Again, J thought he saw the brighter spot once or twice; me, I don't think so. I could imagine that I saw it, but I think it was wishful thinking. Anyway, we were done in by sunrise (!!); Venus was behind a tree so we didn't bother trying to see it through the scope. It was incredibly bright though.

Reflections

When we were planning our astronomy holiday as part of Christmas/New Year, we decided to go to two dark places, over six nights, because we figured we'd get to observe maybe half that time. Seemed reasonable.

In the end, we observed every night, for a total of probably 16 hours. On the sixth night we came inside before midnight for the first time. Each night we were out by 10pm, doing alignments etc. That's a lot of time observing.

I'm the sort of person who has the unfortunate habit of putting pressure on herself. Seeing clear skies, and knowing we'd transported all of that gear, I felt like I absolutely had to get out there and make the most of it. I felt guilty at the very idea of wasting all that precious dark time. This was not a good thing! - especially when, by the last day or two, I was really quite tired; despite sleeping in most mornings, it still takes it out of me, to be up so late so many nights in a row.

One of my other problems is that I both wasn't quite prepared enough, nor quite as easy-going as I would like to have been. See, not only do I think I should be out there looking at the sky, I think I should be actively using it: this, in my head, means looking at as many things as possible, especially new things. Because... what's the point otherwise? Sure I could just look at Orion all night, but isn't that a waste of time?? And then when I wasn't as prepared as I 'should' have been, I got frustrated at 'wasting' time and opportunities.

A wise friend pointed out to us, halfway through this epic, that he likes to think about astronomy as similar to gastronomy: a small amount, savoured, rather than stuffing yourself silly. I like this a lot in theory; it's just going to take me a while to get my ahead around to accepting it as being 'allowed'.

I've come away from our adventure with some things to think about, then. I realise that I have to give some thought to what I actually want to get out of my astro hobby. Am I looking to tick off as many doubles as possible, seeing all the globular clusters, being able to navigate my way around the whole sky... or am I doing it because I enjoy looking at the majesty that is the night sky? Seems there's an obvious answer there, really. I've also learnt that I should just put on more clothes when I need to rather than pretending I'm not that cold (stoooopid), and that maybe observing for 6 nights in a row - especially when it's just me and J, with no one else either to suggest interesting objects to view or break up what does get a bit monotonous - is probably not a brilliant idea. But that's ok; learning is a good thing. As long as I do learn it.

Last night of astroholiday

The wind did not let up for our last night of our astroholiday, but we went out anyway. J had earlier set up the PST for a bit of solar viewing - and in order to do that, put the double plate on the Losmandy mount. Since it was on there anyway, we decided to try the double up: the 128 and the 90mm. Put the 10mm eyepiece in the 128 and 21mm in the other, with the idea that this would give quite a different view of various objects. It was good in theory, I think, and certainly did give different views. However, it was quite heavy, and seemed to have a bit of trouble moving via the hand controls; this was probably partly to do with the wind, but may als mean we didn't have it quite balanced right.

Anyway, I naturally started out with Jupiter, and it was actually good enough seeing that I put the 6mm in Keppler, and magnified it with the 5mm even. A couple of dark bands were obvious.

I decided to continue my little Messier marathon from last night, since I knew I'd missed a few by looking when they had gone behind the house. I caught M78 - which is a neat splodge of nebulosity with two stars seemingly embedded in it; and M37, which in the 10mm was large, faint, with many distinct stars; in the 21mm, more of a grey smudge, although some individual points were still distinct. M36 looked similar, with a shape I'm claiming as like a starfish. I missed M74, M38, and M34 by not being quick enough! So I went to some others: M48 is still a boring open cluster, but M79 is endearing itself by being such a cute little globular.

I was getting a bit put out by the wind by this stage, so J dragged me over to Copernicus and showed me the Grus quartet (which was actually a triplet at this stage, because it wasn't quite dark enough for the whole show), which is always cool: seeing three or four galaxies apparently so close together is breathtaking. He also showed me NGC246, which he is quite in love with: it's a planetary nebula, with three bright points within/to the side; I'm not sure whether they're physically associated with it or not.

We decided to call it an earlier night than normal, so to finish up I dialled up the Popular Deep Sky Objects tour and had a quick spin. I tried for the Witchhead Nebula, knowing it was going to be too big to see the whole thing in one eyepiece (3 degrees!), but hoping I would at least be able to see some nebulosity. I am dubious, although J claims it was obviously greyer in some sections. 47Tuc - such a bright core, so striking an object! - and, of course, the Orion Nebula finished the night off.

Sun sketch

Carted the PST around the place, and it wasn't until our second last day on proper holidays that we remembered to get it out! J set it up on the double mount we bought for the Losmandy; he set it up fairly early, and I wandered out for a look three times over the day - and it managed to track fairly well for the whole day, too.

I even did a sketch:
Done at about 2pm, over a few minutes. It's a composite from a couple of different tunings. Most excitingly, as I went from one tuning where some of those sunspots were more obvious back to where I could also see the prominences (on the limb) - that one on the righthand side suddenly appeared!

And then there was wind

Even more wind last night. Still, at least it kept the possibility of mozzies at bay.

Tragically, I discovered that I could my thumbs all the way through the thumbs of my gloves... very sad. Especially since it got awfully cold.

Anyway, I decided to do a mini Messier marathon for this session, since that required no planning on my part and hey, it's the Messier catalogue! I did try looking at Jupiter first of course, but again it was mush; the seeing was atrocious in the west, and again the wind was not playing nice.

M79: lovely little globular cluster. A couple of bright stars to the side, better with averted vision. Quite irregular.
M77: itty little galaxy. Better in Copernicus with the 10mm, but still no details obvious.
M42 and 43: a favourite, of course. I looked at the Trapezium, and am convinced that I could see three additional faint stars in between the main bright ones. I tried putting the 6mm in, but the wind made focussing a nightmare.
M41: in Copernicus with the 21mm, very bright and interesting; numerous yellow and bright white stars. With the 35mm, boring. In Keppler, the 10mm gave a chaotic and somewhat overwhelming view of the cluster; the 21mm made it more coherent, and showed off the lovely yellow stars in the centre.
M50: chaotic in the 10mm, boring through the 21mm.
M47: a nice enough little cluster with a somewhat interesting arrangement; I liked the line of bright stars through the middle.
M46: could not be seen in the same field of view as M47 through Keppler; good case in point of how awesome Ptolemy is, for wide views. A bit boring, overall, although exciting to see the planetary nebula off to the side (NGC2438).
M45: in Copernicus, it was a group of bright dots with what is apparently nebulosity, but it just looked like haze around individual stars to me. The Pleiades is, I think, best naked eye.
M93: boring... looks a bit like an anvil. Or maybe a teapot.
M48: chaotic in the 10mm; 21mm made it look like the outline of something I couldn't quite figure out.
M67: looks a bit like a comma. Possibly some nebulosity?
M44: some trouble finding this as the Argo thought it was upside down... impossible int he 10mm, and no shape in the 21mm - just looked like a bunch of visual double and triples. Again, more interesting naked eye, where it was a pronounced smudge.
M1: large grey smudge in Copernicus; ditto in Keppler, bigger of course in the 10mm. Not very crabby-looking.
M35: an open cluster; boring except for the fact that it has a little companion that looks like a globular but is actually a really tight little cluster.

And that is when tragedy struck! Well, when I say tragedy, I mean that M36, 37 and 38 were all behind the house AND that the RA encoder died! J gallantly resuscitated it thanks to his trusty Allan key set. At this point it was after midnight and getting awfully cold, so there was no way I was going to re-align. Thus, to bed.

The next night, in the Grampians

To be honest, it felt like a bit of a dud night. I was using Keppler (Tak128), and it was quite windy so it was a little harder to manage than little Ptolemy would have been. Also, I had chosen some dud objects to try and chase: that is, they were smaller and/or dimmer than I realised, so they were hard to find and/or actually see. Le sigh.

Jupiter looked very average. This was largely to do with the wind; it was hard to get a steady view. Basically pointless with the 6mm eyepiece; 10mm was a bit better, with a few bands of cloud visible. I then tried to find a few things but got frustrated, so J hauled me over to Copernicus to show me some galaxies. First, though, IC418: a groovy little planetary nebula, which looked amazing through the 4mm: that's 450x magnification, J assures me, which sounds like a lot. Galaxies: NGC253 (a large grey smudge of a galaxy, brighter at the centre with a couple of very bright spots, which may actually not be physically associated with it? also possibly a dust lane); NGC288, NGC247, NGC300, and NGC7793 (variations on Grey Smudge, some larger than others). Could not see the dwarf galaxy in Sculptor.

To finish the night I went back to Keppler. I looked at the Large Magellanic Cloud (the detail continues to amaze); Omega Centauri (huge, but I think 47Tuc is still my favourite); M79 (a great little globular); M78 (nebula, not that bright); and, naturally, M42. Which was a happy way to finish the night.

New Year's Eve

We left the Little Desert and traveled over to the Grampians, for a change of scene during the day but still dark skies for observing. It was an horrendously hot day, which cooled off only gradually; and to make matters worse, it was incredibly windy - gusts up to 90kph in our area apparently. This made seeing decidedly sub-optimal; while I was still stooging around trying to get a good view of Jupiter, J announced that there was basically no point in me looking for double stars, because resolving them was going to be a pain in the butt. Tragedy! What was I going to do instead?!

Well, I had planned on looking at interesting things and doubles in Canis Major, so I did check out the open cluster NGC2362; it looked all right with averted vision, with quite a bright centre. I also tried looking at the open cluster + emission nebula of NGC2264, but the nebulosity was so faint through Ptolemy (90mm) that I might as well have been making it up.

I didn't have anything else planned, and was feeling a little weary to be honest (two nights of bed at 3am, and a 40C day, will apparently do that to you). So I decided to let J do all the work and just get the advantage of looking through the 16" Dob. He had a plan for looking at some galaxies in Fornax and Colomba, so that's what I did too. We saw:
* NGC1808, a long faint but obvious galaxy, with a bright centre;
* NGC1851, a tendrilly yet compact globular cluster;
* NGC2090 and NGC2188, both faint smears;
* NGC1792, a bigger grey smudge with a couple of bright spots visible;
* a group of five - maybe six - galaxies all visible within the same field of view (1 degree).

In between looking at those, I did end up going back and playing with Ptolemy. Firstly, I set the Argo to Identify, and played around finding stars: I now know Procyon, Castor and Pollux, and confirmed that Aldebaran is indeed that star in Taurus. Plus, I know where the constellation Lepus is (ish). Secondly, I decided to see what Messiers I could find. Most I had already seen before - M93 (boring open cluster); M46 and M47 (awesome to see in the same field of view, nice contrast with one tight and one loose open cluster); M50 (almost unviewable through the 35mm, being too small/dim). But I did get two new ones to tick off: M48 (small and dim open cluster), and M67 (another open cluster that I do like; it looks like someone took a bite out of the side). I was going to look for more but then my Argo's batteries died! Oh the humanity.

By this stage it was midnight, so we took a final tour of some old faves - 47Tuc, which looked INCREDIBLE and as fake as ever; the Tarantula Nebula, which I choose to think of as resembling a flower; and, of course, M42, whose nebulosity just looked brilliant through the Dob. I had to get a bigger eyepiece to get a better view of it!

The Little Desert, Night Two

Not quite as good this second night. There were a few reasons for this:
1. Mozzies.
2. It stayed hot all night - maybe 23C by 2.30 - so the mozzies stayed around too.
3. More mozzies. They were trying to eat me through my clothes.
4. People. There were a few more people at the Lodge, so there were a few more lights on. Also, I actually knew one of the people! He and his friends came out at about 10pm to have a look, we showed them some of the usual suspects... and then he hung around til midnight. I wanted to have a look at the stuff I'd planned, but it wasn't that interesting, so I didn't feel like I could while he was there....
5. Mozzies.
6. Trying a new telescope. Um. Yes. Have I mentioned our new telescope? It's a Tak FS128 (5") which J picked up through his usual cunning ways. I've called it Keppler... and he's huge, in comparison with Ptolemy (90mm). Coming to grips with the different fields of view in the eyepieces, etc, took some doing, and I'm still not there yet.

What did I look at? Well, we started with Jupiter - of course - and it was by far THE most amazing and awesome view of Jupiter I have ever had, enough to almost make me want to sketch it. The main dark band was blindingly obvious, there was detail to the north and the south, and - perhaps most amazingly to me - the moons clearly appeared to be of slightly different shape and colour. Ganymede was obviously bigger and redder. I was totally blown away - as were the people we showed it to a bit later. We also showed them M42 and 43 - of course! - and it too looked stunning through the 128. In fact I looked at it several times over the night, and it just got better and bigger every time.

To get my mojo back a bit, after my acquaintance left, I took some time to just look up. Keppler has a box disconcertingly like a coffin, which it turns out makes an excellent bench, so I just lay back on it (the ground was awfully sandy) and stared up. Orion was pretty close to the zenith (we were pushing midnight by this stage), and the view was just delightful. I also had a chance to look at a few things through J's Dobsonian, probably my favourite of which was an awesome planetary nebula, NGC1360, with a bright core and a discrete cloud around it. I tried dialling up planetary nebulae to 'tour' on Keppler but it was a bit of a bust with the lights on in the distance.

Anyway, I decided to have a go at some doubles. Using the list of doubles in Orion from vol 1 of The Night Sky Observer's Guide, I had a look at and split: E627; E630; 17-rho Ori (a lovely double, orange and blueish); 19-beta Ori; E664; h2259 (although only the 3.6/10.8 mag stars, not the other companions); h697 (the triple); E697; E701; h2268; E114; E790; E816; 60 Ori and E877. Which, yes, was possibly a stupid number of doubles to look at it one night, but I did stop when I was bored. Additionally, I was practising with the Argo, because I found all of these by pushing the telescope around until the read-out on the Argo was the correct RA and Dec. There was a few times when it wasn't quite right, but overall it was a good way to start getting a handle on using the mount as well as the Argo - and getting myself more used to directions.

We stayed up until just after 2, determined to see Saturn. However, we were flagging fast, so when it was just above the horizon and mushy as all get-out (not coming clear at all, and looking like a weird bulging object as a result), we threw in the towel. Still, it was a good night overall (despite the mozzies), and we're hoping for a few more like it - this time in the Grampians.

The Little Desert, Night One

While it's not exactly a desert, when I say we came here because it's a dark part of Victoria, it is seriously a dark part of Victoria.

My main aim on this first night was to play with my new Argo - a Christmas present - and get used to my Losmandy mount. While I grew to love my industrial green Tak P2Z, it is awfully nice not to have to remember to disengage the tracking and then re-engage.... Anyway, I aligned it pretty easily, and then had a look at Jupiter (of course). Since it's so easy with the Argo I also found Uranus - and even though it wasn't very dark, it was an obviously blue little disk.

I decided to start off by having a go at one of their tour functions, and chose Non-Stellar Objects within 30 degrees of Sirius and a lower limit of mag 8 - since I'll admit that it wasn't exactly pitch-black yet, but I was impatient. First off was M41, a bright open cluster, which looked great. The next few objects were also open clusters, and although they can be interesting enough the joy soon waned: I looked at NGC2345, M50, M47, and M46, skipped a number of NGC clusters, and then gave up and moved on to trying to find triple stars, again using the tour function. This too I fairly quickly gave up on; for my part, it was probably not quite dark enough to be trying to split triples, but it was frustrating in general because the Argo didn't supply mags for all of the stars, nor their separations, so I wasn't sure if I found them or not. And thus I moved on to the 'Bright Nebulae' tour.

First, the Rosette Nebula, around NGC2244. In Ptolemy (90mm refractor), the nebulosity was very faint indeed. However, I badgered J into finding it in Copernicus (16" Dob), complete with brand new filters, and WOW! It looked awesome - we couldn't fit the whole thing into the field of view in the 21mm. It was matched, and bettered in my scope, by M42 and 43, of course - I really do love this time of year - they just looked incredible. Every time I look at the nebula there it just looks brilliant.

I was interrupted at this point in my tour my J's excitement at having found the Horsehead Nebula. He got a H-beta filter specifically for finding this, and was over the moon at spotting it. I'm not as patient as him, so while I could see the band of nebulosity and just pick the 'divot' that marks the famous horse's head, I couldn't make out any detail. The Flame Nebula, however, was waaay more interesting, looking quite a lot like a maple leaf. He also showed me M1, the Crab Nebula - a large, faint, not very crabby smudge - and, a bit later, several faint galaxies around Fornax, including the awesome 'Zorro', NGC1365.

I looked at a few more bright nebulae - NGC2175, M78, NGC1975 (drowned out by M42), and a couple of others that I couldn't really pick - before going back to my old fave, double stars. As with the list of triple stars, I was a bit frustrated by the lack of information provided in the Argo about magnitudes and separation distances for the double stars. I ended up grabbing my Cambridge Double Star Atlas, and looking them up in it to see if it was worth my energy - but some of the ones listed on the Argo weren't listed in the Atlas... I know there are double star catalogues available to download, so I will to investigate those. Anyway, I saw E816 (a separation of 4.4"!! Very proud); Ori60; E838; E877; OE73; Ori68; and E766 (I really should figure out how to do Greek letters, since the E is meant to be sigma...). In doing so I also stumbled on an awesome little planetary, NGC2438, and a totally lovely open cluster, NGC2169.

To finish up the night I tried the non-stellar objects tour again, this time in the incredibly rich area around Carina. I skipped most of the open clusters, but looked at Omega Centauri (always breathtaking, and stupidly detailed); NGC2808 (another globular, this one quite faint); the Gem Cluster and Jewel Box (open clusters I will make an exception for); Centaurus A (a faint galaxy with what appears to be a split in the middle); and the seriously cool Ghost of Jupiter (another planetary nebula - I love it).

We packed it in around 2.15, with the moon rising: a crescent, it was so yellow it looked like a banana. If we'd hung around a bit longer we could have looked at Saturn, but my goodness it got cold. From complaining about the heat in the day, we ended up as rugged up as we've ever been while observing. Can't wait for tonight.

Transits

We've dragged the telescope out twice in the last week or so, but only briefly. We haven't really had much summer, yet, so it's been quite cloudy and quite cool at night! Anyway, this may be my favourite celestial time of year: Jupiter still visible for a while in the West, and Orion visible at a really decent time in the East. Whee!

Both times we've had a look at Jupiter we've spied shadow transits, which I think is pretty amazing given they were both haphazard viewing opportunities. The first time it was Europa, and tonight it was little Io. Tonight in particular the shadow was a really dark circle on the disc of Jupiter - very obvious indeed.

Also today, the nights officially start getting longer again! Gone are the days when I was just all about the sunshine, baby. Now - ah, now, I get to be totally conflicted. Fun!