Observing Report: SkyScanning in Oregon

I was up in Oregon last week to visit my university’s second campus in Lebanon. It was a kill-many-birds-with-one-stone type trip: in addition to day-job work in Lebanon on the weekdays, I got in a productive meeting about a joint project with a paleontological colleague who lives nearby, and–the point of this post–last Wednesday night I got to go stargazing with frequent commenter Doug Rennie.

Doug lives up by Portland and I was staying in Albany, so we needed someplace in between with reasonably dark skies. We settled on Baskett Slough Wildlife Refuge, just north of Dallas, OR. We met in Dallas for dinner and then drove out to the slough.

I had along a new-ish pair of Nikon Action 10×50 binoculars that I picked up this summer and haven’t used much. Doug brought his Celestron SkyMaster 15x70s–the same model I have and love–and his Orion SkyScanner 100 tabletop telescope.

Neither of us really knew what to expect in terms of sky quality. The waxing gibbous moon was only three days shy of full, and I was seriously concerned that we’d get “mooned out” and not be able to observe anything in the deep sky.

This brings up the interesting question of how much moonlight it takes to significantly degrade the night sky. I’ll write a full post about it someday, but for now it is enough to note that the brightness of the moon increases exponentially on the run up to opposition (full moon), and decreases exponentially after full moon. For explanations of why that is, check out this graph and this tutorial and read up on opposition surge and heiligenschein. The upshot is that three days shy of full the moon is only perhaps a quarter as bright as it is at full moon, and happily we were able to see quite a bit.

I didn’t know that when we started out, though, but I knew that we wouldn’t see anything if we didn’t try. Ursa Major was opposite the moon, getting closer to the horizon, and with it some of the best and brightest galaxies in the sky. I spent a few minutes faffing around and managed to get M81 in the field of view. It was dim, but it was there, and our observing run was underway.

Some hazy clouds were skirting the northern horizon, and I was worried they might come south and ruin things for us. Also, after the frustrating chase and unimpressive view of M81 we needed a win, so our next target was the Double Cluster, NGC 869 and 884. They were spectacular–two brilliant knots of stars in the rich Milky Way starfields of northern Perseus.

After that we hit some other summer and fall “best of” objects, including the Andromeda galaxy (M31), the Great Glob in Hercules (M13), the Ring Nebula (M57), and the Dumbbell Nebula (M27). Next to M31 we caught the brighter and more compact of its two Messier satellite galaxies, M32. I don’t know if M110 would have been visible or not. It’s a tougher catch, especially under less-than-perfect skies, and I didn’t waste any time looking for it.

M13 was an easy catch, and we kept running up the magnification to see if we could get it to resolve at all. Doug’s 6mm Expanse yielded 67x and, we thought, some tantalizing hints of detail. We Barlowed it up to 133x and the cluster took on the slightly grainy texture that is often the most resolution one can get in a small scope. We also tried lots of magnifications on the two planetary nebula, M57 and M27. We could only glimpse in averted vision the slightly darker center that makes the Ring a ring, and the Dumbbell showed the barest hint of its bilobed structure.

After that we turned back north and plied the starry Milky Way between Cassiopeia and Perseus. Cassiopeia is just lousy with asterisms and open clusters; the only ones we bothered to identify were M103 and nearby NGC 663, which is bigger and brighter.

A highlight of the evening was sweeping the Alpha Persei Association with binoculars. It’s really seen best this way–very few telescopes have a wide enough field of  view to show more than a small part of it. I once read a description of this big, close cluster–variously catalogued as Melotte 20 and Collinder 39–as a “vast wonderland of far-flung suns”, and I can’t look at it without those words coming to mind.

Since Perseus was now a good way up the sky I thought it would be worthwhile to track down the open cluster M34. I’m glad we did. When Doug looked at it he said, “I know this cluster–I’ve drawn it!” And he had–his sketchbook recorded the fingerprint-specific arrangement of stars that make up the cluster. I was most impressed by this–by the drawing and his visual memory both.

At this point we were winding down a bit and just scanning around with binos, taking things as they came. Halfway down the western sky I found the brilliant blue-white double star 16/17 Draconis. By this point Doug’s green laser pointer was fading a bit from cold and overuse, but with some yammering and gesticulating on my part–and much patience and good humor on his–we were able to get both pair of binos on target. That really is a gorgeous double, and just wide enough to be clearly split in low-power binoculars. I recommend it.

Our last stop of the night was the Pleiades, which had just climbed over the northeastern horizon. They were stunning, as always. That gave us a total of nine Messier objects, three non-Messier NGCs (663, 869, and 884), another big open cluster (the Alpha Persei Cluster), and a double star. So, 14 objects in all, which is pretty good for a two-hour session under any conditions.

Using the SkyScanner was a revelation. I had taken a few brief peeks through Terry Nakazono’s SkyScanner on our Baldy runs, and been impressed, but I’d never gotten to just pick one up and freewheel. And “freewheel” is a pretty good description of what we were doing. The scope is light enough that you don’t think twice about just picking up one-handed and moving it wherever you need it. At the same time, four inches is a lot of aperture, and I was consistently impressed by how much the little scope could do, both in terms of light-grasp and resolution. Doug must have collimated it to within an inch of its life, because the image was still good at 133x–a real achievement in any small, fast Newtonian. Finally, I didn’t notice any issues with the focuser. This is one of my pet peeves. Fast scopes have steep light cones and it takes a precise focuser to consistently hit focus without going past in either direction. One of the things that drove me crazy about the Celestron FirstScope was the lousy focuser, which consistently overshot focus. So when I say the focuser on the SkyScanner didn’t draw attention to itself, that’s a good thing. I’m sure that like all consumer scopes there’s some sample-to-sample variation with the SkyScanner, and Doug’s might be an unusually fine example, but so far both of the SkyScanners I’ve gotten to use have impressed me. I think I’ll get one for the Suburban Messier Project, which is on hold until it cools off some–it was 107 here today. In October!

Oh, and speaking of the Suburban Messier Project, I was most impressed by the quality of Doug’s sketches, and by the fact that, having sketched something once, he could recognize it at the eyepiece later without knowing in advance what it was. I’d like to have that level of familiarity with these objects, and I intend to get it–by sketching them. Stay tuned.

Observing report: An entirely different kind of virtual star party

If you’ve been following this blog or have trawled the recent archives then you know about virtual star parties on Google+, where astrophotographers put up real-time video images of celestial objects and a mixed group of professional and amateur astronomers and interested laypeople chat it up.

Tonight I got to experience a virtual star party of a completely different sort: a binocular tour of the night sky as projected on the dome of the Samuel Oschin Planetarium at Griffith Observatory. I was invited along by Steve Sittig, a good friend who works at the Webb Schools here in Claremont, where he teaches science, serves as chapel director, and runs the observatory. It is a curious lapse in my blogging that I haven’t covered any of the times that Steve and Andy Farke and I have passed an evening playing around observing with the big orange C14 in the observatory dome at the top of the Webb campus. We’ve chased comets and supernovae and had all kinds of fun–but those are stories for other posts.

Anyway, Steve hooked Andy and me up with tickets to this evening’s virtual star party, and a little before 7:30 we marched into the big dome, took our seats, and got our binoculars ready. I also got a few snaps, including this slightly-better-than-Bigfoot-level handheld portrait of the three of us not looking dorky at all.

I really didn’t know what to expect when the lights went down. I didn’t know whether the projector would project actual images of deep-sky objects, or just little groups of star-points that would mimic deep-sky objects, or maybe just the regular asterisms and constellation outlines.

All that uncertainty was dispelled as soon as the lights went down and the stars came out. The presenter directed us to Orion with his red laser pointer and went into some well-rehearsed patter about how it’s a big molecular cloud where new stars are being born. I was off and running. From the first view of the Orion Nebula (M42), it was clear that this was going to be a lot of fun. The nebula was big and detailed and looked pretty darned similar to its actual appearance through binoculars under dark skies.

I have to confess, I didn’t hang around for the whole Orion speech. I had stuff to see. I scanned south into Canis Major to look for the open cluster M41–and it was there, and looked legit. Followed the dog’s tail north and east to look for the closely paired clusters M46 and M47. There was only one glowing thing at their location, but there was something there and it was clearly supposed to be a star cluster, or maybe two close together. M35 in Gemini: there. Up to Auriga for M36/37/38: all there.

And so it went. The presenter did give us a pretty good tour of the northern sky, and he got to a lot of the stuff that I had raced ahead to find, but there was always more. I was shocked at the detail and fidelity of the images. Now, to be honest, not everything was there. A lot of the smaller or dimmer Messiers were not there–I looked in vain for M78 and M79. But I was often pleasantly surprised. M44, the Beehive, was an actual swarm of projected stars, not a hazy picture, just as it should have been. Better still, M67–hardly what one would call a showpiece object–was also there, just a bit to the south. And all of these things were not mere blobs of light, but were individually different and looked pretty much like they actually do through binoculars. It was pretty darned impressive.

I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming, since it was obviously technologically possible: the highlight of the evening was a tour of the Southern Hemisphere skies. We saw the Southern Cross and the Coalsack, the Jewel Box Cluster and the Eta Carina Nebula and the Southern Pleiades. I had seen these things before in binoculars, lying on the beach in Punta del Este, Uruguay, almost exactly two years ago. It was unexpectedly moving to get to visit them again, with binoculars, lying in much the same position in the reclined chair in the planetarium.

After that we came back to the northern skies for the summer highlight objects, which were very familiar since I just saw them last week. We hit the usual suspects: M4, M6, M7, M8, M20, M24, M25, M17. I popped up to the tail of Aquila and bagged M11 (actually in Scutum for any pedants in the audience, but it’s most easily found by following the eagle’s tail). All in all, by the end of the night the presenter had pointed out about two dozen deep-sky objects, and I had found another dozen or so that went unremarked. It’s weird to think that the projector is presumably putting up images of these faint fuzzies all the time, even though most of them are below the threshold of naked-eye visibility. I am going to start sneaking my binoculars into the planetarium on a regular basis.

When it was over, we all went out onto the observatory veranda to see what we could see in the real sky. Between the waxing gibbous moon, the regular LA light pollution, a bit of haze, and the modest aperture and magnification of our instruments, what we could see turned out to be “not very much”. We tried going right up to the fence and putting all the local lights behind us to try for the Andromeda galaxy and M13, but neither was in evidence. Oh well: the observatory staff did warn us that the real (Los Angeles) sky would be an unpleasant shock after the pristine projected sky. Steve said the projected sky was like what you see up in the Sierras, where the sky background is so black and there are so many  stars that it’s easy to lose your way; the bright stars that mark the constellations are simply lost in endless fields of distant suns.

The downside to virtual stargazing is just that: the endless fields of distant suns are not really endless. Using the binoculars allows you to see the projected stars and DSOs more clearly, but not the stars and DSOs between them. You can’t go very deep; there’s an inevitable limit and you hit it pretty fast. The Milky Way does not break up into a visually exhausting never-repeating parade of clusters, nebulae, asterisms, and rich fields of stars; it’s just a bunch of cloudy light projected overhead. You’re not really out there; the marvel is not at natural splendor but at human ingenuity, and you are, in the end, sitting in a big dark room using the world’s biggest sky app. Fun and interesting, for sure, but not nearly as rewarding as the real thing.

But I think that’s okay. Tonight’s exercise was an outreach, designed to get people who have never used their binoculars for anything other than spying on birds and neighbors to turn them skyward and see a few of these awesome things for themselves, and for real. Based on a wholly unscientific sample of personal eavesdropping, I think it was a success.

One final note. I had come across the idea of indoor stargazing before, in a blog post by Stephen Saber. He wrote,

darksky arenas…

I’m going to have some Superdome-sized Bortle-class 8 planetariums built with a projection accuracy to match. Really, really accurate. Open 24/7.
Peaceful outdoors sounds. Always a clear sky waiting. No more frozen fingers. No skeeters. Lunatic Happy Hours. Southern Sky Sundays and Messier Marathon Mondays.
Such an idea might offend a lot of hardcore Purists. Many might come just for the experience. But I really can’t see also faking the observation making any difference to goto users. *sorry. old habits.*
Or maybe night sky coliseums. Huge fields with perimeter walls rising to block local light pollution and outlying city lightdomes.

Would you come?
How far would you drive?
How much rain and cloudcover would it take?
Will preserving an area’s dark skies eventually come to this?

Having now done a light version of this, my answers are:

• Apparently I would.
• Um, 45 miles at least.
• None, just good company.
• I sure hope not.

So, virtual stargazing: weird, no substitute for the real thing, but still highly recommended. Go if you ever get a chance.

Two new Astronomical League observing clubs

Award pin for the Binocular Double Star Club, from the AL website

My copy of the Reflector, the Astronomical League’s quarterly magazine, arrived in the mail today, with announcements of two new observing clubs: the Binocular Double Star Club and the Analemma Club.

This is exciting news for me. I’m always looking for new lists of things to look at, especially from home. My Herschel 400 project is chugging along, slowly, as I get dark-sky time, but I can’t get to dark sites all the time and I’m committed to observing from home. I really need structured observing lists or else I spend my driveway observing sessions checking out a handful of old favorites and then wondering what else to wonder at. Binocular lists are good because binocular objects tend to be bright enough that I can see them from Claremont with my 15x70s, and double stars are good because they punch through the light pollution pretty well and many of them are strikingly beautiful. I’ve already finished three binocular observing programs (Binocular Messier, Deep Sky Binocular, and Southern Sky Binocular), and I’m a bit over halfway through the observations for the AL Double Star Club and loving it. So a new club that combines binocular observing and double stars is right up my alley. Update Aug 1 2012: As I often do for AL observing programs I intend to pursue, I made up a blank logbook for the bino double star club. It’s free if you want to use it–you can find a link to the PDF on this page.

Award pin for the Analemma Club, from the AL website

The Analemma Club is a little different. You don’t observe a long list of objects, just one over and over: the sun as it traces out its figure-eight path, or analemma, in the sky over the course of a year. That path is created by Earth’s axial tilt and its elliptical orbit around the sun. A Google Image search for ‘analemma’ will show many composite photos created by amateurs that show the position of the sun in the sky at regular intervals over the course of a year. An analemma can also be recorded by projecting the shadow of a gnomon on the ground, a wall, or a globe–the Wikipedia article on analemmatic sundials has a couple of examples, and there are loads of instructions on how to build these things scattered around the web. Once you have a complete analemma, you can do all kinds of things with it:

• Calculate your observing latitude and the tilt of the Earth’s axis
• Sketch or plot the path of the sun on the celestial sphere
• Calculate the Equation of Time
• Calculate the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit

All of this requires math–alegbra and trigonometry. And in the Analemma Club, you have to first generate an analemma and then do that math; the list of four things to be calculated and sketched is taken from the Analemma Club page. Now, I realize that following the sun for a year so you can do math is not everyone’s idea of a good time. But I’ve always been fascinated by sky motions and I’m sufficiently interested in analemmatic sundials to have started a project folder for one at some point, so this club may be the kick in the pants I need to actually, you know, do the work.

So, that’s why I care about these new clubs. Why should you care? Well, if you’re in the US and you’re a member of an astronomy club, you’re almost certainly an AL member already, so if you’re doing any regular observing programs you might as well send in your observations and get some bling.

What if you’re not a member of an astronomy club, or not in the US? Well, if you find the observing programs useful, do ‘em anyway. All of the requirements are freely available online, and although the bling is a fun perk, the real benefit is in learning your way around the sky, developing your observing skills, and most importantly, seeing a bunch of awesome stuff.

As of this writing, the Astronomical League has 34 different observing programs (and 3 clubs that have no observing requirements), covering everything from Earth orbiting satellites to distant galaxy clusters. Several clubs require only naked-eye observations, several more require binoculars, and the vast majority can be completed with an inexpensive telescope. So whatever your available gear or level of experience, there is probably an AL observing program that would suit you. Go check ‘em out.

Observing report: back in the saddle

Last weekend London and I finally went camping again, and I finally got the scope back out under reasonably dark skies. My  last serious outing had been to Joshua Tree at the beginning of May. There are several reasons for the long hiatus.

• The first is simply heat. We do most of our camping in the spring and the fall because it’s just too darn hot in the summer, at least at our preferred desert destinations. Yeah, we could go up into the mountains and fight everyone else trying to do the same, but I’ve never felt any strong motivation to do so. A big part of going camping, for us, is to get away from crowds of people, which is one of the many reasons we like the desert.
• The second is teaching. My day job is teaching gross anatomy at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona. The anatomy courses run from mid-June to the end of October, and during this stretch I usually have little time or mental energy for anything besides anatomy.
• The third is research. My appointment at WesternU is half teaching, half research. Usually I do almost nothing research-related during teaching time; I have from November through June to worry about dinosaurs. But this year a couple of big research-related events intervened and kept my head in the research arena even during teaching time. The first was a paleontology and anatomy conference in England in September, which I attended and spoke at. The second, and far more intense and important, is that at the beginning of August I took on my first graduate student. Which has been a lot of fun, but has also eaten up the spare cycles that I would normally devote to astronomy.

So, to sum up, the heat has kept me out of the desert, teaching has had its usual effect of monopolizing my attention, and research has scavenged what little teaching left over.

Until last weekend, anyway, when I was overtaken by one of those too-rare bouts of clarity in which I say to myself, “Why on Earth am I overthinking this? Camping is fun and easy, and packing the car takes less than an hour. We should just go.” And so we went.

Despite the earlier bad news, the Salton Sea State Rec Area is still open, at least for now. Don’t know if that’s because the state backed down of full closure, some community group stepped up to keep it open, or no-one’s gotten around to actually stringing a chain across the entrance (I jest; the lights and water were on, and there was a camp host present). That’s pretty much my default destination: it’s close, reasonably dark, has good horizons, is paved all the way in, and has lots of room for London to roam in relative safety with little supervision (i.e., flat, no cliffs to tumble over, and the water is too nasty to contemplate any sort of activity that might lead to drowning).

We got there right at sunset and quickly set up camp. Which basically means setting out the telescope, camp furniture, water, and food, moving all the other gear into the front seats, and making our beds in the back of the Mazda. I like to have all of this squared away before dark; come 3:00 AM I want to be able to climb into an already-made bed and just crash, and not futz around with making any further arrangements. I also got a fire going, and pretty soon we were roasting hot dogs and the making s’mores, our usual camp fare.

The young crescent moon was setting across the water, and as darkness fell the bats came out and started zipping through camp like little silent stealth fighters. London and I dig this; the bats are fun to watch and it’s nice to know that they’re around and keeping us bug-free.

London’s astro-enthusiasm waxes and wanes, much like my own. On some nights all he wants to do is lay out and watch for satellites and shooting stars, and other times he wants to do his own things. Last Saturday he climbed into his nest in the back of the car and played on his Leapster for about an hour (the most time he had spent playing with it in weeks), while I spent some quality time taking in the young crescent moon. I had the wrong camera along. Whereas my decade-old Nikon Coolpix 4500 is endlessly user-adjustable when it comes to settings, my newer Coolpix L19 has no way to manually set the exposure time, so it’s worse than useless when it comes to digiscoping. And the 4500 was back in my office. So no moon shots this time around.

After a while London was ready for some Daddy time so he crawled into my lap and we took turns telling stories until he got sleepy. Sometimes he’ll actually go to sleep in my lap, which is nice, because I know the days for that are growing short. But this time he recognized when he was sufficiently tired, took me to the restroom for his nighttime ablutions, climbed into his nest in the back of the car, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Unlike my outings this spring, this time I wasn’t attempting a Marathon or working on a big observing project. I just wanted to plink around the sky and reacquaint myself with the craft of observing. As usual, I split my time between telescope and binoculars.

This is a great time of year for observing: the summer constellations are still up right after sunset, and by just after midnight the winter constellations are rising. I started with the Great Glob (M13), the Ring Nebula (M57), the Wild Duck Cluster (M11), and Albireo, one of the finest double stars in the sky. By then Jupiter was high enough to be out of the near-horizon roil and showed about half a dozen dark cloud belts in the XT10, and some finer storm detail. After Jupiter I moved on to some autumn favorites: the Pleiades (M45), Andromeda galaxy (M31) and its satellites (M32, M110), and the Double Cluster (NGC 869/884). I could see some hints of the dust lanes in the Andromeda galaxy, but nothing like I saw last fall at Afton Canyon; the Salton Sea is dark but not that dark.

Those were all telescopic observations, and they had  carried me around the sky to the north, where the winter Milky Way was rising. I flopped into the lounge chair, grabbed the 15x70s, and laid back for some binocular stargazing. Cassiopeia in particular is a fantastic area to explore with binoculars; there are so many star clusters that the trick is not usually finding them, but figuring out which among the dozens you’re looking at. I thought about grabbing the atlas and sorting through it all.

Instead, I fell asleep.

I woke up about an hour later, at half past midnight. Normally, I would have called it a night, but during my reverie Orion had strode over the eastern horizon. Now this was too good to pass up. I went back to the scope and spent some time looking at the Great Nebula in Orion (M42/M43), the Crab Nebula (M1), the trio of Messier clusters in Auriga (M36, M37, and M38), and another cluster near Auriga (NGC 2281). I went back to the Pleiades, and got my best-ever view of the Merope Nebula, one of the many faint wisps of nebulosity that surround this bright young cluster. (In retrospect, the clarity with which I saw the Merope Nebula should have sent me scrambling back to the Andromeda galaxy to look again for dust lanes–the sky had evidently improved in the intervening two hours.)

Pleiades by Rob Gendler, borrowed from APOD

Then it was back to the lounge chair and binoculars to revisit all of these targets and more. And eventually, back to sleep under the stars. I did wake up later on and crawl into the car for some deeper sleep, but falling asleep under the splendor of the Milky Way was one of my favorite experiences in astronomy.

I was away too long. I can’t wait to go back out and do it again.

Observing report: Binoculars on Mount Baldy

Thursday night my buddy Brian and I drove up Mount Baldy to do some casual observing. Brian probably wouldn’t describe himself as an amateur astronomer (yet), but I’m working on him. We’ve been talking for months about going out with binoculars and a planisphere and just spending some time learning the sky. When I got back from Uruguay I realized that Brian had been in town for a year and we hadn’t been out observing yet, so I started bugging him regularly. Thursday night, we went.

It was just by chance that Thursday night was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower; we were going out anyway and the meteor shower didn’t affect our decision one way or another. But it was a nice perk, and we both saw some excellent meteors up on the mountain. Not as many as we might have if we had gone for that purpose, because the best meteor watching is done with both eyes wide open, laying on the ground or on the hood or trunk of the car. Even binoculars cut out so much sky that you’re more likely to miss meteors than to see them if you’re scanning the sky with binos. That said, Brian did catch at least one through binoculars. Brian had along his 10x50s and I had my 10x50s, 15x70s, and SV50. We looked at just about every good target with all three instruments. Usually we’d find things with the 10x50s, kick things up a notch with the 15x70s, and go to the SV50 for a steady fixed view and sometimes for more power. It was a useful, easy-to-use set of instruments that I thought complemented one another well; my only regret was not bringing the eyepiece rack for the telescope mount, because I spent more time than I wanted fiddling with end caps when I was switching eyepieces on the telescope.

We started out facing south, down the mountain, toward Scorpio and Sagittarius. Those are two of the most recognizable constellations, Scorpio because it actually looks like a scorpion and Sagittarius because of the striking ‘teapot’ asterism. They’re also prime territory for deep-sky observing, with binoculars or telescopes of any size. Our first target was M7, just above the “stinger” of Scorpio. M7 is a BIG, bright cluster, and it looked pretty darned good even though Scorpio was down in the light dome over LA. M6 is right next to M7 and looks like its smaller sibling. From there we went up into Sagittarius, to M8, M22, and M24. M8 is the Lagoon Nebula, and M22 is the brightest globular cluster in Sagittarius. M24 is “not a ‘true’ deep sky object, but a huge star cloud in the Milky Way, a pseudo-cluster of stars spread thousands of light years along the line of sight, perceived through a chance tunnel in the interstellar dust”, according to its SEDS page.

At that point I was doing something else–switching eyepieces on the telescope, as likely as not–and Brian was just cruising with the 10x50s when he ran across another bright cluster. We identified it, and several other “discoveries” of the evening, by the following process: one person would find something in binoculars, and then hold the binos with one hand while getting a green laser pointer on target with the other hand. Then the other person would follow the line of the green laser to the target using his binoculars. That first time, the target was M11, the Wild Duck Cluster, one of the true gems of the summer sky. Other “discoveries” sent me scrambling for the star atlas.

By that point we had been facing south for more than half an hour and we needed a stretch and a change of pace. We hit M13, Epsilon Lyrae (the Double Double star), and M15 in the mid sky before settling down to face north. Our  first northern target was M31, the Andromeda galaxy. It was grand. We also spotted its two satellite galaxies, M32 and M110, without much trouble. By that time the Double Cluster had cleared the treeline to the north so we spent a few pleasant minutes contemplating that celestial showpiece. Then we just panned around Cassiopeia taking in all the good stuff. Even with binoculars, you can spot clusters in Cassiopeia faster than you can identify them, unless you already have them committed to memory, and we saw a lot more than we logged. Specific objects that we noted or looked up included the open clusters Stock 2, M34, and NGC 457. Our last two objects were M33, the Triangulum galaxy, and the Engagement Ring of stars around Polaris.

We wrapped up about 12:30 AM after a solid hour and a half of unhurried observing, during which time we had seen several asterisms, one nebula (M8), one identified double star (Epsilon Lyrae) and at least one unidentified by us, seven identified open clusters (M7, M6, M11, the Double Cluster, Stock 2, M34, and NGC 457) plus several more unidentified, three globular clusters (M22, M13, and M15), five galaxies (M31, M32, M110, M33, and our own Milky Way arcing high overhead), and a galactic star cloud (M24). So we had seen at least one of just about every class of deep sky object except for planetary nebulae and dark nebulae. If I’d been more target-oriented I would have remember M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, and then we’d have gotten a planetary as well.

But I wasn’t target-oriented. I was just there to have fun surfing the sky with a friend. I had a heck of a good time, and I think Brian did too. I’m already looking forward to the next time out.

Mt Wilson: even better the second time around

About a dozen of us from the Pomona Valley Amateur Astronomers spent Saturday night observing with the 60-inch telescope up on Mount Wilson. A really excellent night on the mountain is a Goldilocks affair–you need enough of a marine layer to cover up the lights of LA, but the fog has to stay low enough not to swamp the observatory itself. The PVAA visited Mount Wilson last summer, but got fogged out. That worked out okay for me, because they rescheduled for the fall and I found out about the trip in time to go along.

Saturday night the marine layer was looking  pretty good when we got there. Unfortunately, it cleared out before midnight, so the sky was too bright for us to do any serious galaxy observing. But we saw quite a few planetary nebulae and globular clusters, which punch through the light pollution better than most galaxies.

We saw a lot of burnt trees on the way in, from last fall’s Station Fire, which at one point threatened the observatory. The trees by the gate had some light charring down near the bottoms of their trunks, but they hadn’t burned very high or very hot, and I suspect that the fire evidence I saw there was caused by backfires set by the firefighters who saved the observatory.

The 60-inch telescope, largest in the world from 1908 to 1917, is as impressive as ever.

Our first target was Saturn. Although the seeing settled down later in the evening, right after dark the sky was pretty turbulent and that cut down on the amount of detail we could see. Also, and to my immense irritation, I couldn’t get my camera to focus with the optical zoom engaged, so I couldn’t  increase the object size on the CCD as much as I would have liked. This photo doesn’t really do the view justice–in fact, it’s not much better than I’ve done with my 10-inch scope from my driveway (proof here).  Remember that this is a sad comment on the state of the just-past-sunset atmosphere and my finicky camera, and not a slight on the telescope, which is capable of much better!

But things did get better as the evening progressed and we saw tons of cool stuff. Several other people were experimenting with their own digital cameras and that inspired me to try some things I haven’t done before, like photographing double stars. Here is Albireo, a summer favorite that is easily split by even small telescopes.

We started with Saturn and ended with Jupiter; the King of the Planets was climbing in the east as the sky started to brighten before dawn. If you haven’t looked at Jupiter in a while, the Red Spot is actually red again, and the normally-brown South Equatorial Belt has faded almost completely. This is a big switch from the past year or two, when the “Red” Spot has mostly been visible as a white notch in the SEB. It was far and away the best look at the GRS that I’d ever gotten.

The highlight of the evening for me was seeing M13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, and M5, another excellent summer glob, back to back. M13 is probably in most deep sky observers’ top ten, but some people like M5 better, and I’m in that camp. M5 isn’t quite as big or bright, although it comes very close, but it has a much more compact core and the outer stars are arranged in loops and swirls rather than radiating chains. To my eyes, M5 looks like an explosion of stars, in progress. It’s good in my ten-inch scope. It’s phenomenal in the 60-inch.

Last fall we went on a weeknight and I had to leave early, around 3:00 AM or so, to get up to teach the next morning. We also had a considerably larger group, so we didn’t get through as many objects per unit time. Obviously going with a big group is better for the club, but it was nice to have a more intimate group and a shorter line at the eyepiece. I had a heck of a good time, and I plan on going back up every chance I get. If it’s within your means, you should do likewise.

Many thanks to our host and telescope operator for another tremendous evening!

Update: I’m kind of a doofus. If you were wondering why this post is included in the binocular category, it’s because I took my 15×70 bins with me and did some deep-sky observing out of the opening in the dome, while waiting in line for the eyepiece. I bagged four targets for the AL Deep Sky Binocular club, which leaves me with only six more needed to complete that list. But I forgot to mention all of this when I first posted!

Mission 19: Cross asterism near NGC 2281

Mission Objectives: Asterism, Open cluster

Equipment: Binoculars, Telescope

Required Time: 3 minutes

Related Missions: Diamonds from the Ring of Fire

An asterism is just a pattern of stars that grabs someone’s attention. Asterisms differ from constellations in that they don’t have any official standing, although some like the Big Dipper (which is only part of the constellation Ursa Major) are better known than their host constellations and have been recognized for far longer. Since asterisms don’t have to meet anyone’s standards for asterism-hood, anyone can point one out, and stargazers have been discovering them for as long as humans have watched the skies.

I noticed this one for the first time a few weeks ago when I was hunting down NGC 2281 with my 15×70 binoculars. It’s an easy catch–just find Capella, trace a line to Menkalinan the next star counter-clockwise in the ring of stars that marks the constellation Auriga, and extend the line an equal distance in the same direction. Might as well take in NGC 2281 while you’re there–it’s just southwest of the right arm of the cross.

NGC 2281 is a nice little open cluster for either telescopes or binoculars–another glittering diamond in the celestial Ring of Fire. But in this case, I like the asterism better than the cluster! It’s well worth seeking out, and definitely better in binoculars than in telescopes.

The cross asterism seems really obvious, but I haven’t found any other mentions of it so far. Does anyone know if it has been noted or discussed before? I’ll be grateful for any info.

Mission 18: Diamonds from the Ring of Fire

Mission Objectives: Bright stars, Open clusters, Messier objects, Star hopping

Equipment: Sky map, Binoculars, Telescope

Required Time: 5-10 minutes per window

Related Missions: Ring of Fire

Introduction: Here on Earth, diamonds are found in the magma pipes that fed long-extinct volcanoes. Sometime in the distant future, the volcanic provinces of the Pacific “Ring of Fire” will be prime diamond-hunting territory. So it’s fitting that winter’s Ring of Fire is also full of diamonds, in the form of open clusters that decorate the winter Milky Way.

All of the clusters described here are within reach of 50mm binoculars, although most won’t show much detail at 7-10x. Even the smaller ones will start to differentiate in 15×70 binoculars, and all of them are stunning in telescopes of any size.

Instructions for M41, M93, M46 and M47: Go outside after dark, face south, and find Sirius. Use it to trace the “doggy” shape of Canis Major. M41 is the biggest and brightest of the clusters in this area, and it’s an easy catch right in the heart of the dog. I usually find it by centering Sirius in the field of view and then just sweeping down (south) through the constellation. It never fails to swim into view. If you’re having a hard time, M41 makes one corner of an elongated triangle with Sirius and a trio of brightish stars along the dog’s back.

After M41, the rest of the Messier clusters around Canis Major may seem a bit anticlimactic, but each has its own charm and they are all well worth tracking down. And there are even better clusters to come.

Although it is nowhere near as brilliant as M41, M93 is one of my favorites. It is small but fairly dense, and at low magnification its irregular shape makes me think of a silvery flame burning in the night sky. To get there, trace your way down the dog’s back to the bright stars Wezen, Adhara, and Aludra, which mark the dog’s hindquarters and tail. If you’re in doubt about which is which, note that these three stars form a right triangle with Aludra at the south end. From Aludra, a loose chain of bright stars trails east into the constellation Puppis. Sweep over and up, over and up, and you’ll see M93. If you get to a star as bright as Aludra, you’ve hit Rho Puppis (looks like ‘p Pup’ in the map above) and gone too far.

The last two in this window, M46 and M47, make a nice contrasting pair. From Sirius, scan east to find the stars that make the back of the dog’s head. I imagine these stars forming one end of a shallow arc that includes several bright background stars and ends on the paired clusters. If that doesn’t work for you, use Stellarium or the atlas of your choice to pick out intermediate stars to use as waypoints. A word of caution: this is a rich region of the sky, with loads of tiny faint clusters that aren’t marked on any but the most detailed maps. More than once I have been looking for M46 and M47 and gotten hung up in the wrong place. If you have any doubt about whether the clusters you’re looking at are the right ones, they’re probably not. One way to recognize them for sure is to note the differences between them; M47 is very sparse with a handful of bright stars in an irregular pattern, whereas M46 has many more stars that are more even in brightness, although none of them are nearly as bright as the most prominent members of M47.

Instructions for M35-M38: Now go to the north end of the Ring of Fire, to the bright star Capella. Use it to trace the 5- or 6-sided (depending on how many stars you include) ring of the constellation Auriga. The side of the polygon opposite Capella is formed by the long line from Alnath (technically in the neighboring constellation Taurus) to the next star clockwise. The clusters M37 and M36 are on either side of that line at the halfway point. Extend the line from M37 to M36 on to the west with a slight bend to the north to find M38. As with M46 and M47, this trio of clusters make an interesting study in contrasts. Here are my notes from Messier Marathon night:

• M37: compact, dense with faint stars, very rich but dim
• M36: smallest but brightest of trio, dominated by a few brighter stars
• M38: intermediate between the other two in both richness and brightness

The first time I observed these clusters, I found M37 and M36 easily and then spent almost an hour trying to locate M38. It just wasn’t there! Then I checked the descriptions of the clusters and realized that I had actually been looking at M36 and M38. I’d been extending the line in the wrong direction. I backtracked and picked up M37 easily–an illustration of why it is useful to know what things ought to look like, and not just where they are.

The Auriga trio are nice clusters, but the fourth and final M-cluster in this window blows them all away. To find M35, trace down the body of the western twin in Gemini, from bright Castor to the swooping arc of stars that marks the outside ‘foot’. Just above the toe of the boot, in a right triangle with the last two stars in the arc, you’ll find M35, a big, bright cluster that rivals M41 in either binoculars or telescopes. If you’ve got a telescope, you can get a twofer–the small, compact cluster NGC 2158 is right next to M35 in the same field. It’s a tough catch in binoculars unless you’re under dark skies, but almost any telescope ought to show it easily. There’s a nice photo of the pair here.

Instructions for M44: I saved the best for last. M44, also known as the Beehive Cluster or Praesepe (“the manger”), is probably the second best cluster in the sky after the Pleiades. But it’s not as easy to find. The Pleiades have enough bright stars to shine out even in suburban skies, but the Beehive is an aptly named swarm of smaller lights. To complicate matters, M44 is located in Cancer, which has no bright stars.

I usually get to the Beehive from Gemini. Here are some methods that might work for you. My usual path is to draw a line from the extended arm of the western twin, through Pollux, and on in the same direction for about the same distance. Right now that line also intersects Mars, so you could cut your travel time by just drawing a line from Pollux, through Mars, to Praesepe. But that method is only going to work for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks at most, because Mars is on the move (compare its position in the map above with this shot from just a few weeks ago). Finally, if your skies are really nasty, you might try drawing a triangle from Procyon, to Pollux, to Praesepe. It won’t be a perfect equilateral, but it’s close; M44 is just above the point of what would be a perfect equilateral.

Or you could do what I often resort to when I’m in  a rush: find the region between the Gemini twins and Regulus, in Leo (just off-screen to the lower left in the image above), and just sweep around with binoculars or your finder. It’s pretty low-fi, but it’s never failed me yet.

M44 is a true showpiece of the sky, with dozens of stars of even brightness seemingly arranged in a net or grid. It can be seen with the naked eye under dark skies, but it really shines in binoculars. As with the Pleiades, it usually looks better in binos than in telescopes, although a short focal length, rich-field scope might have a wide enough field to show the cluster with some surrounding sky for context.

Coda: The nine open clusters in this  mission are just the tip of the iceberg. This section of the winter sky is littered with hundreds more. There are plenty of bright NGC clusters that rival or exceed many Messiers. The region around the ‘feet’ of the Gemini twins is an especially rich area to sweep with binoculars or a telescope at low power, whether you’re hunting for specific targets or just soaking up the view.

Spring is coming. Although the constellations of winter are high overhead at sunset, they are already starting their long slide toward the western horizon. So get ‘em while you can.

Observing report: Between the clouds

We’ve been having lots of cloudy and rainy weather here in the LA basin, so when a clear night comes along I try to take full advantage. Last night was clear, so I grabbed my 15x70s and went out to see the clusters between Cassiopeia and Perseus.

I made a New Year’s resolution to get through the Messier list this year. Right after I started on that project, I found out that some people–including Jay Reynolds Freeman–had done the whole list with 50mm binoculars. I hadn’t ever taken on a binocular observing project, so I decided to do the AL Binocular Messier Club at the same time. Plus, I would have felt like a wuss knowing that people had done the list with 50mm bins and I hadn’t even tried with my 15x70s.

The first week of January was pretty clear here and I got through almost all of the Messier objects that can be easily seen from my suburban skies at convenient hours. No M76 or M78 yet, at least not with the binoculars (M78 did fall to my 6-inch Dob). It was enough to get me hooked on the challenge and pleasure of tracking down faint fuzzies with binoculars, so I decided to start the Deep Sky Binocular Club, too.

I started that club a few weeks ago with what western objects I could get, before they get too close to the sun, or more depressing yet, too far down into the LA light dome (I’m at the far eastern edge of LA county). Then I went on through Orion, Lepus, Puppis, Gemini, Auriga, Taurus, and so on. A couple of weeks ago I was looking at my tally and realized that I’d gotten so busy with the southern stretches of the winter Milky Way that I’d forgotten about the circumpolar constellations! Which is a shame, Cassiopeia was the first constellation I learned when I got into amateur astronomy in earnest, and was a frequent stop on my earliest observing runs. And the stretch from Cassiopeia to Perseus is huge for the Deep Sky Binocular Club, with about a quarter of the objects on the list. I didn’t realize that until I’d gotten through most of the rest of the evening sky and was wondering why my tally wasn’t higher. Then I “discovered” how crucial Cass and Perseus are.

Then it started raining. A LOT.

As I compose this, it is raining. But last night was clear so I went cluster-hunting. I live in a back house with a big open parking area between it and the front house. This affords a decent bowl from which to observe without too much interference from local lighting. I usually wear a dark hooded sweatshirt and pull the hood up over my face so only my eyes are showing. With patience and good dark adaptation I’ve seen some things that I would have thought impossible in these skies, including the M galaxies around Canes Venatici and the Crab Nebula.

I didn’t start off with the Cass clusters. I wanted another crack at M78, and while I was waiting for my eyes to settle into observing mode I swept up M42 and M43, M35, and the Auriga M clusters. All very pretty, but they didn’t help M78 appear out of the murk. Sometimes right after a rain the transparency is just shocking, but sometimes there are mixed clouds and haze that really put the hurt on the faint fuzzies. Last night was one of those nights. M78 will have to wait for darker skies (maybe this weekend).

So I switched over to Cassiopeia and its neighbors. I started with the Double Cluster, which I’d seen umpteen times before but never logged for the Deep Sky Bino Club. And I was off and running. Here are the rest of my notes for the evening:

Tr 2 – Two chains of faint stars intersect to form the shape of a flying wing. Delicately beautiful.

Stock 2 – Extremely large, vase-shaped assemblage of faint stars. IMHO, rivals Double Cluster in binoculars, although its appearance is very different.

Markarian 6 – Dense patch of light, no granularity, makes a nice contrast with nearby Mel 15.

Melotte 15 – Larger and sparser than nearby Mark 6, but with more bright stars. Reminds me of a hybrid of the Double Cluster clusters.

NGC 663 – Obvious and granular even in these skies, brighter than nearby NGCs and even M103.

Kemble’s Cascade – Lovely curving chain of stars of varying brightnesses, anchored by NGC 1502 on one end and a counter-curving arc of bright stars on the other. Bright stars plus cascade make extended S shape.

Stock 23 – Jumps right out even in the surrounding rich starfield. Dominated by four bright stars in a flattened kite shape.

Cr 463 – Large aggregation of faint stars, smaller and dimmer than Stock 2, in a nice trapezoidal asterism not far from the pole.

All of these bizarre designations are explained in the official AL Deep Sky Bino Club list, and all of the listed objects are easy to find in the Pocket Sky Atlas.

I’d also tried for NGCs 129, 436, 457, and 7789, but didn’t pick them up. I think it was partly sky conditions–Cass was getting down into the LA murk–and partly observer conditions. I usually refuse to give up on something unless I have really put in the effort, maybe half an hour of laying flat on my back with every surrounding glint of light blocked out and lots of searching with averted vision. But last night I was cold and tired, and didn’t spend more than 4 or 5 minutes on any one thing.

Still, I ended the night with 10 more objects knocked off the Deep Sky Bino Club. The clouds can do whatever they want today, I’ve got a little victory energy to run on.

Observing Report: binoculars vs. cloudy skies

70mm of EPIC WIN -- times two!

Contrary to popular belief, it does rain in southern California. We’re in the middle of what is projected to be a solid week of rainy weather. Today we had thunderstorms and a small tornado even came ashore in Orange County. So I hadn’t planned to get any observing done until after this coming weekend.

Rather, I should say that I hadn’t counted on getting any observing in. But I had hoped that there might be some breaks in the clouds, and I had planned accordingly. The point of generating all of the AL observing club logbooks was to have all my ducks in a row when the sky cleared up this rainy season (I can’t bring myself to call it “winter”, and we really only have two seasons anyway, rainy and dry).

By the way, it may look like I’ve gone completely mad for AL observing clubs, with six active projects. But there’s a lot of overlap; some observations for the Messier and Deep Sky Binocular clubs also count for the Urban club, and Deep Sky Binocular work is basically observing the brighter NGCs that never made it into the Messier list, so except for the Galileo and Lunar II clubs, all of my observing projects involve hunting down faint fuzzies. And they all can be done with binoculars, at least to a point, although ‘nokks are only required for the two clubs with ‘binocular’ in the title.

ANYWAY, this evening the clouds cleared out for a bit so I grabbed my observing kit and headed out into the driveway to hunt for goodies. What’s in my binocular observing kit? Glad you asked!

1. My ‘nokks of choice, Celestron SkyMaster 15x70s. These are big, and they really gobble up the photons. The views are sharper when they’re mounted, but I prefer the freedom of handheld scanning, and that’s how I use them most of the time. If I’m going to use smaller binoculars on a given evening, I have to do so before I look through these; going back to 50mm of aperture is like having someone shut off the lights. Huge bang for the buck, but if you’re going to freehand them, get a wide padded neck strap instead of the shoelace guillotine that comes included.
2. Sky & Telescope’s Pocket Sky Atlas. I love, love, love this atlas. It’s small enough to hold in one hand, spiral bound to lay flat or fold over in the field, easy to read with a red flashlight, conveniently organized…with this atlas, my 15x70s, and reasonably dark skies, I can ‘nokk off DSOs about as fast as I can look them up on the charts. In the city I can’t always see the faint fuzzies, but I can always get myself to the place in the sky where they would appear if I wasn’t under the LA light dome.
3. Notebook. I use a hardbound 8×5 off the bargain rack at Borders, but anything would do, even a blank piece of paper. At the top of the page for each observing session I note the date, location, and sky conditions. Entries include time, instrument used, target,  and a brief description. I transcribe everything into my AL logbooks after I come back inside, because its easier to do that than juggle four floppy 8×11 notebooks in the field.
4. Red flashlight. Mine is a Mini Maglite with the window painted over with a double coat of red nail polish. I wear it around my neck on a lanyard so it’s always to hand. Bright enough to let me use the atlas and record my observations without trouble, small enough to fit in my teeth when I’m laying on my back and two-handing the atlas overhead.
5. Writin’ iron. I use the cheapest stick pens that money can buy, so I don’t have to worry about breaking or losing them, but whatever you like will do.
6. Hooded  sweatshirt. Surprisingly useful. Not only keeps me warm, I can stash the binocular lens caps in one pocket and my pen in the other. The biggest benefit is being able to pull the hood around my face like a cowl to block out stray light and improve my eyes’ dark adaptation. This makes a BIG difference in seeing faint stuff I would otherwise miss. Patience, and knowing I’m looking in exactly the right place (thanks to the atlas) are the other two legs of this triad.
7. Towel or folding chair. Depending on how my targets are. If low in the sky, I may choose to sit in a folding chair. If high in the sky–where I prefer to work, both for ergonomic reasons and because things look the best when you’re looking straight up, through as little atmosphere as possible–I lay a beach towel on the car and lay back against the windshield. The towel keeps me warmer than I would be otherwise and keeps me from scratching up the car.

That’s it. For  walking out the door, I’ve got the sweatshirt on, binoculars and red flashlight both hanging from their neck straps, pen in my pocket, atlas and notebook in one hand, towel or folding chair in the other. I’m outside in one trip, and observing about 5 minutes after the  mood strikes.

That comes in handy on nights like tonight; between 5:30 and midnight I was out four times, because the sky was clear four times and cloudy three times in between. It would not have paid to set up a telescope, and I would not have felt comfortable doing so considering the amount of moisture  still falling down out of the trees–when the slightest breeze hits the tall palm in my front yard, it shakes itself like 60 feet of wet dog. So it was ‘nokks or nothing, which suited me just fine because I’ve been on a serious binocular observing bent lately.

I spent the first session ‘nokking off some easy Messiers. Nothing new, all things I’d already seen and logged from the Salton Sea and just needed to dupe for the Urban Club. Still nice to check those off the list.

The rest of the sessions I was hunting clusters. I’ll give the full run-down on how I do this in another post. Suffice to say that by the end of the night I had logged 24 DSOs, including 15 objects that I’d never seen before. Some of them were just gorgeous–there is a nice run of little clusters off the feet of Gemini that must been seen to be believed. Plus I got in some sweet views of the moon and had a quick peek at Mars and Saturn, too.

Now it’s late and I’m bushed, so I and my victory energy are going to bed. Catch you on the flip side.