Friday night there was a clear sky and I was able to spend a couple hours observing and imaging a great red spot (GRS) transit of the planet Jupiter.

I was not feeling well and I had told myself if there were any issues with the equipment it was going to be an observing only night. Luckily everything worked out OK.

The moon was nearly full so I knew I would not have much luck with deep sky objects but I did have a quick look at M42 in Orion (still one of my favorites). It looked nice but a little washed out. The next target was the planet Uranus. I was not expecting to be able to see it very well and was surprised when it the blue/green disk appeared in the eyepiece.

At around 7:45 PM I moved to Jupiter and set up the Celestron NexImage Camera. Seeing was actually OK early on and I was quickly able to get decent focus. I took a couple of quick test shots and things looked pretty good.

Over the next hour or so I took a series of 1 minute video captures of Jupiter to record the transit of the Great Red Spot across the planets surface. The seeing declined considerably after 8:30 or so and the wind picked up. The images are still OK but the earlier images have a bit more detail. Still pretty neat seeing the disturbance in the southern equatorial band caused by the GRS.

The GRS is noted on the flickr page for this image which can be found here.

As the wind picked up and seeing declined I decided to take a couple quick shots of the moon. I have not taken the time to identify the features yet, but the pictures turned out nice.

Just after 10 PM I decided to call it a night. A great observing and imaging session, hopefully it will not be such a long wait for the next one.

More information on the supernova can be found here www.universetoday.com/86261/supernova-discovered-in-m51-t…

The supernova is tagged on the Flickr page which can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/herseyc/5797898286/.

M51- Whirlpool Galaxy with Supernova
06/03/2011 – Suffolk, VA
Camera: Orion Star Shoot DSI II
Scope: Astro-Tech 66 ED
Focal Length: 400mm
Mount: Celestron AS-CG5 GOTO
Exposures: 30 x 2 minute
Guided: Yes – Celestron C6-SGT/Orion Starshoot Autoguider/PHD
Stacked with DeepSky Stacker 3.3.2

The Orion Nebula (M42)

Flickr link for this image is http://www.flickr.com/photos/herseyc/5401039974/in/photostream/

Open Cluster – M37

Flickr link for this image is http://www.flickr.com/photos/herseyc/5401127642/in/photostream/

The Horsehead Nebula – IC434

Flickr link for this image is http://www.flickr.com/photos/herseyc/5400436753/in/photostream/

Mary Shannon and I arrived on site just before 5:00 PM and set up our Celestron C8-SGT. Ted arrived shortly after us with his 18″ Obsession Dob. Several other folks showed up after that and there was a good mix of scope including a 5″ refractor, a 14″ Dob, and a 6″ reflector.

The night started out mostly cloudy with a few stars peeking through holes in the clouds and Jupiter shining bright enough to even be seen through all but the thickest clouds. Because of the clouds I only did a Solar System align on Jupiter, I had pretty good polar alignment so that alignment worked well enough for the rest of the night. The sky cleared pretty nice just before 8 PM.

The “star” of the night, at least for me, was M37. This open cluster was absolutely beautiful with the central bright red/yellow star and it looked very nice in my 26mm SWAN filling nearly the entire field of view. A really nice view in the dark sky.

Also checked out a few other open clusters, M35, M41, and M44 along with M42 the Orion Nebula, M1 the Crab Nebula, and a few other bright Messier object. M45, the Pleiades, cluster looked awesome filling the field of my 50mm finder scope. The Pleiades cluster is so large that even at my lowest power on the C8 I am not able to get all of it in the eyepiece. I was able to get M81 and M82 in the same field of view using my 33mm SWAN and that was the first time I had seen them both in the same field on my scope so that was really neat.

I also had the chance to observe a few new objects. NGC2169, which is a small open cluster in Orion and NGC2261 the Hubble Variable Nebula. NGC2261 was very interesting, it looked a lot like a blue comet.

At around 9:45 PM a bank of clouds moved through and it looked like that was going to be the end of the night. I decided to pack up about 10:00 PM and shortly after putting the last piece of gear in the car the sky cleared so we hung out checking out the views in other scopes. Finally around 11:15 or so we called it a night.

Great time and I am looking forward to the next one.

It was cold, just over freezing, and dry in Suffolk. I set up my Stellarvue SV80BV to do some prime focus photos of the event. The full set of photos can be found here.

I took my first images around 1:30 AM and even though you could not see a shadow on the moon with the unaided eye the camera did pick up a bit of shadow starting to creep over the surface.

Around 2:10 AM or so some pretty heavy clouds started to move through, the moon was bright enough to be seen even through the clouds, but there was a period of time around 2:20 AM that the moon was completely blocked out and I thought that we may miss seeing totality.

Luckily the clouds moved off about as quickly as they moved in and by 2:30 or so the sky was crystal clear. Still a few thin clouds for the first photo below.

But then things started to clear up nicely.

During totality the moon was a nice red color and it was amazing how as the moon darkened the stars brightened. It was really cool to look through the eye piece and see a field of stars behind the moon, these stars are usually washed out during a full moon.

At around 4:00 AM I decided to call it a night and try to get a few hours sleep. It was great to see the eclipse and I am glad my picture came out as well as they did. The full set can be found in my Flickr Lunar Eclipse December 21, 2010 Set.

I was looking for a nice deep sky galaxy target for Saturday night and after looking at M74, NGC7331, and NGC1055 I decided on NGC1055 as the object I was going to image. I ended up having nothing but problems. I could not get the autoguider to work, tried using both the camera port and the ASCOM driver but I was not able to get the mount to guide consistently for more than 5 or 6 minutes.

I took over 90 minutes or exposures but only ended up with 15 or so where the stars were even somewhat round. Here is what I was able to get with 15 2 minute exposures.

Here is the Flickr page for NGC1055

Not very pretty but the faint galaxy NGC1055 is there.

I had much better luck on Sunday night. I found that the mount was a bit off balance and I have a feeling that was what caused the guiding issue on Saturday. I was able to guide for over an hour without any issues while imaging NGC6960, the Veil Nebula, and I think the picture turned out nice. It is a stack of 34×2 minute exposures. NGC6960 is also known as the Veil Nebula and this is only a small piece of it. I plan to have another go at this with my DSLR to get a wider field.

Here is the Flickr page for NGC6960

A couple weeks ago I created a small diffraction mask for the AT66. Nothing fancy, just a piece of card board cut to fit over the AT66′s dew shield and two pieces of thin elastic strings. I decided to give it a try on NGC457, the Owl Cluster. Again, guiding was working well and I was able to get 30 minutes of usable exposures (15 x 2 minutes). The diffraction spikes can be seen in the bright stars. I think it worked pretty well, but I think the elastic strings need to be a bit thinner, I’ll have to see what I can come up with.

The Flickr page for NGC457 can be found here.

Saturday night was clear and cool (cold actually). The mount had a good polar alignment and was balanced well thanks to my efforts the night before. Seeing was pretty good – probably a 7 maybe even an 8, as was transparency at about 7-8. I decided to focus my imaging efforts on a single target – Messier 33 (M33) Triangulum Galaxy.

My guiding was working pretty well I was able to guide rock solid for 35 minutes then there were some issues, I think maybe there is a bad place in the mount since I have had this issue before. I need to take the time to look into this so I can get some longer exposures and sets, but it was cold and I was happy with what I had. I took a little over 30 minutes of 2 minute exposures of M33 and ended up with 13 very nice subs to stack. I also took 10 minutes of darks (5 x 120 seconds) to use.

Here is a quick shot I took of the laptop while imaging. You can see the PHD Guiding window to the left and the Maxim DL Essentials window (with M33) on the right.

The image of M33 is a stack of 13 120 second color images taken with the Orion Star Shoot DSI II attached to my Astro-Tech 66mm scope (400mm Focal length), no other filters, reducers or correctors were used. I used my Celestron C6 SCT (with f/6.3 focal reducer) and the Orion Star Shoot autoguider camera to guide.

This is just the stack and adjustment of the RGB, Luminance, and saturation in Deep Sky Stacker. I did not do any post processing clean up in gimp (except to convert it to jpeg).

I am really happy with this image and I learn a bit more each time I go out. This is definitely a nice target that I will revisit.

Flickr page for this image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/herseyc/5154280096/

I have some narrow-band filters on the way so I am looking forward to experimenting with them

Very nice clear night. The Milky Way was easily visible across the sky, which is unusual for my backyard, the light pollution usually does it in. I was also able to see all the stars in the little dipper without assistance. So a very nice night for observing.

I was set up to image but I did have a look at M27 and M31 through both scopes with the 25mm Plossl and both resolved nicely. M31 was still very low but bright and the bright galactic core was very easy to resolve in both scopes. M27 was nearly directly overhead and looked fantastic.

I also check out M22. In the C6 it was very easy to resolve individual stars, it also looked great in the 66 but it was not as easy to see individual members.

My first target for imaging was Messier 11 (M11) – The Wild Duck Cluster. I took fifteen 60 second exposures with the Orion Starshoot DSI II through the Astro-Tech 66mm guided with the Starshoot Autoguider on the Celestron C6-SGT and ended up with a twelve minutes (12×60 seconds)to stack. I had a little problem with the guiding after about 10 minutes and this caused some issues with the last few shots.

I think I need to work on this a bit more. It looks a little over exposed to me. I am going to try to reprocess what I have and will definitely spend some more time on this in the near future. It really is a nice looking cluster.

The next target was Messier 16 (M16) – The Eagle Nebula. I calibrated the autoguider and it seemed to be working well. I started with 10 60 second exposures and these turned out nice so I up the exposures to 120 seconds. I ended up with twenty minutes (10 x 120 seconds) of exposures with the Orion StarShoot DSI II through the Astro-Tech 66mm guided with the StarShoot Autoguider on the Celestron C6-SGT and I think it turned out very nice.

I also took some images of M31 but they were all junk. I am not sure why. I was having a few issues with the autoguider, not sure if there was a balance issue, if it had something to do with where M31 was in the sky, or what but I just could not get it work right.

All in all a great night to be out looking at the stars.

Alignment Stars: Arcturus, Vega

Luck for us Hurricane Earl ended up just brushing by and the rain and wind stopped in the early afternoon on Friday. The sky cleared just in time for the BBAA Skywatch at Northwest River Park in Chesapeake. There were four scopes set up, on big Dob, a 6″ (??) refractor, a smaller reflector, and I had my 8″ SCT.

There were a ton of cub scouts out there and this made getting things set up a bit frustrating. It is cool, they were all just very excited to look through the scopes and that is really what we are out there for. The humidity was very high and dew heaters on all the scopes were working over time. The dew got to the small reflector pretty quick which left only 3 scopes and a bunch of anxious cub scouts. Several of the scouts asked some really great questions and I think they had a pretty good time looking through scopes.

This was my first time with my 8″ scope in the field. It took me several attempts to get it aligned but once it was it was dead on for the entire night. My DIY field power supply did great. It is powered by a 12 volt 105 amp hour marine deep cycle battery and it had no problem powering the mount and dew heater for the time we were set up.

I did not keep a very detailed log, just a list of objects. M27, M22, M11, M17, M15, M10, and M12. Jupiter rose above the trees about 10:00 or so and looked great.

One object that I did get a pretty good view of was M71. So far every time I have attempted this one in my backyard the light pollution (or moon light) has made it impossible to find. With the clear dark sky I was able to find M71 and it looked great. In the 8″ scope, M71 appeared as a tight faint cluster of stars, it was hard to resolve any individual members.

All in all it was a great Skywatch and I am already looking forward to the next one scheduled for Friday, October 1, 2010.

I knew the moon was going to be fairly bright, but I wanted to have a look at and maybe try to get an image or two of Jupiter. It was nice and clear, a bit warm, and very humid.

I recently picked up a 16mm Nagler on Astromart and was looking forward to giving it a try in the SV80BV – WOW! This will probably end up being my main eyepiece for this scope. Nice crisp views, sharp focus, just very nice. Since it is a 1.25″ eyepiece I stuck with all 1.25″ eyepieces so I did not have to keep switching out the 2″-1.25″ adapter.

The notes in my log are not as I usually do them – Object: Description of what I see. This time they are a bit more free form, I guess I was just not feeling very structured during this session.

I tried to check out several Messier objects before moon rise, but even with the moon over the horizon the bright light from it still made a wash of the night sky. I did get a view or M27, M57, M13, and M15 but because of the bright moon light I was not able to see very much detail for any of these. M13 was very faint and I was not able to resolve and individual stars with either the 16mm or 7mm eyepieces. M27 looked like a faint bubble and showed no detail.

Jupiter was just awesome! Very clear and crisp in the 16mm and 7mm. Even very nice and sharp in the 4mm Radian. Lots of detail in the 4mm – one dark band and at least two visible lighter bands. The views through the eyepiece were just spectacular! The four Galilean moons of Jupiter were very bright and easy to spot. I could keep all of them in the FOV of the 16mm and 7mm eyepieces. (I made a rough sketch of their position in my log, I might scan it later)

I hooked up the Orion DSI II camera to the Televue 2x Powermate and took 100 exposures at 0.04 second and 100 exposures at 0.05 second. I was a bit out of focus on the second set so they are pretty much trash, but after stacking the 100/0.04 seconds I ended up with my best Jupiter image yet.

I ended the night with a look at M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Even with the bright moon the galactic center was easy to find and looked very nice in the 16mm. With a darker sky I think this object will end up looking amazing with this eyepiece through this scope.