Planetary

2010/04/27

Wed, 04/28/2010 — Daniel

Who: Daniel, Vickie, and Dad
Time: 21:00 EDT
Temperature: ~55 degrees F
Location: Leeward Court
Equipment: Astroscan with 21.5mm RKE
Viewed
- Mars
Notes
- We just sneaked a peak at Mars before the clouds took over

2010/04/17 - Saturn

Thu, 04/22/2010 — Daniel

Info

Saturn

Original Imaging Info

Images captured with the 0.81 meter telescope at TCO by Dr. Danford on 2010-04-17 at 03:34:33 (UT)
1024x1024 Apogee CCD
Three 1/2 second exposures with "zip 5" filter

Image Post Processing

I used IRIS v5.58 to stack the three images using the "add_mean" command.
The final FITS image was imported into GIMP where I adjusted the black/white levels and used the "Unsharp Mask" filter.

2010/04/16 - TCO

Mon, 04/19/2010 — Daniel

Info

Who: Daniel
Session Moderator: Dr. Steve Danford of UNCG
Time: 20:30 EDT
Location: TCO
Equipment: TCO - 32 inch f/13.5 reflector
Sky View: Cluster PDF / Galaxy PDF (created with XEphem)

Would Like To See

Visual Observing

Castor - Visual binary star system. Castor is actually a quadruple star system.
Mars - Very difficult to make out any detail of the disk.
NGC2392 - Clown Face/Eskimo Nebula - I could see the structure of the concentric layers of this nebula.
Saturn - Very beautiful - with faint spears of rings on either side. The shadow of the rings was noticeable.
M82 - I was able to see and discern the dust lanes.
M81 - I was unable to make out any spiral structure - but did recognize the component of the galaxy outside of the galaxy core.
Two satellites - at 22:36 localtime, two satellites passed overhead, one following the other and slightly offset. The dimmest was "Cosmos 2360 Rocket". The other was very bright at first, then dropped sharply in magnitude. At its brightest - it rivaled Venus. This second object remains unidentified.
M3 - Absolutely stunning. The cluster occupied about 75% of the eyepiece FOV. Hundreds of individual stars were discernible. What was also amazing was seeing the "ripple" and "wave" motion of the atmosphere and how it affected the view of this cluster.
Vesta - Actually viewed through the Astroscan. Vesta has dropped off in magnitude noticeably since I started tracking it.

CCD Work

Gamma Leonis - The binary star system was used to adjust the focus of the telescope.
Saturn - Dr. Danford snapped hundreds of images of Saturn in an attempt to capture one at a point with cooperative atmosphere. The photos were for a student that was studying the motions of Saturn's moons.

Notes

I arrived at 20:20 for the 20:30 observing session. The observatory was already packed full, with about 12 people still after me. Early arrival is not necessary because everyone does get a chance to view every object.
The strategy I used that worked well was to be the last person to view an object - then go outside and view through my scope. I then reenter when the remaining line is short for the next object.

2 attachments

2010/04/02

Mon, 04/05/2010 — Daniel

Who: Daniel
Time: 21:30 EDT
Temperature: ~64 degrees F
Location: Farrington Boat Ramp - western ramp
Equipment: Astroscan with 21.5mm RKE
Viewed
- M44 - Beehive: Mediocre early in the night - better around 22:00.
- Saturn
- Vesta: It was possible to view Vesta and Algenubi (Epsilon Leonis) in the same FOV.
- M67
- M81 and M82: Viewing of the pair seemed to be better than 2010/03/19 session.
- M51
- M94
- Cor Caroli (Alpha Canum Venaticorum): I could easily split the two stars. The magnitude difference was very apparent.
- M3: Very beautiful with a radial symmetry. There was a well-defined center with a graceful drop of density/intensity.
Notes
- Robert N. and Jon S.T. from CHAOS were observing also.
- Light from vehicles made observing tonight very tough and frustrating. The warm night, and holiday weekend, brought out a lot of boat ramp traffic.

2010/03/20

Mon, 03/22/2010 — Daniel

Who: Daniel, Abigail, and Vickie
Time: 20:00 EDT
Temperature: ~66 degrees F
Location: Leeward Court
Equipment: Astroscan with 21.5mm RKE
Viewed
- Betelgeuse
- Mars
- M45 - Pleiades: The moon was passing very near to M45. The cluster and the moon were all visible in the same FOV. Clouds that rolled in prevented viewing an occultation.
- M42 - Orion Nebula
Notes
- Abigail recognized the color similarity between Betelgeuse and Mars.

2010/03/19

Mon, 03/22/2010 — Daniel

Who: Daniel
Time: 21:30 EDT
Temperature: ~50 degrees F
Location: Farrington Boat Ramp - eastern ramp
Equipment: Astroscan with 21.5mm RKE
Viewed
- M37: Very blue - could discern one non-blue (perhaps orange) star in the center.
- M38: About a dozen of the brightest stars are visible with faint blue around it.
- M36: More compact than M38.
- NGC2392: Did not find.
- M35: Scattered, wide, low density.
- M44 - Beehive: Impressive - as always.
- Saturn: The rings were just visible - appearing as tiny spikes on opposite side of Saturn. There is a lot of glare/flare emanating from the planet itself. This could be the RKE or the AstroScan - I need to try other eyepieces to figure it out. There were two moons to the left with the brightest the furthest out. Virgo 10, on the right, was aligned and could have been mistaken for a moon.
- Vesta: 23:31 localtime: In the FOV were about 7 bright objects. Correlating this with XEphem puts the star limiting magnitude around 10. Use "Stars Lim Mag" = 10 and "Mag Dot Step" = 1.
- M81: This was the larger, brighter, fuzzier of the pair. Both seemed to be washed out due to city lights to the north.
- M82: Thin streak. The pair were about a 1/2 FOV apart.
- M51: Extremely dim and faint. This is about at the limit for this scope.
Notes
- Kumar P. was observing also.
- Viewed M44 in the AstroScan using a 22m Vixen Lanthanum Wide LVW Eyepiece (borrowed from Kumar). The field of view was effectively wider due to significantly less distortion away from the center.

2010/02/07

Mon, 02/08/2010 — Daniel

Who: Daniel and Vickie
Time: 20:00 EST
Location: Leeward Court
Equipment: Astroscan with 21.5mm RKE
Viewed
- M42 - Orion Nebula
- M45 - Pleiades
- Mars
- NGC869 and NGC884 - (Double Cluster) - The brightest stars really stood out from the background sky. There was a faint hint of the deeper clustering of the fainter stars. Both clusters easily fit within the FOV of the equipment used.
Did Not View
- M1

2010/01/18

Mon, 01/18/2010 — Daniel

Who: Daniel and Abigail
Time: 18:20 EST
Location: Leeward Court
Equipment: Astroscan with 21.5mm RKE
Viewed
- Jupiter, Europa, Callisto, Io, Ganymede
- Moon - Waxing Crescent
Notes
- Telescope needs to be given more time to cool down. Heat waves were very evident.
Logs