Posts Made By: Dmitri Kulginov

What can you say about this scope (that belongs to a friend of mine )? Left is outside focus, right inside.

Dmitri

Last Friday I took a good advantage of a clear weather of the last dark night of the Moonless time. I went to my dark place (I'm beginning to find that addictive) to look at open and globular clusters in Lepus, Canis Major and Puppis that culminate very low at my latitude: M79, NGC2362, M93, M47, and M46. The winner was of course 2362 with its Tau CMa in the middle, but the others were beautiful too - I wish they were higher.

After that I looked at NGC1275 - an active Galaxy in Perseus cluster some 230,000,000 light years away! Mind blowing. It looked as a small, dim, grey fleck between two magnutude 11.8 and 12.3 stars. There was something vicious in its appearance - a galaxy eating another galaxy, a black hole creating enormous jets, seen at this huge distance. A good chart is a must for finding this galaxy.

Then it was time for Rosette. I could saw "something" with my naked eye where it is supposed to be; after checking in the telescope I decided that it was the central cluster, NGC2244. Then I tried to look with the naked eye through the UHC filter - the cluster became dimmer, but the glow became bigger - I'd say as big as the Moon. The Rosette blinked! In telecsope at 22x the nebula could be seen without filter. With the filter I could see the central hole, and there was more both of nebulosity and of the hole to NW.

An excellent night! Now I face two weeks of clouds/Moon/double star observing.

Dmitri

Do faint fuzzy things look any better in a fine apochromatic refractor than in an acrhomat of the same aperture? At low levels of brightness, the resolving power of human eye decreases and I would expect that it cannot take full advantage from a better optical quality.

Same question for premium mirrors: does one see a lot more in a 1/10 wave mirror than in 1/4 wave one when it comes to faint galaxies?

Dmitri

I had a wonderful observing night yesterday, at my dark site (I begin to find darkness addictive). I started with M35 and proceeded along the Miky Way (that was clearly visible albeit not down to the horizon) looking for open clusters - while they were placed favourably at our latitude. There are at least a dozen bright open clusters for a small telescope between M35 and M46, all very different from each other! Along the way I came over NGC2175 which is shown as an open cluster in Karkoschka but involves a large featureless diffuse neubla as well. I missed to look for the Cone Nebula in the Christmas Tree cluster. In the end was M46 with its huge amount of stars of even brightness, where I for the first time saw the planetary nebula NGC2438. It was not visible without filter, but with UHC it reminded M57 with much lower contrast. I checked the size later - and indeed, 2438 is 1'.1 and M57 1'.5 in diameter. I had a feeling that there is a huge wealth of interesting objects further down - but bumped into the horizon... Canis Major hardly ever shows its complete self here.

Before I went home I took a quick look at the Leo triplet - a foretaste of spring galaxies to come.

Dmitri

What is the diameter of fully illuminated field of Orion 80ED?

Dmitri

Last Wednesday I looked in a telescope at the Virgo-Coma galaxy cluster for the first time. It was a religious-like experience.

I was away at a skiing trip; according to the weather forecast, the only clear night would fall on Tuesday when the Moon sets at 2 a.m. The evening was clear indeed, so I set my alarm watch on 2.15. The cabin where we stayed is located by a beautiful lake, no lights, no cities around.

I was out at 2.30; it was very cold, -20C (well below zero Farenheit; ice on the lake made loud rumbles), but transparency was good; whlie I could easily see my gear, limiting magnitude was at least 6.15 in Coma (much darker near zenith).

I was using a copy of a close-up chart from Uranometria, navigation was easy. I went through all the Messier galaxies in Virgo and Coma, and there was a lot of small NGC galaxies sprinkled around them. M84/86 were bright, slightly different in size and had concentrated cores. I could barely see 4387/88 that form a nose and a mouth to M84/86. 4435/38 next to them stared at me from the darkness some 60 Mly away (I finally understood why they are called The Eyes). Then I followed Markarian's chain: 4458/61 were small and pretty obvious; I saw half a dozen other galaxies on the way to M88 and M91, but I don't remember the details because it was far too cold to even think of making notes. The elliptic glow of M88 was placed against an asterism that looked like a mirror image of mini-Aries. After that I roamed at the perifery of my chart (M98, 99, 100, 89, 90, 58). M87 was very bright, if I may say so about a distant galaxy in 80mm; I could see its neighbours 4476/78. Then I proceeded to Coma with the help of another chart from U2K where I found M85, and then hopped from 17 Com via small galaxies 4494 and 4562 to the long, not-so-faint and elegant 4565.

After that transparency began to deteriorate; halos appeared around bright stars. Using Karkoschka, I found M60, 59, 85, 98 and, with some struggle, M49 and 61. My hands could hardly move, and I was very happy to get inside; it was 3.35 a.m.

Even though I didn't see much detail in any of the galaxies, it was an awe-inspiring night. When you've learned how our Milky Way is laid out, on a dark night you can see the structure of our own galaxy with naked eye; but here - I could see the structure of the Universe!

Dmitri

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=309846&poll_id=&news_id=

In January I wrote about my frustration about not being able to see the wealth of open clusters behind the hind legs of Canis Major from Sweden. Well, now I've got my opportunity!

My last night in Brasília was clear and transparent - first really clear night in two weeks of my stay there. I went to the hotel roof about half past ten. The beautiful city was brightly lit as usual, but half an hour into the session I discovered that if I retract the tripod legs and sit down on the (warm) floor, the sky instantly becomes dark and I can see Milky Way - thanks to the transparency.

I mainly looked at the open clusters in Puppis/Vela and Centaurus. NGC2451 was striking with its bright orange stars. It was hard to find 2477, but then I noticed its large faint nebulosity at 11x that resolved into a swarm of faint stars at higher power. I also looked at 2546, 2547, IC2391, 5460, 5822 and 3239. One of them (I don't remember which) had delicate chains of stars making calligraphic patters, like a question mark. I wasn't writing log because I didn't have much time - which one could that be?

Along the way I looked at the globulars Omega Centauri and 3201, some very double stars like Gamma Vel and Alpha Cen (the latter lost its traffic light appearance due to the excellent seeing and being relatively high over the horizon), and Jupiter where I could see detail in the belts and a tiny disc of Europa very next to the planet limb - seeing was truly remarkable! Is that usual for tropic countries?

The last half an hour I devoted to the nirvana of Eta Carinae which was clearly seen with naked eye. With UHC, its central bright part easily took 100x. I saw that what I had seen before as a dark ragged cone protruding into the bright nebulosity was actually a dark winding rift. Later I realised after some reading that it was the Keyhole Nebula. At 22x I could feel that the large faint nebulosity had a lot of detail in it, but I couldn't pick up any - I surely would if I had a couple of hours to look at it. The abundance of bright and faint stars in the nebula made me wonder whether an open cluster is involved - Uranometria shows no less than six just within the nebula's borders! The wonderful combination of bright, not-so-bright and dark nebulosity with stars bright and faint make Eta Carinae truly unique and certainly my favourite object. I'm wondering when I get to see it again!

Dmitri

A couple days ago I spent some time looking at Saturn in 80mm. To my big surprise I could see Rhea and Tethys only at low power, they both disappeared at more than 32x (18mm Ultima). Is that something that everybody else knows? What power is best for the moons in bigger apertures? Does this have anything to do with eyepiece quality? (No trace of them at 100x with 4mm UO ortho.)

Dmitri

I've just got my new C8 on CG-5. One question: is the mounting screw on the mounting platform supposed to be tightened directly against the orange dovetail bar of the OTA? I guess it will leave marks on it, is that normal? I can put the dovetail bar into the slot on the mounting platform from above, without sliding it in from the side - am I missing any parts?

Dmitri