Posts Made By: Dmitri Kulginov

Yesterday I drove to my dark site with my C8 for the first time in the season. It was rather dark as usual, with medium transparency and not-so-good seeing. First, I went through the Southern Messier objects to see just what can be seen from my latitude 57N. The Southern part of the sky was washed by fog/light pollution, and without GOTO I wouldn't have found a single object. To my big surprise, I could see Messiers 9, 16-18, 20, 21, 23-25, 72 and 75. The views were comparable (sometimes better, sometimes worse) with what I saw in 80mm from the tropics - for example, I could see the eagle-shaped nebulosity in M16 with UHC filter.

After that I went through 25 objects of Herschel 400 situated between 17 and 23 hours of right ascension and -15 and 90 degrees of declination that I have not seen yet. This is in principle the beginning of my H400 survey, and I was afraid that the Herschels would be too dim and disappoingint after the bright Messiers. But no, dim they were, but exciting too - it felt like real deep sky stuff!

I finished the session with the local group galaxies M31-32-110-33 and NGC 147 and 185. They were all easy; I could not see the arms of M33 (it was still too low), but I saw nebulosity beyond the first dust lane of M31. NGC 891 showed its dust lane too. All in all, 45 objects in two hours, and I spent some time with each of them without hurry.

Dmitri

It is insude our galaxy. Open clusters are mainly in the galactic plane, globular clusters swarm around the galaxy centre like a halo. Globular clusters in our nearest neighbour galaxies can also be seen, but they appear very small, almost stellar.

http://www.thinkastronomy.com/M13/common/examples_assets/M13.jpg

Dmitri

Herbert,

It's great to know that someone shares my love for open clusters!

Now, I hope that you hate dim duffuse nebulae just as much as I do!!

Dmitri

Are you spherically aberrated?

Dmitri

I love my Nagler zoom 3-6mm. I think of it as an 'open cluster opener'. Want to see more stars? Turn the wheel!

Another possibility is Burgess 2.5mm. I have 4 and 6mm and am very happy with both.

Dmitri

Edit: And they will have 3.2mm too.

What level of quality should I accept from the "imports" toted as APO?

'Import' like TMB?

Dmitri

Inge,

Lucky you! Here it's been cloudy since the Moon went away. I'm really looking forward to looking at the galaxies in Pegasus.

This object is on my to-do list for my next trip to La Palma on the Canary Islands (September, next year)

What, no invitation? 8)

Dmitri

At f/10, it would be hard to navigate this large nebula. Look for the 'Mexican gulf', which is darker that its surroundings, with the help of a good detailed atlas; then proceed to Mexico, Florida, and up North.

A short refractor or binocular is better to view the whole nebula. UHC filter helps a lot.

I agree that it is often easy with unaided eye - when the sky is dark. With some practice, it will be pretty easy to see in SCT too - and then you can start studying the details at high power with filter.

Dmitri

Doug,

Could you please describe what you did to your scope?

Dmitri

From my log with 80mm from a relatively bright hotel yard:

NGC 253 seen at 22x, worse at 40x. Huge!! Seems mottled. An outstanding galaxy; should be a killer sight given dark skies.

Dmitri