Posts Made By: Rick Wiseman

Mike,

Your five inch has a pretty high focal ratio, f/15, which gives higher magnification and a narrower field of view than a scope with a lower focal ratio. This type of scope excels for viewing the moon and planets and it will be great for viewing globular clusters and planetary nebulae, as Inge mentions above. But many open clusters may “spill” outside your field of view. Even so, it will be neat to scan around in the star-filled spaces.

Your aperture is bigger than my 3-1/2”, and your location is darker than mine, so you will be able to go “deeper” than me. I can “find” quite a few galaxies, but that is about it. Not a lot of detail is apparent. You will get a better look at the shape of the galaxies than I do, and see some dark areas that I can’t in the Andromeda galaxy, m82 and the famous Sombrero galaxy. But you will get the biggest kick from realizing that those dim ovals of light are so huge, so far away, and contain billions of stars like our sun. Wonder who is looking back at our Milky Way galaxy from there? ! ! !

Stick with it, get out there and observe as much as you can. Working a scope, eyepieces, focuser and equatorial mount can be clumsy and difficult at first, but it will become second nature quickly. Your scope will give you great satisfaction. I get this great feeling every observing session, and it lasts for several days. It’s a combination of peace and relaxation and of being amazed at what I see. Dmitri said it the best: “M42 made me shout things in the darkness.”

Enjoy,
Rick

We have good discussions here about finding observing buddies and involving new people in amateur astronomy. I think many people wonder “Why should I get up out of this comfy chair and go outside and look at the stars?” Maybe they think about the cold or the mosquitoes or creepy things in the dark.

Even I have to answer that question myself occasionally. I look out the window to see how clear the sky is, then I think about what phase the moon is at and what is “up” tonight. And I think about how recent my last session outside was and if it’s getting tiresome to my wife and kids.

Of course, any night of the year there are several of “headline” objects visible – ie. Jupiter, Saturn, the moon, Orion nebula, M13, M31 and so on. But sometimes my laziness kicks in and I think, I have seen that a bunch of times already!

Then I think, I have to see M83 before it goes down in the west, (stuff in the south has an annoying habit of disappearing quickly!) and I don’t want to have to wait another year to see it! This is why we have the Messier list and the Herschel 400 list and so on. It’s also why we buy all the magazines and guide books and sky atlases and maps.

So how do you answer the question “Why should I get up out of this comfy chair and go outside and look at the stars?” for yourselves and for new people interested in the hobby?

Regards,
Rick

All,

Have you noticed the dance Jupiter and his moons have been performing around about three background stars this past few weeks?

There is one bright star with a dimmer star a few arc-minutes south and another well southwest of the vertically aligned pair.

Jupiter passed the bright star moving west, and is now moving back 'beneath' the bright star after quadrature. There have been some neat patterns with the moons and the stars.

Rick

Greg,

I have observed a couple of trends in society that you touched on in your long letter.

First, participation in all adult club-type activities has dropped greatly in the past 25 years or so. Bowling leagues, service clubs like Lions or Kiwanis, fraternal organizations like Knights of Columbus or Eagles, etc, etc. What are we all doing with our time?

Second, school rules. If your kids want to be active in anything, they MUST commit a lot of time to it. If you want to play on the basketball team, not only do you have practices and games during the season, you have to go to basketball camps in the summer and weightlifting training at school all offseason. Mom and dad's activities must be scheduled around the school activities.

I don't know if these trends are good or bad or shouldn't be occurring, I just know that they exist.

So, when will dad go out to a star party, when he won't even go to his lodge meetings anymore? And when do the kids have time to go out to a star party, when they are overbooked with other school-sponsored activities?

Regards,
Rick

I need to find some parts for the mount of my DS-90AT. I need the gear shaft for the altitude axis (victim of a little accident - oops). I also want to get another set of drive motors, I think my altitude motor has an electrical issue. Anywhere on the web?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Regards,
Rick

Well, I observed Friday evening, not a new deep sky object, but a new Constellation, Corona Australis. The clarity was great, especially after all the haze during the August heat. I found it by a happy accident.

I wanted to observe M54 in Sagittarius, and I normally start at Sigma Sgr and move straight south. M54 is tiny and bright and all by itself. Then I switch a higher power.

But by mistake I started at Ascella, moved straight south and noted a nice double star 6th or 7th mag. and about 5-10 secs. separation. But no M54. Moving back north I ran across a very nice globular cluster, NGC5723. This is about 36-37 degrees south declination and is actually just inside the Sagittarius border. so it was only about 12 or 13 degrees elevation. About as far south as I ever get.

I found the double star in Burnham with the designation "Brs 14", but I don't know what catalog Brs stands for. Can anyone give the name of that? There is a complex of nebulae around Brs 14, but I did not see them. Too far south. I could easily see the arc of the remaining stars in Corona.

I discovered my error a bit later and found M54 easily, along with M69, M70, M55, M18 and the great M22. A globular cluster night.

Regards,
Rick

The conjunction of the moon with Venus earlier this month brought a question to mind. Since the moon and Venus were the same angular distance from the sun, but showed different phases, could this observation, or perhaps observations over a number of months, be used to determine the distance to Venus? This assumes a known distance to the moon, which was found using parallax. Perhaps one of the old time astronomers used this measurement technique. This makes me wonder about all the fuss over transits of Venus to determine its distance. Thanks for all comments.

Rick W

All,

Tonight was the first clear night for seven or eight days, and the moon has not yet risen. Comet Holmes is still an easy naked eye object. It is much larger now, and I can see it has a very comet-like appearance, somewhat rounded and sharp edged on one side and vague and indistinctly fading into darkness on the other. It is very bright in 10x50 binoculars.

At 40x, Holmes nearly fills the FOV of my 90mm refractor, much, much larger than the full moon. A longish oval or spindle shaped bright area is in the middle. The sharp edge still looks like the coma a few weeks ago, with a bright outer ring and dimmer inside. Many background stars are visible through the coma.

I encourage you all to get out and have a look at this comet, especially before moonrise.

Regards,
Rick W

All,

Last night was clear here in Ohio and I was out with the scope. About 11:00pm I noticed a diffuse 'cloud' perhaps 10 degrees below Polaris and a bit to the east. At first I thought it was a small cirrus cloud, lit by the lights of Lima, Ohio. There had been some cirrus earlier in the evening.

But this cloud was PERSISTENT, stayed in the same location and was too small for a cirrus cloud. It seemed to be HIGH, and reminded me of a upper-stage fuel dump or perhaps something else from NASA. It was perhaps 8 to 10 degrees long, maybe 4 degrees wide and roughly oval in shape. The cloud was dim, its surface brightness was greater than the Milky Way.

Thanks for any reports.

Rick

Everyone,

I have observed for four years using a 90mm refractor, and with some success. All 100 Messier objects and many other NGC clusters and planetary nebulae.

Well, I recently purchased an 8" reflector, and I wanted to report a few observations.

The best: globular clusters. I reported in the "Under 124mm" forum recently about a good night when I was able to resolve M13, M92 but not M3 globulars with the 90mm. It took four years of experience and good clarity and seeing to do this. With the 8", any night, whatever seeing, I can not just resolve the globulars, I can blow them apart. At 320x, I feel I can lay down in and grovel around among all the stars! Stupendous.

Excellent: planetary nebulae. Many have high surface brightness, of course, but are tiny. 320x makes them obvious greenish disks. M27 is huge, M57 is a beautiful round cheerio.

Maybe good, galaxies. I haven't seen enough at this time of year. M31 is huge, M32 is bright and with M110 appear far away from the big galaxy. M33 and M110 not so good, but they were low and the clarity was not that good.

Jupiter is excellent, but I saw the planets pretty well with the 90mm.

By the way, I still never did see the 'color' with my 90mm f11 achro that all the Apo guys worry about. The colors in the 8" seem the same.

More observations in a later post, thanks for reading this,

Rick