Jupiter, at last! (And oh, Messier 31 and Messier 42)

The weather was OK today, so I had to do some observations – this might have been my first "proper" deep-sky session. So far I my only "proper" observations were of the Moon, Saturn and the Pleiades. Some time ago I got some first (and suboptimal) glances at M31, M13 with my 70mm refractor, and of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury by naked eye, and recently first glances of Jupiter with two scopes.

But today I used the 5.9-inch Newton scope for my first "proper" session of M31, M45, M42 and then Jupiter – though first I took some wide-angle images, with the 400D and the 10-22mm lens, at 10mm, f/4, ISO1600 and over 1 minute exposure – just to do some long-exposure photography again after a long hiatus.

The house of our friendly yet annoying neighbour… Light pollution to the left came from a sports-ground – they later switched off their flood lights.

My small slice of the milky way – and some undefined orangeish streak (probably clouds illuminated by our beautiful high-pressure-sodium lights). I intentionally photographed the airplane passing through the photo.

First I observed the Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31) while it was at about 40° altitude. Frankly, I'm still a bit underwhelmed by M31 in my 5.9-inch (150/750) scope – yes, it is noticebly brighter than in my 70mm refractor (and I am not experienced, and not properly dark adapted), but still… Lacking a light-pollution filter, I tried the poor man's substitute: color filters. I tried blue and green filters, and they increase contrast (and make the periphery discernable), but obviously they make the whole image darker. I tried the 40mm, the 30mm, the 25mm and the 20mm (all Plössls). Still undecided whether color filters are recommendable as a cheap light-pollution filter.

Later on I observed M31 as it was almost in the zenith, and I was under the impression that the image was slightly better.

Regarding the Orbinar 40mm and 30mm Plössls I must notice that the eye-relief is too long, the eye position is critical (kidney-beaning) and the lack of an eye-cup is sorely noted.

I then shortly moved on to the Pleiades (Messier 45). The "tail" was visible to me, but the "last two" stars only barely (TYC 1800-1783-1 with magnitude 10.12 and TYC 1800-1804-1 with magnitude 10.32).

Later on Orion became visible and I had to check out the Orion nebula (Messier 42). It was more impressive than M31, but still it lacked the "Awwwh!" moment that seeing Saturn's rings for the first gave to me.

As a last observation I waited for Jupiter to clear some roofs here. It was a much superior view of Jupiter compared to my past encounters – I have finally "really" seen Jupiter. Well, not "really" actually but the two dark equatorial bands I saw were an improvement. (And little Io was there close to Jupiter, Ganymede on his side, Europa and Callisto on the other side)

Now my muscles hurt and I had to stop. It was a bit too much cramped into one session for me with my health problems – but the weather was good and I don't know when I will get the next chance (yeah, someone give a house in the south of France, please?!?).

I must admit: I'm a sucker for eye-candy, for high-contrast images that are bright enough – oh well. The craters of the Moon, or Saturn's rings, that is my catnip – and even the Jupiter's limb. But Jupiter's bands? Oh, well, I've seen two of them now. I guess seeing wasn't that good, and the scope maybe was not good as well, and I lack the experience, but compared to the high-contrast views this is visually a bit lacking. I'll see if I can squeeze some better views out this scope.

And I need to remind myself of the wonder of what I'm seeing.

Serendipity – Broken Glasses and the Pleiades

Yesterday I bought an used 150/750 Newton telescope, of course I got it rather cheaply (this *is* Cheap Astronomy, after all). The 150/750 telescope is everything it promises: a large mirror in a cheap package, with quite a few quirks – it will be fun playing around with it.

I choose a scenic route back from the seller (having no chance to do otherwise an vacation, this was quite nice), and while I was exhausted from the journey I had to try out the new scope at the night sky. And then it's when it happened: I had the glasses rather carelessly on top of my head, they fell down and broke (right in the middle) into two pieces. Though I don't need them to look through the scope (and prefer rather not to wear them at the eyepiece) they are necessary for me to look with the naked eye at the night-sky. Without glasses, the stars are quite blurry – which proved to be a fortunate accident. When I later scanned the night sky with the truly naked eye (after having possibly seen the California Nebula in the 150mm Newton) I stumbled without glasses upon the Alpha Persei Cluster, (aka Mel 20, Melotte 20 or Collinder 39) the Pleiades.

[Update] I am such a noob. I got side-tracked in my star-charts and can't properly tell altitude. The object I saw was much lower in the sky (about 20 degrees) than Mel20 (about 45 degrees) – it was the Pleiades! In a 70mm scope at 12x magnification they look a little bit different than the photos: much more lively. Though I should have recognized them in the binoculars. Doh. m( Thankfully nobody reads this. :-) [/Update]

For me, without glasses, the Pleiades seem like a longish blur, a bit reminiscent of an elongated galaxy – standing out quite clearly against the night-sky. There is something there! I grabbed my 7x60 binoculars, and sure enough there is a nice star cluster there.

Next my modified 70/300 refractor came in rather nicely. With a 25mm Plössl (at 12x magnification) it was splendid. The refractor revealed more than my (bad, bad) 7x60 binoculars, showing the brilliance of the stars in that cluster rather nicely.

What is important to have a large field of view to reveal the contrast between the star-rich cluster and the "normal" night-sky with a lower star density – if you yank up the magnification then the star cluster will look like any other star-field… Though (at 300mm focal length) a PL30mm, PL32mm or PL35mm eyepiece would probably be nice, as with the lower magnification (10x, 9.4x or 8.5x respectively) it might reveal more of the surrounding sky, and frame the cluster better.

I must say, the Pleiades are a night-sky target well suited for binoculars and small telescopes with low magnification (in the range between 7x and 15x) – highly recommended eye-candy!

[Update 2013-10-05] Now that I know what to look for I took another look a the Pleiades yesterday. Some cloud-ish something was hanging in the East and the view of the Pleiades wasn't nearly as vivid as I the first time I saw them. I could have sworn: the first time I say the Pleiades I thought I could discern different star colors. Mainly blue for the brighter ones, but some orange-ish dimmer ones interspersed. (I think my memory is playing tricks on me).

No colorful stars yesterday, and much less vivid – the weather was not as good last night. At both nights I tried the Pleiades with the 70/300 Refractor and a PL25mm (12x magnification) and my new 150/750 Newton and the same eyepiece (30x magnification). The 5.9 inch Newton is significantly brighter, as was to be expected. The images at that magnification are good in the 5.9 inch Newton, but of course the Pleiades now fill the entire FOV of the Plössl. A PL32mm or maybe a PL35mm would be a welcome addition to my eyepiece collection – maybe for Christmas. :-)

I am very happy to have bought that cheap 150/750 Newton. The EQ-3-1 mount and tripod isn't great, but I got it to behave with some small mechanical modifications.

On the first night I saw the Pleiades I tried the little 76/350 Newton as well (which has an effective aperture of about 60mm) and I must say the images are not good compared with the 70/300 Refractor (which is a badly collimated instrument). Viewed through the focuser's tube it is obvious that the secondary of that little Newton is too much to the front. The primary is not adjustable (at least without some DIY modifications) – but adjusting the secondary might help a lot.