Posts Made By: Vincent Bert

Central portion of the Great Hercules Galaxy Cluster through a 20" F4.5 @ 164X Location is Mesquite Springs, Death Valley, CA. NELM 7.9 This is a very dim cluster, some of the members I observed were mag 16 or more. Galaxies were popping out and disappering and I only sketched the ones I was sure were there. the Argo Navis database lists over 80 members in a larger area than my FOV. Seeing was poor and hampered the observation.

This is a fine large, 109 arc sec, mag 11.4 planetary in Aquila. Magnitude of the central star (very close to the brighter star depicted near the center) is 16.2, however I was not able to capture it. The seeing was rather poor at a Pickering 4, and I think the nebulosity washed out the dim central star. Sketch was done at the EP of a 20" F4.5 at 326X. The location was once again Mesquite Springs in Death Valley, CA. Naked eye limiting magnitude at zenith was 7.9.

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I finally got the Denk II with all the bells and whistles and a pair of 24 pans. This past week I put them in my 20" F4.5 dob. The normal OCS in low power mode and 24 pans gave me about 140X. I did notice a bit of astigmatism on brighter stars and I could not get as tight a focus on brighter stars compared to cyclops mode. I first put them on M13 and the view was pretty spectacular however the view was not quite as sharp as in cyclops. I fiddled with focusing my individual eyes for quite a while and when I was sure I got it right the image was still slightly soft but breathtaking nonetheless. I just chalked up the softness to the light going through so much glass, OCS, prisms, 24 pans, thats a boat load of glass. Next I went over to M17, whoa! incredible with 2 eyes. Using 2 eyes really seemed to bring out the fine contrast, akin to the cyclops view with a UHC filter. I hit most of the showpieces, M51, 57, 92, 97, N4565, M20, on and on. Next I wanted to see how it would do on the dim stuff like Abell gx clusters. I went to the heart of Abell 2151 in Hercules and could pick out only 2 galaxies in the FOV. I then popped in a 16 Nagler in cyclops mode, 144X, and 5 more galaxies popped into view, but they were very faint and were fading in and out. So of course there is some light loss but not a whole heck of alot. I also went to the planetary N6781 in Aquila. In the Bv'er the nebulosity looked great but the dimmer stars in the disk were invisible, but as predicted came into view in cyclops mode. I did numerous comparisons on other relatively faint DSO's witht he same result. To make a rough guess about the light loss I would say that using the BV'er in the 20" is like having a 15 inch mirror for each eye but YMMV. However the views of the bright showpieces were spectacular. I am not going to sell my cyclops EP's because I enjoy hunting the real dim elusive stuff. For showpiece DSO's the BV'er is a wonderful thing. After the sun came up i broke out the 4" Tak and Coronado solarmax 60 and attached the BV'er with 24 pans. HOLY CRAP! The 2 eyed HA view of the full disk of the sun literally blew me away. The level of detail in dim proms, filaments, and sunspots was mind blowing. Once again superior contrast with 2 eyes. I switched to cyclops and all the detail was still there, but you really had to look for it. In the BV'er those details just jumped right out at me. So I will probably keep the BV'er despite the slightly soft and mildly astigmatic star images as I was blown away with the sun and showpiece DSO's. I highly recommend that everyone give it a try. I am ordering some Edmund RKE's in an attempt to get some glass out of the light path and maybe improve sharpness a bit. All in all a great experience. thanks for reading my ramblings.

Yet another fine planetary in Aquila, NGC 6804 is 66 arc seconds across, visual magnitude 12.0, central star mag 14.4. I made the observation with a 20" F4.5 at 326X (7mm Pentax XL.) NELM at zenith 7.8, Seeing Pickering 5. Some observers say this planetary looks a bit like a comet but through my scope I failed to see the analogy.

Thanks guys. The old C8 is proving to be a fairly decent webcam imager.

I processed a stray AVI from last week and found it to be the best one I got that night. I found this image to be sharper than the one I posted last week. I used a little different processing but I'm not sure if it helped or the AVI was just better. I used de-interlace, odd and even lines, and 1.5 resampling. Frames were hand picked from the AVI. Processed in Registax 2 and PS elements. C8 @ F20 Toucam Pro. Seeing P7. Processing advice always needed and welcome.

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Just found this stray AVI from last week and I think it turned out pretty well. Pretty good for me anyway Thanks for looking, Vince

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This is NGC 7009 through a 20" F 4.5 at 440X from Tierra del Sol, CA, NELM 6.5. I had about an hour of Pickering 6 seeing in which to make the sketch. I was very surprised at how much detail was visible in this bright planetary. I have found sketching DSO's to be quite challenging, mainly due to the need of a fairly bright red light with which to sketch. After I make a few marks on the paper I return to the EP to find that my previously dark adapted vision had deteriorated and takes a couple of minutes to improve. It is quite a tedious process. I tried just making a rough sketch with notes and a final drawing later in good light, but in subsequent observing sessions found that my finished sketch did not accurately reflect what I saw. After I scan the drawing I open it in Photoshop, invert the colors, then add some Gaussian Blur to better blend my pencil marks. I guess its sort of cheating, but it makes for a much more pleasing finished product. Thanks for looking.

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I am building a 10" F6 newt and I'm not sure about secondary size. Of course I want to keep it as small a possible. right now I am planning on using a 1.83" but not sure if I can go smaller. Any quick and not so dirty methods out there to calculate the proper size? Thanks, Vince