Session 30 – The Owl Cluster

Friday 9th February 2018 – 20:42-21:02

It had been a busy week, so I was glad to be able to get a quick observing session, before grabbing an early night.  After a quick alignment on Sirius and Rigel, I opted to have a quick look at some classics.

I started with the Little Beehive Cluster – M41,.  Whilst significantly smaller than the “original” Beehive Cluster, it’s good to see, even though tonight it appeared fairly faint.

C13 – the Owl Cluster is a fun object to look at.  As the name suggests, it appears like an owl (subject to some input from the imagination) – the two bright stars in the cluster are the owl’s “eyes”.

M31 and M32 were next.  The galactic centre of the former was clear and distinctive as always, whereas M32 was more difficult to identify.  It was just about visible, and resembled a faint fuzzy star.  M110 alas was still unidentifiable – perhaps one day I’ll find it!

I ended the session with a look at M42 – the Orion Nebula.  Tonight it was very bright and looked absolutely superb.  Definitely a great target to end on!

Session 17 – Mixing it up

Friday 27th October 2017 – 19:26-21:31

Tonight was a Friday, and the sky was perfectly clear.  I’d made an extensive list of objects to observe tonight, and as such, it was going to be a marathon session.

I aligned on Vega and Altair, and opened the session by looking at the moon – currently around 50% illuminated and waxing.  It was pretty bright, but I didn’t spend too much time looking at it.

M31 was the first deep space object of the evening, and I had a good view of the centre of the galaxy.  Unfortunately however, neither M32 nor M110 (two of its companion galaxies) were visible today.

M52 was next, but it was quite faint, although I was able to see several stars in this particular cluster.  M103 followed, but it was hard to identify.

Moving onto brighter and more easily identifiable objects, I had a look at M39.  This cluster is large and bright, and as such, is a good option if you want to look at an open cluster.

It’d been a while since I saw the Wild Duck Cluster, and so I slewed to it.  There was a slight issue though, in that a few leaves were obscuring it.  Luckily there weren’t too many, so I went to my shed, took out the shears, and gave the shrub a quick trim.  The horticultural issue now being resolved, I had another go at observing the cluster.  Typically, it was now behind a cloud!  Evidently I had to return to this later on.

Turning back to objects that weren’t obscured, M27 was next.  This classic nebula was good to see, but quite faint.  Its characteristic shape was just about visible though.

I decided it was time to look at a globular cluster.  M15 was the one I chose, and it proved to be marvellous.  It was bright and clear, and gave a great view in the 9.7mm eyepiece as well.  Well worth a look!  M56 was the next globular, but proved disappointing in comparison to the previous one.

The Ring Nebula followed these, and I was given a decent view of it.  Luckily the cloud problem was now resolved, and so I returned to M11 (third time lucky)!  It was quite faint, but easily identifiable nevertheless.

I next attempted to view M71 but couldn’t find it.  I checked the alignment on Vega, and it was spot on, so I guess I was just unlucky.  I returned to M71, and still couldn’t see it, but I did see a satellite.  I was unable to be certain of it, but I think it was SL-16 R/B (rocket debris).

M29 (the Cooling Tower) followed after, and gave an excellent view, with its brighter stars making a nice looking asterism:

Simulated view of M29 from Starry Night Pro, showing the bright stars forming the asterism

Back to the globular clusters once more, and M2 proved to be a good one.  It wasn’t as good as M15, but even so, it was large and easy to find.  M13 followed as the next globular cluster, as did M92 after that.  The former is larger than the latter, and although it has a lower magnitude, it appears less bright (as it is more spread out).  In terms of size though, M13 is very impressive.

I returned to an old favourite at this point – M34, and it is always a joy to see this particular open cluster.  C8 was unremarkable, but C10 had lots of stars and was a good cluster.

At this point, the AutoStar handset crashed, emitting a loud beep at a frequency I’d not heard before, which was rather alarming.  I attempted to reboot it and realign the telescope, but it crashed again.  It appeared to be a power failure, as the batteries were too low.

Earlier in the session, I’d thought about splitting it into two halves, and moving the telescope nearer the house so I would be able to observe the northern sky better (in spite of its horrendous light pollution).  I’d had a few more objects I wished to see before doing this, but owing to the power failure, I had to move the telescope earlier than anticipated.  Luckily the location near the house was close enough to the mains power supply, meaning I was able to use the AC adapter to run the telescope for the rest of the evening.

With the telescope moved and set up near the house, I aligned on Capella and Altair, and got started with the second half of the session, using a new observation target list I’d drawn up consisting of objects in that particular part of the sky.

I started the second half of the session by viewing M36 and M38, two open clusters.  They were both quite small and not massively exciting.  I then viewed the Pleiades, which are always good to see, although due to the size of the cluster, the whole object does not fit into the field of view (so I may need to buy a focal reducer).

As the typical telescope location has its view to the north blocked by a large tree, I took the opportunity to view the most northerly parts of the celestial sphere.  I spent a while looking at Polaris (the North Star), followed by C1 – which was faint and unexciting.

C28 proved to be much more rewarding, and is a large cluster.  Slightly larger than the field of view, it would also benefit from a focal reducer.  It was an impressive sight, and a really good open cluster.  I followed this with C13 – the Owl Cluster, and the owl shape was discernible.  I was able to see both the eyes and the wings and tail of the owl.  It was a good sight this evening.

Continuing with the Caldwell catalogue, I returned to my favourite C14 – the Double Cluster.  It was gorgeous.  C16 was the next, and is another good cluster (although not as good as the Double Cluster).

The evening was drawing on, so I turned my attention to the ice giants.  Uranus was bright tonight, while Neptune was fainter but still visible.  I ended the session with a look at the Garnet Star.

All in all it had been very successful, with the alternative telescope location working really well.  I’ll certainly have to repeat the exercise in future!

Session 15 – Intergalactic Excitement

Saturday 14th October 2017 – 20:58-21:48

The weather had been cloudy all day, but after looking outside in the evening, it was beautifully clear, and so it was the perfect opportunity to observe.  This time, I’d changed the batteries in the telescope, so it was much better!

The plan was to focus on some new open and globular clusters, but unfortunately, I was unable to identify/locate some, so that side of observing was of limited success.

I aligned on Vega and Altair as is common these days.  The telescope first selected Capella instead of Altair, and while it was visible in the sky, the location of the telescope on the patio meant it was behind a tree from that position unfortunately.  I’ll keep this in mind next time, as the Vega/Capella combination gives a much better alignment due to them being far apart in the sky.  During the alignment, I noticed that the Telrad had lost its alignment with the main telescope tube, so that will need to be corrected in the future.

Now I’m more used to the night sky, I started the session once again by viewing the ice giants.  Uranus showed a good disk, particularly with the 9.7mm eyepiece.  Neptune was more disappointing however, and proved to be slightly more difficult to identify.  In terms of observation, I much prefer Uranus, as its disk is more discernible (unsurprising given that they are of very similar size, yet Neptune is ≈60% further away from the sun).

Moving onto the deep sky objects, I started with M30, which proved to be very faint indeed.  M71 followed after, and I saw a nice triangular asterism.  I may have misidentified it, so will have to follow it up with future observations.

C47 was the next (and final) globular cluster for the evening, and it was also pretty faint.  It was very close to a nearby star (the catchily named TYC-522-2249-1), that was almost on top of the cluster.

Moving on to view some open clusters, C13 – the Owl Cluster was first.  It was pleasant to observe, with a good number of stars, where one (φ Cassiopeiæ) was particularly bright.  C28 followed, which was a large cluster with lots of stars, and yielded a good view.

Being somewhat discouraged by the failure to find several clusters so far (not mentioned above), I decided to look at M57 – the Ring Nebula, to see if I were just unlucky, or whether the light pollution was worse than usual.  Fortunately I could see it, faint as ever, but still beautiful, so I was just unlucky after all!

Moving back towards more familiar territory, I opted to view C14 – the Double Cluster.  Strictly speaking it is composed of two clusters – NGC 869 and NGC 884, as on previous occasions, it is truly spectacular to see, and tonight was no exception.  I will attempt to image it in future, to put up on this blog!

Buoyed by the sight of C14, I decided to give viewing M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy a go.  One of the downsides of the light pollution I experience is that galaxies seem particularly affected, even such large galaxies as M31.  Luckily today, the view of M31 appeared to be better than usual, and I could easily make out the galactic centre.  It bore similarities to a globular cluster, but much “fuzzier”.  Given the view of the galactic centre of M31 was so good, I turned my attention to the two of its companion galaxies that also fall within the Messier catalogue – M32 and M110.  I was able to find M32 relatively easily, and it looked small, round and fuzzy (as to be expected from an elliptical dwarf companion galaxy).  Sadly I couldn’t find M110, but I will try again in the future!

The night was drawing on, and so before I finished the session, I took one final look at the Double Cluster and Uranus before heading indoors.

Session 10 – Ice Giants and Clusters

Wednesday 13th September 2017 – 21:31-22:38

I’d had dinner with a friend in Central London, and got back just after 9.  I saw that the sky was very clear, and as it wasn’t too late, decided to spend an hour or so observing the sky as it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity.  I decided not to bother taking any photos tonight, so this will just be a text post, as I wanted to view lots of objects rather than spend my time imaging (especially as I have work in the morning).

I aligned the telescope on Vega and Altair.  Arcturus was low in the sky at this time (and behind my house anyway).  These two stars are close together, so not perfect for alignment, but it seemed to be fine.  As I was aligning on Altair, a satellite crossed the field of view – checking later showed that it was probably Ariane 40 R/B (debris from a satellite launch rocket).

I opened the session by viewing M24 and M57 – a couple of my perennial favourites.  M24 was quite low in the sky, so wasn’t quite as good as usual.  M57 however was excellent.

After my success last time viewing Neptune, I thought I’d repeat the exercise.  Although it had moved against the starry background (the word “planet” is after all derived from the Classical Greek word meaning “wanderer”), it was this time easy to find.  I enjoyed a good view of it through the 9.7mm eyepiece, and thought I could see a hint of blue.

Next I decided to observe C13 – the Owl Cluster.  The two bright stars in the cluster – the eyes of the owl – were easy to see and were very clear.

I have mentioned before that Betelgeuse is my favourite star, and one of the reasons for this is because it is a very red star.  For some reason, I seem to like red stars more than the hotter bluer ones.  I’d heard of a star colloquially called the Garnet Star.  Garnet is one of my favourite minerals (to the extent that I did my MSci degree research project on garnet), and so I absolutely had to have a look for this star.  Also known as μ Cephei, it is one of the reddest stars in the sky, but also quite bright.  It was quite easy to identify given its colour (but I did double check on Starry Night afterwards to make sure).  It had a deep orange colour, and the 9.7mm eyepiece provided a really good view of it.

I wanted to tick off a few more Messier objects tonight, and I’d made a list of options.  M103 alas was behind a tree (if I’d placed the telescope about 5 cm further south, it wouldn’t have been a problem!!), but M52 was visible.  The view was good (especially in the 9.7mm eyepiece), but the object was quite faint.

I noticed at this point that as the telescope was slewing, the AudioStar handset lights were dimmer than usual, and the tracking motors sounded a bit tired.  As such, the batteries will need to be replaced soon.  I’m considering investing in an outdoor AC extension cable, so I might just get that instead, as I already have an AC adapter for the telescope itself that I bought with it initially.

M34 – the Spiral Cluster was next on my list, and this was spectacular.  The view was fantastic, and it is a great open cluster.  Lots of stars were visible, and I will definitely be observing it again in future.

The evening was getting later, and some clouds had appeared in the north and west (fortunately the two directions I look towards least, given the appalling light pollution from Central London), but it was a reminder that I probably didn’t have a lot of time left.

I took another look at Neptune before slewing to C14 – the Double Cluster.  Only a few stars were visible, and I wasn’t entirely sure of what to expect when observing it, so I will revisit it at a future date.

M11 – the Wild Duck Cluster, another one of my favourites, followed soon after.  At this point in the evening though, it was quite low in the sky, and so less spectacular than usual.

It occurred to me that just as Saturn was progressing through the sky, and setting earlier and earlier in the evening now, Uranus must be rising earlier and earlier.  Unlike when I first saw it, it was now at a sensible altitude at a sensible time, and so I spent some time observing it.  It yielded a good pale disk, through the eyepiece, especially the higher powered one.

The clouds were starting to head towards the south and east, and would most likely being to hamper my observing (and the battery levels were getting low), so I took a final look at the Garnet Star to end the session.  As I was doing so, a satellite crossed the field of view (which turned out to be Iridium 84 after checking later).  With that final view, I ended the session.  It had been another highly successful one, with a good mixture of objects viewed – planets, stars, nebulæ and clusters!