OR from Henry Coe 10/17/25
Richard Navarrete
Tales from an overly ambitious amateur astronomer.
.jpg?part=0.1&view=1 "Inline image")
I switched gear around and put an AT80ED refractor on the eq mount, and went about aligning the SE8. I’ve been practicing setup in my backyard so it only took a few minutes to get things aligned and ready for observing. I continued working through the essays in ’Celestial Sampler’ by Sue French, but for some reason I was going pretty slowly andI only managed to get through one essay, and even at that I got skunked on an asterism she called the Toadstool in Delphinus. Have any of you observed that asterism before?
‘The Arrow and the Dolphin’ was the article I was working with, and M71 in Sagitta was my first target. It’s a globular cluster, and with an 11mm ES 82 eyepiece (a birthday present from my wife) appeared a bit oval with a dark lane running across the northern edge. A string of brighter stars ran North to South. Next was Harvard 20 which is a very sparse open cluster near M71. Two magnitude 9 stars helped me identify the field and I saw maybe 10 other dim members. Not a memorable observation. Next was the double star Gamma Delphinus, an easy split of two white stars. I’m discovering my sense of colors in stars rarely matches those given in catalogs and other observers’ reports. It must be my aging eyes. Struve 2725 was another small pair of stars, easily split at 52x. I saw a yellow primary and a pale blue secondary. Sue French saw a yellow-orange pair. The last multiple star of the night was Struve 2703. This is a triple star system that makes the shape of a skinny triangle. They were yellow, blue and white to my eyes. The last object was the Toadstool, and I couldn’t pick this asterism out, even though I’m sure I was in the right area. You win some, you lose some.
I decided to take a break and sat in a chair and took out a planisphere. I’ve observed objects in all the northern constellations, but I have a terrible memory of the shape of some of the dimmer autumn constellations, or how far some of them meander across the sky. This was a good time to eat a snack and drink some tea and just enjoy the night sky and identify constellations.
I was planning on starting a new article, but discovered the areas I was interested in were straight up, or half the constellation was behind the big oak tree at the southern end of the lot. I did observe M30 in Lacerta, a small globular cluster with streams of stars radiating out of the southern end. The core was brighter, but unresolved at 116x.
While taking my break and looking at the planisphere I saw that Sculptor was up, so I slewed over to NGC 253, affectionately called the Sculptor galaxy. What a treat! I haven’t observed this galaxy in a long time. In the 8” SCT the field of view was almost full with this elongated galaxy and its’ central bulge. I thought I detected some slight mottling throughout.
I had the small refractor set up, but didn’t really use it much. I did take a peek at the Pleiades with a 35 Panoptic, and took a gander at Mirfak and it’s beautiful environs for a few minutes.
To end my observing session I pulled out my Orion bino-viewer and a pair of 15mm plossls to ogle Saturn. Seeing wasn’t rock solid, but there were long moments where the image settled, and I enjoyed great views of this magnificent planet. I noticed three of its’ moons, which I think were Rhea, Hyperion and Tethys.
I had planned to make this a short night, so I started packing up at 11. It took 20 minutes to get everything back in the car. There was only one other astronomer in the lot, but he was taking Astro photos and I think he was napping in his car when I was ready to leave. I called out a couple of times to let him know I was about to turn on headlights and leave, but I couldn’t rouse him, and I didn’t want to bang on his car.
The dive home was nice, and I saw a skunk (not dead) in the middle of the road, and an owl sitting on a post as I drove down the mountain into Morgan Hill.
A somewhat short session, but lots of fun nonetheless, and I’ll bring fewer toys next time.
Muriel Dulieu
On Oct 19, 2025, at 7:48 PM, 'Richard Navarrete' via The Astronomy Connection (TAC) <sf-ba...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Tales from an overly ambitious amateur astronomer.
I brought too much gear to Henry Coe on Friday, October 17, 2025. I was excited to try and photograph two comets, as well as do some observing with a new-to-me 8” Celestron SCT on an SE mount. So I had an eq mount for a camera and an 80mm refractor, a tripod for both a camera and a pair of 20x70 binoculars, and the SCT. I set up the gear starting around 6:00 and had the eq polar aligned as soon as Polaris was visible. I took some test shots in the area of Ursa Major and Canis Venatici where Comet Lemmon was supposed be. A small fuzzball showed up and I started taking photos, but I could not get the intervalometer to work, so I had to manually push the shutter every 30 seconds. I put the binos on the tripod and saw the comet basically as a fuzzball with a very short tail. Nothing like the photos I had been seeing on the internet. I then put another camera on the tripod and started taking 10 second exposures in the direction of M16 and M17 where Comet Swan was supposed to be hanging out. In the end, I got an OK image of Comet Lemmon, but it was too wide field and the tail wasn’t very prominent. I think I saw Swan in the binos, there was a faint bloated star in the right area, but again, the camera lens I was using was too wide angle and Comet Swan didn’t show up in the photos.
<Comet Lemmon done (1 of 1).jpg>
I switched gear around and put an AT80ED refractor on the eq mount, and went about aligning the SE8. I’ve been practicing setup in my backyard so it only took a few minutes to get things aligned and ready for observing. I continued working through the essays in ’Celestial Sampler’ by Sue French, but for some reason I was going pretty slowly andI only managed to get through one essay, and even at that I got skunked on an asterism she called the Toadstool in Delphinus. Have any of you observed that asterism before?
‘The Arrow and the Dolphin’ was the article I was working with, and M71 in Sagitta was my first target. It’s a globular cluster, and with an 11mm ES 82 eyepiece (a birthday present from my wife) appeared a bit oval with a dark lane running across the northern edge. A string of brighter stars ran North to South. Next was Harvard 20 which is a very sparse open cluster near M71. Two magnitude 9 stars helped me identify the field and I saw maybe 10 other dim members. Not a memorable observation. Next was the double star Gamma Delphinus, an easy split of two white stars. I’m discovering my sense of colors in stars rarely matches those given in catalogs and other observers’ reports. It must be my aging eyes. Struve 2725 was another small pair of stars, easily split at 52x. I saw a yellow primary and a pale blue secondary. Sue French saw a yellow-orange pair. The last multiple star of the night was Struve 2703. This is a triple star system that makes the shape of a skinny triangle. They were yellow, blue and white to my eyes. The last object was the Toadstool, and I couldn’t pick this asterism out, even though I’m sure I was in the right area. You win some, you lose some.
I decided to take a break and sat in a chair and took out a planisphere. I’ve observed objects in all the northern constellations, but I have a terrible memory of the shape of some of the dimmer autumn constellations, or how far some of them meander across the sky. This was a good time to eat a snack and drink some tea and just enjoy the night sky and identify constellations.
I was planning on starting a new article, but discovered the areas I was interested in were straight up, or half the constellation was behind the big oak tree at the southern end of the lot. I did observe M30 in Lacerta, a small globular cluster with streams of stars radiating out of the southern end. The core was brighter, but unresolved at 116x.
While taking my break and looking at the planisphere I saw that Sculptor was up, so I slewed over to NGC 253, affectionately called the Sculptor galaxy. What a treat! I haven’t observed this galaxy in a long time. In the 8” SCT the field of view was almost full with this elongated galaxy and its’ central bulge. I thought I detected some slight mottling throughout.
I had the small refractor set up, but didn’t really use it much. I did take a peek at the Pleiades with a 35 Panoptic, and took a gander at Mirfak and it’s beautiful environs for a few minutes.
To end my observing session I pulled out my Orion bino-viewer and a pair of 15mm plossls to ogle Saturn. Seeing wasn’t rock solid, but there were long moments where the image settled, and I enjoyed great views of this magnificent planet. I noticed three of its’ moons, which I think were Rhea, Hyperion and Tethys.
I had planned to make this a short night, so I started packing up at 11. It took 20 minutes to get everything back in the car. There was only one other astronomer in the lot, but he was taking Astro photos and I think he was napping in his car when I was ready to leave. I called out a couple of times to let him know I was about to turn on headlights and leave, but I couldn’t rouse him, and I didn’t want to bang on his car.
The dive home was nice, and I saw a skunk (not dead) in the middle of the road, and an owl sitting on a post as I drove down the mountain into Morgan Hill.
A somewhat short session, but lots of fun nonetheless, and I’ll bring fewer toys next time.
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<Comet Lemmon done (1 of 1).jpg>
