OR Pinnacles 23 December

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

On Friday night, Christmas Eve Eve, there was fun to be had at the Pinnacles. 3 of us TACos were there, one of whom brought along 4 of his buddies. Conditions were very good, 6.2 limiting magnitude for me overhead, seeing 4/5 good, moving to excellent 5/5 around 8 pm. Excellent sky with serious stars. 

This is as much an outreach report as an observing report.

A father with his 2 teenage sons had come out at sunset to look at the sky, saw the crew of us, thought we were there to drink, and were about to move along. I pitched Saturn and they stopped. Those 3 stuck around for 3 hours, got a cook’s tour of the sky. Lots of Q&A. Bright people. They looked at 3 planets, 2 doubles, 3 bright OC’s, 1 galaxy. These folks live in Greenfield and like to go camping and nighttime sky gazing at Williams Hill, where I haven’t been and which Dwayne Maxwell and others have gone on about, here on the list. We’re gonna meet up there in the spring for barbecuing and telescope viewing.

After they left, I looked at some favorite things and had fun conversations with the other astroids. Aris and Komal, the TACos, I hadn’t met in person. Very genial fellas, as were Komal’s buddies. Komal and I spent the big chunk of the night showing his friends cool objects and answering smart questions.

Spent extra time on 40 Eridani, the triple star Gottlieb was looking at from Lake Sonoma. Marko hasn’t complained when I’ve evangelized this object shamelessly. It’s astounding, not for the visuals but for what you’re looking at. A regular K-type main sequence star (one of the few K-type stars we can see naked eye, it being only 16 lightyears from here), then a close pair of a white dwarf and a red dwarf. The white dwarf is far and away the easiest white dwarf to catch with our scopes.

What kills me is the timelines. It’s presumed they formed together. Here’s a main sequence star in the midst of its ca 8 billion year lifetime, then a star that must have been more massive and already run out of fuel, collapsed into a very hot cinder that’ll go along that way for a long time.

With the red dwarf, we have no idea what it’ll turn into when it uses up its fuel, the universe isn’t old enough. They’re very patient and go on for what Kaler calls “a seeming eternity.”

James Kaler has a fascinating description of 40 Eri on his Stars site - http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/keid.html

Around 8 pm, the seeing got very good to the east; 6 stars in Trapezium were sharp to direct vision at 180x. Fornax was well above the horizon, but it still wasn’t high enough for the Fornax Cluster to start showing up, except for the brightest couple of galaxies. Next month.

Aris was imaging IC 443, the Jellyfish Nebula, in Gemini. He was getting a fancy picture of the whole disk of this supernova remnant. I had forgotten that it’s not only a visual object but that I’ve seen it, 20 years ago from Dinosaur Point with Felix my 11”. Bob Czerwinski, Jeff Crilly and I were comparing observations - “SNR! Showed a strip @126x with OIII. Aperture mattered: Bob’s 12.5 showed more strip; Jeff’s 15 caught the E end with curves and curdling.”

For the record, when we post OI’s we can’t guarantee the conditions. It’s like what Dave Staples said about going to Lake Sonoma the same night - “I realize that weather is questionable …” but he was going anyway. What I can guarantee is that I’ll show up. Buddies will tell you since ’99 I’ve kept a 100% track record.

Wasn’t near as cold as expected, got into the mid 40’s, then finally around 40 by midnight. That was when the dew finally started to get assertive. It was still clear where we were at 2,000 ft. By 1 am, Berenice’s Hair was up, as was Puppis to the south. Spring is coming!

Dense fog over the whole valley on the way home and in Salinas. I’m so glad I went out.

[Akarsh Simha]

Wonderful OR. Komal also gave a short summary of his experience on a different group and mentioned meeting you and Aris. I now want to see 40 Eridani!

Regards

Akarsh

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[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

Thanks Akarsh. 40 Eri is easy to catch, that K-type star is way naked eye, eastern member of a pair of stars. It's also just north and east of epsilon Eridani, around which orbit not only the planet Vulcan but Babylon 5, depending on your universe.

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

About the Jellyfish Nebula, IC 443, the Chandra X-ray scope got an instructive image of this supernova remnant.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/what-spawned-the-jellyfish-nebula.html

Reason I'm putting it up, what Czerwinski, Crilly and I saw were parts of the bright northeastern arc. Aris' image was capturing the whole jellyfish body.

[Akarsh Simha]

This was one of the objects we wanted to point to during the star party here in India, but unfortunately we ran short of time. It’s a cool object and I ought to pay it a visit again.

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[Shashi Sathya]

Nice Report as usual Jamie...Just got back from India.  I am glad Komal et al got to meet you other TACOs.  He is also a Visual observer like you...Hopefully we all will meet more often in Pinnacles.

Hope to meet fellow TACOs in Jan' 23.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year in 2023 !

Clear Skies

Shashi.

[ma...@astrospotter.com]

Well not much to be impressed with but a great many years back I caught JellyFish and IC444 in a 'quick project' and have never posted this to my https://astrospotter.zenfolio.com/ site.

So for the fun of it, here is a 'quick' jellyfish back in my astrophotography phase.

Enjoy,  Marko

[Aris Pope]

I was very nice to meet you both Jamie and Komal. I haven't had time to edit but this is 3.5 hours of data I collected the first week of December. The editing doesn't take me anytime at all it's actually the processing. I collected some good data on the 23rd just need to process and add to this. HOO Pallet.

ARIS

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[Komal Bhardwaj]

Thanks a lot Jamie for initial OI on 23 Dec, I came because you were committed 100%. And secondly thanks to Aris for staying on till early morning which helped me also observe till 2AM on that night. It was good chatting with both of you. I am glad we did the observation on that night, because since then it has been nearly cloudy every night. 

My friend Hari and a bunch of his enthusiastic friends also came and definitely enjoyed the experience of looking through my 12.5" Dob, Jamie's 13" Dob. 

I practised star hopping to find Leo triplets, M53, M51, Beta Mono, M31, M33, M42, M81/82. It was not as productive session as it was with Akarsh back in July though :) I am still learning star hopping with my current 12.5" Dob, as my previous scope was a GoTo. In fact, after 2 years of observing nearly 100 objects across M / NGC / IC objects, I realised that I remember only 20% of objects and their corresponding constellations or type (Galaxy, Nebula, GC or OC etc). Maybe that's just me or GoTo spoiled me :) Now, I use a Rigel QF on my 12.5" Dob, but practically used it as a red dot finder. For star hopping to an object, I bring the nearest bright star in center of QF and look through pattern in low power EP to compare it with SkySafari view. This worked for most of the above objects that I observed on 23 Dec. Towards the end I tried star hopping to Comet C/2020 V2, but I wasn’t successful. Maybe because it was high mag (10), or because I was too tired and it became too cold as well.

Looking forward to the next one. 

Regards,

Komal

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

Komal, I forgot to mention your scope in the first place. That 12.5 Starmaster with the Zambuto mirror really is one of the alltime great telescopes. Jeff Blanchard still has his, since before '99 when I met him. It was fun comparing views.

[Komal Bhardwaj]

Agreed Jamie! Akarsh & Mark McCarthy helped me in finalising this purchase recently. It has shown great views till now, but I think I need to get better at collimation. Right now I do approx collimation using a laser collimator, but after reading a few advanced articles about collimation - I think I am not yet doing collimation perfectly. I am also yet to test out it's push to system & EQ tracking platform in the field. Lots to do in the upcoming observation nights. 

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

Collimation, like starhopping and several other observing skills, is like shooting marbles. Much better learned from another person than from an article.

[ma...@astrospotter.com]

As far as:    I am not yet doing collimation perfectly.

If you get there, you will be the first man of all astronomy to reach 'perfect' collimation

marko

[Aris Pope]

And Pinnacles I tried John's tip of using it 2X Barlow with my collimation laser. It made the laser dot super large. I ended up tossing the barlow aside and just doing it the normal way.

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[John Pierce]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2023, 9:02 PM Aris Pope <arispo...@gmail.com> wrote:

And Pinnacles I tried John's tip of using it 2X Barlow with my collimation laser. It made the laser dot super large. I ended up tossing the barlow aside and just doing it the normal way.

You have to first adjust the secondary mirror without the Barlow, so the laser is centered on your target on the primary...  Then with the Barlow, you should be able to see a shadow of the mirror donut in the reflection on the back of the collimator, adjust the primary mirror to center that reflection on the collimator target.  This works best if the beam only goes through the Barlow once, it's not so great with the Orion style collimator with the 45 degree screen window.

[Aris Pope]

That explains it, that was totally user error. I will try but I do have the Meade laser collimator with the 45° cut window. 

Aris

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[Alex]

The best approach to learning that simplified "barlowed laser" collimation technique (above) is to move the primary around back and forth as fast as you can when you are starting. That way you can comprehend the fuzzy shadow's size and shape, as it's passing through on the diagonal screen, much quicker, thanks to the brain's visual cortex "whole picture recomposition" function. As soon as you figure out how the brighter center of the particular mirror's donut shadow looks, finding and centering it next time becomes trivial without flexing the springs too much. This is the best "zero additional equipment" method for the final collimation. And as convenient for working from the mirror cell's end as the bare LC it's based upon. I don't even bother for the star test after that, unless planning planets at the very narrow FOV (i.e. at ~800x).

-Alex

[John Pierce]

I 3d printed this clone of a Glitter Blug for use with a truss dob...   The Barlow element was from a funk old Orion Barlow, this fits on the inside of the focuser tube, use a laser in the eyepiece holder.

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[Alex]

Aww! Very cool idea, John! Even though for a full OTA (vs truss) the construct may get quite long, the larger and sharper screen (before the Barlow) will be handy, esp. for a beginner. E.g.:

 

Dark Blue - the stock Orion-like 1.25" LC, Grey - 1.25" barlow, Light Blue - 2" 3D printed shadow screen enclosure.

-Alex

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