OR: A great night that could've started better

[Akarsh Simha]

For once, I was only 15 minutes late in leaving home. I'd packed and prepared everything in advance, and laid out everything that needed to get into the truck in the morning in our hallway. Mom was going to make me brunch and dinner. The forecast was looking great except for some smoke. I was going to join Tanveer and Shashi and head out to an observing site I'd never been to before. My mom was going to join with a newfound friend Jan, a beginner in astronomy. Our drive was impeded by unexpected traffic on 101 delaying our ETA at the site to 7 PM instead of the anticipated 6 PM. I was still going to set up in the daylight, right?

Arriving at the location, various factors took me on an emotional roller coaster making me anxious, and then absolutely irate and visibly annoyed. I apologize if I pulled my fellow TACos' mood down a bit through this mess. All of this set me back by an hour; so yes I was setting up in the fading twilight. Shashi and Tanveer helped me wrangle the unwieldy rocker box and mirror box and we had the lower assembly done. Still not in the right frame of mind, I slowly put together the rest of the telescope holding a red flashlight in my mouth. I also managed to set up the upper tube assembly by myself—something I had not done before and wanted to practice.

Phew, 9 PM, astronomical twilight is fading and my telescope is all set up. I remove the primary mirror cover and start undoing the secondary mirror cover and the velvet bag feels heavier than usual. Oops. I knew the secondary must have fallen out of its holder. How did it happen? I had no clue! This was the second time the scope was set up, so I anticipated trouble of some form—but I should've been crazy to expect this!

The secondary was my primary concern

The velvet bag had protected the secondary and there was only minor damage to the exceptional flat (I have a Zygo test)—it had chipped a bit in a rim region without much consequence (as far as I know). Not knowing what the cause might be, I checked if some of my experienced friends were awake. It's nice to have LTE on the field. Randy and Jimi helped me navigate the issue, saying there was probably nothing wrong with the holder. I was initially confused as the mirror seemed very floppy in its holder. Tanveer, Randy and I figured out why—the foam backing the secondary had collapsed and had to be refluffed. Once we did that, the secondary sat properly; it would have anyway done that under gravity even if we hadn't. Then what caused the secondary to fall out? Still a mystery, but I have an idea—it's the bumpy ride in the bed of my truck that made the mirror momentarily fly up several times, and it finally found its way out of its prison. I'm inviting your ideas (DM me) so I can ensure it never happens again.

Anyway, all that was left was to tighten the secondary holder, but I was wiped out by my emotional roller-coaster that I just sat there staring at the problem not having the energy to do anything about it. Tanveer and Shashi's timely support in restoring the secondary and seeing it all fall (not literally) in place kicked up my spirits. I rapidly became convinced that there was nothing fundamentally gone wrong with the secondary holder, and the result was some bad impact. By 11 PM I was collimating, and by 11:20 PM the scope was operational! The fun could finally begin! I really thought I'd be packing up and going home, but here I was, observing!

All this while the skies were excellent, perhaps a good Bortle 3. I may call it a Bortle 2 if not for the smoke extinction—it was dark, but the milky way looked washed out. There were hardly any light domes visible distinctly to my eyes! The 2 imagers (Tanveer, Shashi) and 2 visual astronomers (Peter K, myself) had set up a healthy distance apart to prevent light interference. Since we had beginners (I was expecting more) and imager friends, I planned a lot of bright and popular targets until 2 AM, including many that I had never seen through this sort of aperture before. We started out with M 51 which was mighty low by the time we started. Still, the view was great, perhaps on par with my 18" on a good night when it was high up. We then looked at M 13, which I felt compelled to describe in my notes despite having seen many times—"Absolutely mindblowing! Slightly elongated fuzzball full of stars! Very bright." I missed one object on my list, Mrk 273, due to the late start.

We then went on to M 17, which was impressive, but Peter suggested that I pop in a UHC filter—for some bizarre reason I had thought it might not help all that much—but the results were mindblowing! That was an absolutely jaw-dropping view of the swan nebula, bursting with textured threads of nebulosity, completely filling the ½° FOV. The "loop" seen in Howard's sketch of the nebula was plainly visible.

Next up was M 16, which was easy to find thanks to the 9×50 finder scope. I placed it in view (with UHC) and two dark regions jumped out to me. One was the main dark region, but the other was the pillars of creation region. At 200x, the middle pillar was visible to direct vision. Both the dark pillars were easily held to averted vision. The low-contrast northeasternmost pillar required some more work to pull out. It started with a dark base and ran to the north-east of a bright star. The region of nebulosity around the star as well as at the tip (northwest) of the pillar were brighter. Wow! My mom went up to the eyepiece and easily saw two of the pillars, describing their orientation correctly. Granted, I have hardly looked at the Eagle Nebula and studied the pillars—but I remember I had to work much harder to ferret them out in my 18". Aperture is cheating. Maybe not as much as the tube, but it still is.

M 57 was very bright; I could not easily see a central star, perhaps due to the UHC filter. Saturn appeared pretty good, but would not hold over ~300x due to its low elevation. We picked up on perhaps 3–4 moons. I picked up a color variation on Saturn's disk that I had not noticed before (it's because I never look at the planets, not because it was hard).

Then I tried to find NGC 6537, the Red Spider nebula. I hate star-hopping, even more so in the Milky Way. I located what I thought was the field of the object. At this point it was mighty low with an airmass of 3.2 on a smoky night, but an NGC planetary should be easy with a 28", I thought. But all I saw at 280x was a stellar point with a very faint asymmetric glow around it that appeared to stream eastwards from the star. A nearby asterism caught my eye repeatedly. I cannot understand what I saw or why this object was so challenging. The point appeared stellar even at 280x. I have to revisit this under better conditions.

We looked at M 31 next, where I reconfirmed the inclined core region. At GSSP, Komal and I noticed in my telescope that M 31 has a core region that was inclined about 15° to the main disk of the galaxy. I posted on a telescope makers' group about this and learned that it might be the bar of M 31. Huh. In the view last night through a ~25' FOV, the core was oriented 11:30-5:30 clock position, whereas the dark lane and therefore the disk of the galaxy ran vertically up-down. Tanveer who was viewing with me said that imagers see it in their short exposure images. M 31's dust lanes were thick and raggedy. NGC 206 appeared as an elongated brightening in the arms of M 31 curving along with the arms. A few faint stars were sprinkled on the textured nebulosity. I also noticed that the core of M 31 affected one's night vision. M 33 appeared as an S-shaped object studded with nebulosity all over it, we did not study it deeply.

Inchworm cluster NGC 6910, one of Tanveer's suggestions, appeared as two bright stars with a meandering chain of faint stars connecting them. The Double-Double (eps Lyrae), was a clean split in a 4.5mm Morpheus eyepiece (632x). The tighter pairs were almost "touching", but definitely split. Crescent Nebula filled the ~25' FOV and showed a lot of scattered pieces of bright nebulosity apart from the main crescent + cross-arm filaments.

Tanveer on the ladder, probably looking in the Cyngus milky way area

Sh2-136, a fairly small reflection nebula that Tanveer recommended, appeared as a star with a weak elongated halo running roughly north-south, about 3' in length to my averted vision. The nebulosity appeared weakly curved, concave NNW towards the bright double star. Nearby Iris Nebula, NGC 7023, was very structured and reminiscent of a barred spiral galaxy with lots of mottling.

Dracula's Chivito, a newly (Feb 2024) discovered protoplanetary disk was brought to my attention by Jimi Lowrey, who posted his observation on DSF. In my finder eyepiece at 145x, the object already looked like a fuzzy star. Going crazy on it with a 4.5 Morpheus giving 650x, it appeared like an elongated fuzzy spot with an elongation at between -15° or -30° position angle east of north, i.e. NNW-SSE. On about three occasions, I may have sensed a "split" in that same direction of its elongation, as though it was a tight double star, but it was so weak I can't be sure—moreover I can't corroborate this with images. A faint star was seen to about 90° PA, i.e. due east. Peter K also confirmed its diffuse nature looking through my scope. Hand-tracking at 67° declination was not bad even at this high power. I wish I had carried my 3.5mm Pentax.

Dracula's Chivito, image from the Feb 2024 discovery paper

Eastern Veil NGC 6992 was next on my list. I wanted to see the filamentous structure of this part, and it was jaw dropping. I remember the first time I saw this segment about 12 years ago through John Tatarchuk's 25", and it was about the same. I likened what I saw to the "skin of a pineapple"

Shk 331 Alvin has seen three members in a 22", but despite my best efforts I could only nail down two clumps. At 485x, PGC 96862 was the brightest (clumped with unresolved companion) and PGC 96865 was the second. No other galaxies were concretely detected.

VV 738 was one of my best objects from the night! I'll post the new stuff we've added to Adventures in Deep Space in a separate thread at an appropriate juncture, but one of the big new ones is the DSF OOTW by constellation a really handy way to find curated challenging observing targets, as a thumb rule generally targeted at an 18" or smaller. I was rummaging through Pegasus and Andromeda when I found this thread. Wow! What an object! I most certainly wanted to see it. I must've spent about half an hour finding, observing and sketching it. I was able to pick up on both tidal tails at 291x, and also two nuclei of the merging galaxies. The object was very easy to re-acquire because of the blazingly bright 6.5mag star nearby, which helped me go to my log and find it in the eyepiece again. My 28" is fully manual—no go-to, no plate-solving, no tracking as of now :-(.

VV 738 from the Legacy Survey.
PSA: Prolonged looking at the Legacy Survey may cause you to quit the hobby out of disappointment.

I came to IC 18 here for the tidal tail. It was tough. I would've thought it a figment of my imagination if I hadn't nailed down its exact orientation knowing only the rough orientation. I "hallucinated" at least 5–6 tidal tail orientations on both IC 19 (its neighbor, which I first mistook to be IC 18) and on IC 18; Mel Bartels is right that there is a different "character" to real light compared to confirmation bias. I'm yet to internalize this difference so I can know in the field automatically, so I instead gave myself only one chance to call out the orientation correctly. I tried to "see" tidal tails in many different orientations, but kept going back to one particular direction. When I was sufficiently satisfied, I went to the DSS image and I was amazed to have nailed down the exact orientation! That's how I confirmed this tough nut. This was using 291x. I would expect this to be a lot easier under the right conditions in a 28".

By now, it was almost breaking day, but I wanted to "shove in" one more object. I fought astronomical twilight to make this sketch of the Propeller Galaxy, NGC 7479. Too bad I could not study it to my satisfaction because of the brightening background. Within the propeller, I noticed two brightenings—combined glow of HK 45 and its neighbor, and HK 36 (I think). I was using 290x and 485x with 485x being better for detail. Image is POSSII.

 

With astronomical twilight getting me before I could try to study the faint arms, I figured it was time to quit. As I tore down, I decided to use the opportunity to make some measurements on the telescope in working towards making it a one-person operation. Then I slowly packed my stuff around by when Tanveer and Shashi were awake; so I got their help to lift the mirror and rocker back into the truck—it's much harder at the end of a long night than before starting! Shashi and I drove out together, with Shashi in my mirror almost all the way to Gilroy, reassuring me that my tired roof rigging was being watched and I'd get a call if something got loose!

Early morning engineering, taking some measurements

I came home, showered, and looked at myself in the mirror—my muscles were pumped up stiff as if I'd just returned from a rigorous gym regimen. I'm sure these health benefits of astronomy are negated by the downsides of staying up through the night.

Clear Skies,

Akarsh

PS: I owe the success of this session to Tanveer and Shashi who helped me get the scope fixed up and running last night.

[Vishal Kasliwal]

The red spider is a deceptive little planetary. I recall spending a couple of hours chasing it down. The culprit was Sky Tools 4 - it recommend using low power, which is absolutely not what you want to do with this small planetary. Being an absolute noob when it comes to using electronics in the field, I took Sky Tools at it's word and went over the field again and again with a fine tooth comb, or planetary comb in this case. This planetary is so small that even with the OIII, I could not identify the spider until I broke out the NGC field guide to absolutely identify the star field. I did see it after boosting magnification considerably - I think I was at ~400x but I can check my notes. It vaguely looks spidery, but I think a better reason for calling it the red spider is that there is another infamous (non-insect) spider - the White Spider - which proved to be a huge challenge before it was finally conquered... 

Vishal

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[Akarsh Simha]

On Sun, Aug 4, 2024 at 9:37 PM Vishal Kasliwal <vishal....@gmail.com> wrote:

The red spider is a deceptive little planetary. I recall spending a couple of hours chasing it down. The culprit was Sky Tools 4 - it recommend using low power, which is absolutely not what you want to do with this small planetary. Being an absolute noob when it comes to using electronics in the field, I took Sky Tools at it's word and went over the field again and again with a fine tooth comb, or planetary comb in this case. This planetary is so small that even with the OIII, I could not identify the spider until I broke out the NGC field guide to absolutely identify the star field. I did see it after boosting magnification considerably - I think I was at ~400x but I can check my notes. It vaguely looks spidery, but I think a better reason for calling it the red spider is that there is another infamous (non-insect) spider - the White Spider - which proved to be a huge challenge before it was finally conquered... 

Vishal

Thanks to your above reply, I think I'm beginning to get a picture. This is what you see on the POSSII:

But being extremely red, the "legs" of the spider are basically visually invisible. The Astronomy Magazine blurb also asserts that—"for most, it may look like a disk with irregular edges". But I also looked at Gottlieb's notes here, "at 225x; very small disc with a warm or ruddy color.  Excellent view at 375x; very small, slightly elongated, ~6" diameter.  The disc has a very high surface brightness and appears to be surrounded by a very faint thin shell."

Perhaps I saw hints of one of the faint legs of the spider, but I did not pay enough attention/tack on enough power to see the tiny body? I would've thunk that something 6 arcsec should show well at 295x; perhaps the stars were so bloated down there due to airmass 3.2 that it was all washed out and appeared like the other stars.

I did not try more power because I looked at the DSS2 image and said "Oh, about 300x should be the right scale to view this at" but little did I know that the legs aren't what got it into the NGC.

Regards

Akarsh

 

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[Akarsh Simha]

I just found out that the Red Spider was a DSF OOTW, link here. So we have two big dob reports, one from Jimi Lowrey who was able to see the faint legs in his 48" (jealous!) and another from Uwe Glahn who seems to have marked an asymmetric faint feature around a ring. The orientation and nature of the faint feature in his sketch roughly matches what I saw, although I said the halo streams "eastward" and not "south east". Trying to reconstruct the orientation in the field from memory, I think Uwe and I may be talking about the same thing. Of course, I couldn't even tell the bright disk from a star, let alone see a ring.

Regards

Akarsh

[Vishal Kasliwal]

The funny thing is that the Red Spider looks almost exactly like its more infamous cousin, the White Spider...

On Sun, Aug 4, 2024 at 9:48 PM Akarsh Simha <akars...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Akarsh Simha]

I wanted to include this in my OR, but forgot:

I quote this snippet out of Michael Bakich's article in Astronomy Magazine here:

"Advanced observers regard observing faint galaxies as a challenge. I know one amateur who progressed from an 8-inch telescope to a 12-inch, then to a 16-inch and, as I write this, now a 24-inch scope. With each new telescope, the galaxies he observed became fainter and fainter, always just at the limit of what the telescope would reveal.

This type of compulsive, competitive observing may not be for you. That’s OK. Lots of galaxies out there are relatively bright."

I was like "oops, he got me." But one does not put up with the frustration of hauling a 300lb telescope and set it up with two other friends to see the same stuff that you've already looked at in smaller aperture, right? To me, the bright objects do "get old"—what the bigger telescope has opened up for me is a vast treasure trove of galaxies with incredible amount of detail that can be ferreted out with patience. It's the fresh stuff that is the lidocaine patch to the pains of the huge dob. I'm so impressed with the view of the tidal tails of VV 738, I simply don't think my 18-inch could have done that. The pillars in M16, sure. The loop of M17, yes. NGC 7023, of course. M31's dust lane, yeah. But the tidal tails of IC 18 and VV 738, almost surely not. I dream that I'm wrong, for I'd settle for transporting the 18" any day over this obnoxious telescope.

Regards
Akarsh

[Ted Hauter]

Akarsh this is well said and resourced man.

I'd like to add that I suffer from an untold problem at the bright faint targets. I get all I get at a first glance/viewing. The more I look the more it goes away. Conversely, as I sit and stare and wander, will the ultra faint reveal itself? Surely with time. But we need to add lots time. Many many years at the glass.

These grand jewel articles that come at us time to time rarely mention what's really needed to complete the job: Insane dark adaption/prior readiness, in the form of no bright light time on the eyes for hours before even days! Foods, hydration, elevation adaptation of unavailable extra time.

To study the objects on the crosshairs of commitment.  To know them so can then be revealed to the eye from the brain.

These articles are like giving everyone a 7 inch Mak. Here, a big lens over most refractors to contrast your target, finally, nearly unhindered. But you can't have an inch more... and if you try you'll be puni$hed severely. And try to find one.

That said. It's a magical article. Pure observation food for our souls.

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[Akarsh Simha]

On Mon, Aug 5, 2024 at 11:47 PM Ted Hauter <thgo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Akarsh this is well said and resourced man.

I'd like to add that I suffer from an untold problem at the bright faint targets. I get all I get at a first glance/viewing. The more I look the more it goes away. Conversely, as I sit and stare and wander, will the ultra faint reveal itself? Surely with time. But we need to add lots time. Many many years at the glass.

These grand jewel articles that come at us time to time rarely mention what's really needed to complete the job: Insane dark adaption/prior readiness, in the form of no bright light time on the eyes for hours before even days! Foods, hydration, elevation adaptation of unavailable extra time.

To study the objects on the crosshairs of commitment.  To know them so can then be revealed to the eye from the brain.

These articles are like giving everyone a 7 inch Mak. Here, a big lens over most refractors to contrast your target, finally, nearly unhindered. But you can't have an inch more... and if you try you'll be puni$hed severely. And try to find one.

That said. It's a magical article. Pure observation food for our souls.

This is a great point—I know Howard strives to mention in his articles in S&T from time-to-time about how conditions and transparency play a great role. Steve did the same in his Milky Way and the Seven Dwarfs article. I have a feeling the reason these various factors aren't mentioned a lot are because they are amorphous—there's no way to quantify their importance. With aperture, it's simple—there's one number that you can use. Larger, the better (typically). Yes, we have Bortle, but it's such a vague scale. Yes we have SQM, but I've seen excellent nights where SQM readings are 21.5, probably due to airglow. There doesn't seem to be a clear quantitative measure of transparency as far as I know. There's the Pickering scale for seeing. But what about hydration? Observer experience? I have no clue.

Mel Bartels has a very good list on his website, I can't exactly find it, but found this instead:

http://bbastrodesigns.com/NewtDesigner.html#visualHowFaint

 

Regards

Akarsh

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[Jonathan Lawton]

It drives me wild there's no quantitative measurement of transparency available.  It seems to me it should be relatively straightforward to use photometry to make relative measurements.  I'm not sure what technique would be best for calibrating absolute measurements, but I have a few ideas.  The problem is I can add things to my todo list much faster than I can remove them.

Jonathan

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[Ted Hauter]

It is my understanding that there has been established a 1-5 scale that is based on how clear the sky is at the horizon, zenith, and around the sun and moon that is strictly visual cues. 

1. Poor sky, not cloudy or clouded over necessarily but a complete haze and moisture is near 100% Con trails are horizon to horizon. Horizon invisible. Sun and moon in thick haze. Total junk. Smoke and dust and pollution included. Night sky appears white.

2. Less of that. No detail near horizon. 

3. Less of that. Contrails are long to medium in length. Moon has haze around it several moon diameters. Sun same diameters. Horizon better to not bad. 

4. Very nice. A vast improvement. Contrails short. Haze around sun and moon only a few diameters to one diameter only. Horizon clear to sharp. To beginners a near perfect sky they have never noticed before. Amateurs drop everything to go have a look-see. Somewhat rare. Night sky appears black. 

5. Very rare. Deep dark blue sky low to horizon. No visible haze. Horizon reveals detail never seen before. No con trails. Moon sharp as outer space. Sun deep blue surrounding it. Night time sky is BLACK. Magnitude visibility reveals new stars. This is awesome!!!

 

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[Richard Ozer]

A dab of RTV to hold the back of the mirror to the foam, and a dab to hold the foam to the secondary holder's bottom would probably do the trick.  I hate glue of any type, but a good secondary is a terrible thing to waste.

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[Steve Gottlieb]

I made another observation of the Red Spider in my 14.5” just from Lake Sonoma last year (I need to update my notes on Adventures in Deep Space) and like before, the non-stellar nature showed up at fairly modest power — but no structure with this aperture.

"Easily identified at 66x (straight-forward to match up field stars with chart) including mag 7.1 HD 165202 7' to the NE and a mag 11.6 star 1.5' WNW. A rhombus with sides ~2.5' and mag 11-12 stars is centered 7' NW.  At 122x, the PN displays an excellent contrast gain blinking with a UHC filter and seemed slightly non-stellar ("soft"). Increasing to 264x resolved an obvious 5" to 6" disc, which was prominent at 395x.”

By the way, I didn’t notice the tails in VV 738 in my 24” back in 2016 — and this was from Grandview — so I’m jealous of your observation!

Steve

On Aug 4, 2024, at 9:53 PM, Akarsh Simha <akars...@gmail.com> wrote:

I just found out that the Red Spider was a DSF OOTW, link here. So we have two big dob reports, one from Jimi Lowrey who was able to see the faint legs in his 48" (jealous!) and another from Uwe Glahn who seems to have marked an asymmetric faint feature around a ring. The orientation and nature of the faint feature in his sketch roughly matches what I saw, although I said the halo streams "eastward" and not "south east". Trying to reconstruct the orientation in the field from memory, I think Uwe and I may be talking about the same thing. Of course, I couldn't even tell the bright disk from a star, let alone see a ring.

Regards
Akarsh


On Sun, Aug 4, 2024 at 9:48 PM Akarsh Simha <akars...@gmail.com> wrote:


On Sun, Aug 4, 2024 at 9:37 PM Vishal Kasliwal <vishal....@gmail.com> wrote:
The red spider is a deceptive little planetary. I recall spending a couple of hours chasing it down. The culprit was Sky Tools 4 - it recommend using low power, which is absolutely not what you want to do with this small planetary. Being an absolute noob when it comes to using electronics in the field, I took Sky Tools at it's word and went over the field again and again with a fine tooth comb, or planetary comb in this case. This planetary is so small that even with the OIII, I could not identify the spider until I broke out the NGC field guide to absolutely identify the star field. I did see it after boosting magnification considerably - I think I was at ~400x but I can check my notes. It vaguely looks spidery, but I think a better reason for calling it the red spider is that there is another infamous (non-insect) spider - the White Spider - which proved to be a huge challenge before it was finally conquered... 

Vishal

Thanks to your above reply, I think I'm beginning to get a picture. This is what you see on the POSSII:

<image.png>
But being extremely red, the "legs" of the spider are basically visually invisible. The Astronomy Magazine blurb also asserts that—"for most, it may look like a disk with irregular edges". But I also looked at Gottlieb's notes here, "at 225x; very small disc with a warm or ruddy color.  Excellent view at 375x; very small, slightly elongated, ~6" diameter.  The disc has a very high surface brightness and appears to be surrounded by a very faint thin shell."

Perhaps I saw hints of one of the faint legs of the spider, but I did not pay enough attention/tack on enough power to see the tiny body? I would've thunk that something 6 arcsec should show well at 295x; perhaps the stars were so bloated down there due to airmass 3.2 that it was all washed out and appeared like the other stars.

I did not try more power because I looked at the DSS2 image and said "Oh, about 300x should be the right scale to view this at" but little did I know that the legs aren't what got it into the NGC.

Regards
Akarsh

 

On Sun, Aug 4, 2024, 21:15 Akarsh Simha <akars...@gmail.com> wrote:
For once, I was only 15 minutes late in leaving home. I'd packed and prepared everything in advance, and laid out everything that needed to get into the truck in the morning in our hallway. Mom was going to make me brunch and dinner. The forecast was looking great except for some smoke. I was going to join Tanveer and Shashi and head out to an observing site I'd never been to before. My mom was going to join with a newfound friend Jan, a beginner in astronomy. Our drive was impeded by unexpected traffic on 101 delaying our ETA at the site to 7 PM instead of the anticipated 6 PM. I was still going to set up in the daylight, right?

Arriving at the location, various factors took me on an emotional roller coaster making me anxious, and then absolutely irate and visibly annoyed. I apologize if I pulled my fellow TACos' mood down a bit through this mess. All of this set me back by an hour; so yes I was setting up in the fading twilight. Shashi and Tanveer helped me wrangle the unwieldy rocker box and mirror box and we had the lower assembly done. Still not in the right frame of mind, I slowly put together the rest of the telescope holding a red flashlight in my mouth. I also managed to set up the upper tube assembly by myself—something I had not done before and wanted to practice.

Phew, 9 PM, astronomical twilight is fading and my telescope is all set up. I remove the primary mirror cover and start undoing the secondary mirror cover and the velvet bag feels heavier than usual. Oops. I knew the secondary must have fallen out of its holder. How did it happen? I had no clue! This was the second time the scope was set up, so I anticipated trouble of some form—but I should've been crazy to expect this!

<image.png>
The secondary was my primary concern

The velvet bag had protected the secondary and there was only minor damage to the exceptional flat (I have a Zygo test)—it had chipped a bit in a rim region without much consequence (as far as I know). Not knowing what the cause might be, I checked if some of my experienced friends were awake. It's nice to have LTE on the field. Randy and Jimi helped me navigate the issue, saying there was probably nothing wrong with the holder. I was initially confused as the mirror seemed very floppy in its holder. Tanveer, Randy and I figured out why—the foam backing the secondary had collapsed and had to be refluffed. Once we did that, the secondary sat properly; it would have anyway done that under gravity even if we hadn't. Then what caused the secondary to fall out? Still a mystery, but I have an idea—it's the bumpy ride in the bed of my truck that made the mirror momentarily fly up several times, and it finally found its way out of its prison. I'm inviting your ideas (DM me) so I can ensure it never happens again.

Anyway, all that was left was to tighten the secondary holder, but I was wiped out by my emotional roller-coaster that I just sat there staring at the problem not having the energy to do anything about it. Tanveer and Shashi's timely support in restoring the secondary and seeing it all fall (not literally) in place kicked up my spirits. I rapidly became convinced that there was nothing fundamentally gone wrong with the secondary holder, and the result was some bad impact. By 11 PM I was collimating, and by 11:20 PM the scope was operational! The fun could finally begin! I really thought I'd be packing up and going home, but here I was, observing!

All this while the skies were excellent, perhaps a good Bortle 3. I may call it a Bortle 2 if not for the smoke extinction—it was dark, but the milky way looked washed out. There were hardly any light domes visible distinctly to my eyes! The 2 imagers (Tanveer, Shashi) and 2 visual astronomers (Peter K, myself) had set up a healthy distance apart to prevent light interference. Since we had beginners (I was expecting more) and imager friends, I planned a lot of bright and popular targets until 2 AM, including many that I had never seen through this sort of aperture before. We started out with M 51 which was mighty low by the time we started. Still, the view was great, perhaps on par with my 18" on a good night when it was high up. We then looked at M 13, which I felt compelled to describe in my notes despite having seen many times—"Absolutely mindblowing! Slightly elongated fuzzball full of stars! Very bright." I missed one object on my list, Mrk 273, due to the late start.

We then went on to M 17, which was impressive, but Peter suggested that I pop in a UHC filter—for some bizarre reason I had thought it might not help all that much—but the results were mindblowing! That was an absolutely jaw-dropping view of the swan nebula, bursting with textured threads of nebulosity, completely filling the ½° FOV. The "loop" seen in Howard's sketch of the nebula was plainly visible.

Next up was M 16, which was easy to find thanks to the 9×50 finder scope. I placed it in view (with UHC) and two dark regions jumped out to me. One was the main dark region, but the other was the pillars of creation region. At 200x, the middle pillar was visible to direct vision. Both the dark pillars were easily held to averted vision. The low-contrast northeasternmost pillar required some more work to pull out. It started with a dark base and ran to the north-east of a bright star. The region of nebulosity around the star as well as at the tip (northwest) of the pillar were brighter. Wow! My mom went up to the eyepiece and easily saw two of the pillars, describing their orientation correctly. Granted, I have hardly looked at the Eagle Nebula and studied the pillars—but I remember I had to work much harder to ferret them out in my 18". Aperture is cheating. Maybe not as much as the tube, but it still is.

M 57 was very bright; I could not easily see a central star, perhaps due to the UHC filter. Saturn appeared pretty good, but would not hold over ~300x due to its low elevation. We picked up on perhaps 3–4 moons. I picked up a color variation on Saturn's disk that I had not noticed before (it's because I never look at the planets, not because it was hard).

Then I tried to find NGC 6537, the Red Spider nebula. I hate star-hopping, even more so in the Milky Way. I located what I thought was the field of the object. At this point it was mighty low with an airmass of 3.2 on a smoky night, but an NGC planetary should be easy with a 28", I thought. But all I saw at 280x was a stellar point with a very faint asymmetric glow around it that appeared to stream eastwards from the star. A nearby asterism caught my eye repeatedly. I cannot understand what I saw or why this object was so challenging. The point appeared stellar even at 280x. I have to revisit this under better conditions.

We looked at M 31 next, where I reconfirmed the inclined core region. At GSSP, Komal and I noticed in my telescope that M 31 has a core region that was inclined about 15° to the main disk of the galaxy. I posted on a telescope makers' group about this and learned that it might be the bar of M 31. Huh. In the view last night through a ~25' FOV, the core was oriented 11:30-5:30 clock position, whereas the dark lane and therefore the disk of the galaxy ran vertically up-down. Tanveer who was viewing with me said that imagers see it in their short exposure images. M 31's dust lanes were thick and raggedy. NGC 206 appeared as an elongated brightening in the arms of M 31 curving along with the arms. A few faint stars were sprinkled on the textured nebulosity. I also noticed that the core of M 31 affected one's night vision. M 33 appeared as an S-shaped object studded with nebulosity all over it, we did not study it deeply.

Inchworm cluster NGC 6910, one of Tanveer's suggestions, appeared as two bright stars with a meandering chain of faint stars connecting them. The Double-Double (eps Lyrae), was a clean split in a 4.5mm Morpheus eyepiece (632x). The tighter pairs were almost "touching", but definitely split. Crescent Nebula filled the ~25' FOV and showed a lot of scattered pieces of bright nebulosity apart from the main crescent + cross-arm filaments.

<Tanveer.jpg.jpeg>
Tanveer on the ladder, probably looking in the Cyngus milky way area

Sh2-136, a fairly small reflection nebula that Tanveer recommended, appeared as a star with a weak elongated halo running roughly north-south, about 3' in length to my averted vision. The nebulosity appeared weakly curved, concave NNW towards the bright double star. Nearby Iris Nebula, NGC 7023, was very structured and reminiscent of a barred spiral galaxy with lots of mottling.

Dracula's Chivito, a newly (Feb 2024) discovered protoplanetary disk was brought to my attention by Jimi Lowrey, who posted his observation on DSF. In my finder eyepiece at 145x, the object already looked like a fuzzy star. Going crazy on it with a 4.5 Morpheus giving 650x, it appeared like an elongated fuzzy spot with an elongation at between -15° or -30° position angle east of north, i.e. NNW-SSE. On about three occasions, I may have sensed a "split" in that same direction of its elongation, as though it was a tight double star, but it was so weak I can't be sure—moreover I can't corroborate this with images. A faint star was seen to about 90° PA, i.e. due east. Peter K also confirmed its diffuse nature looking through my scope. Hand-tracking at 67° declination was not bad even at this high power. I wish I had carried my 3.5mm Pentax.

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Dracula's Chivito, image from the Feb 2024 discovery paper

Eastern Veil NGC 6992 was next on my list. I wanted to see the filamentous structure of this part, and it was jaw dropping. I remember the first time I saw this segment about 12 years ago through John Tatarchuk's 25", and it was about the same. I likened what I saw to the "skin of a pineapple"

Shk 331 Alvin has seen three members in a 22", but despite my best efforts I could only nail down two clumps. At 485x, PGC 96862 was the brightest (clumped with unresolved companion) and PGC 96865 was the second. No other galaxies were concretely detected.

VV 738 was one of my best objects from the night! I'll post the new stuff we've added to Adventures in Deep Space in a separate thread at an appropriate juncture, but one of the big new ones is the DSF OOTW by constellation a really handy way to find curated challenging observing targets, as a thumb rule generally targeted at an 18" or smaller. I was rummaging through Pegasus and Andromeda when I found this thread. Wow! What an object! I most certainly wanted to see it. I must've spent about half an hour finding, observing and sketching it. I was able to pick up on both tidal tails at 291x, and also two nuclei of the merging galaxies. The object was very easy to re-acquire because of the blazingly bright 6.5mag star nearby, which helped me go to my log and find it in the eyepiece again. My 28" is fully manual—no go-to, no plate-solving, no tracking as of now :-(.

<image.png>
VV 738 from the Legacy Survey.
PSA: Prolonged looking at the Legacy Survey may cause you to quit the hobby out of disappointment.

I came to IC 18 here for the tidal tail. It was tough. I would've thought it a figment of my imagination if I hadn't nailed down its exact orientation knowing only the rough orientation. I "hallucinated" at least 5–6 tidal tail orientations on both IC 19 (its neighbor, which I first mistook to be IC 18) and on IC 18; Mel Bartels is right that there is a different "character" to real light compared to confirmation bias. I'm yet to internalize this difference so I can know in the field automatically, so I instead gave myself only one chance to call out the orientation correctly. I tried to "see" tidal tails in many different orientations, but kept going back to one particular direction. When I was sufficiently satisfied, I went to the DSS image and I was amazed to have nailed down the exact orientation! That's how I confirmed this tough nut. This was using 291x. I would expect this to be a lot easier under the right conditions in a 28".

By now, it was almost breaking day, but I wanted to "shove in" one more object. I fought astronomical twilight to make this sketch of the Propeller Galaxy, NGC 7479. Too bad I could not study it to my satisfaction because of the brightening background. Within the propeller, I noticed two brightenings—combined glow of HK 45 and its neighbor, and HK 36 (I think). I was using 290x and 485x with 485x being better for detail. Image is POSSII.

<NGC7479.jpg>  <NGC7479knots.png>

With astronomical twilight getting me before I could try to study the faint arms, I figured it was time to quit. As I tore down, I decided to use the opportunity to make some measurements on the telescope in working towards making it a one-person operation. Then I slowly packed my stuff around by when Tanveer and Shashi were awake; so I got their help to lift the mirror and rocker back into the truck—it's much harder at the end of a long night than before starting! Shashi and I drove out together, with Shashi in my mirror almost all the way to Gilroy, reassuring me that my tired roof rigging was being watched and I'd get a call if something got loose!

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[Akarsh Simha]

Steve I was waiting for your insights. Looks like I failed to see the disk of the planetary although I may have caught a hint of its outer halo. In any case, it warrants reobservation at s a lower airmass.  

As for the tails of VV738, they were pretty “bright” (still intermittent) in the 28” to the point where I would’ve suspected that they should be accessible in a 24” under good conditions. I imagined you’d have a 48” view though?

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[Ted Hauter]

Steve, Akarsh, 

Not to worry. I covered all of us this past weekend. Observed with Don Pensack and he had told me about an eyepiece to cover for one I cannot find that is 1/4 the price and it's just as good! This win in the eyepiece column keeps us over the top.

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[Tan usa1]

The Foam as a spring hack really surprised me. Why not use a real rubber spring kind of thing. Like bump stops of Automobiles, 

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[John Pierce]

My Obsession used a white synthetic cotton ball like stuff.  Very springy without exerting a lot of pressure....   I hauled that scope many 1000s of miles in the back of a very stiffly sprung F250 without a mishap

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[Akarsh Simha]

My Obsession used a white synthetic cotton ball like stuff.  Very springy without exerting a lot of pressure....   I hauled that scope many 1000s of miles in the back of a very stiffly sprung F250 without a mishap

The Foam as a spring hack really surprised me. Why not use a real rubber spring kind of thing. Like bump stops of Automobiles, 

The reason to use these "flimsy" materials rather than a real spring is to prevent point forces on the secondary mirror that could affect its figure. The secondary mirror in most cells (including my Obsession) is held by the lip of the rim of the secondary mirror holder, under gravity. However, Obsession has enough material behind the secondary (it sort of feels like synthetic sleeping bag filling) to prevent a bump in the ride to flop the secondary. Also most secondary mirrors are less heavy than a 5" diagonal, which means the springiness of the material compensates well for its inertia.

Obsession also has a safety (which another TACo DM'd me about) involving a string tied to an adhesive backed cable tie mounting base. The string doesn't yank the mirror but catches the secondary should it end up falling out for whatever reason.

My AstroSystems holder did not come with this, but that's okay.

Regards

Akarsh

 

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