Lately I've been catching up with some reading.  The Messier Objects by Stephen James O'Meara is a comprehensive description of every object together with a finder chart, photograph, and in most cases, a sketch of what the author saw in his eyepiece.  The sketches are a little strange in that they appear to have been drawn under almost impossibly perfect conditions over a few nights each, so don't expect to see what the author saw.  This is particularly true with some of the drawings where he has "joined the dots" to come up with fanciful creations much as the ancients did.  For example M41 is drawn, I kid you not, as bat with spread wings about to take off from a branch.  On page 23 O'Meara makes a case for hyperventilating to improve seeing - whether this also helps to see the bats is left unanswered.

The descriptive text is very well done.  Where required O'Meara gives a potted viewing history of  an object, observation reports from the past and his own comments.  This aspect is definitely the best part of the book and makes the whole package an enjoyable read and aid for your own viewing plan.

04/04/2000

Whilst the clouds and rain have stopped any viewing for the past few weeks I haven't been idle during that time.  If you look back at 27/02/2000 you'll see that  when building Tom Skinner's equatorial wedge I was stopped at the first hurdle by the lack of suitable bolts to fit the Nexstar base. Fortunately a chance conversation with a daily commuting friend resulted in three suitable bolts taken from the spares box of  his Classic American car. Check in motoring magazines and you should find the addresses of U.K. specialist dealers/garages that hold a range of U.S. size bolts.

The complete plans are available from Tom. Go to his site at http://members.tripod.com/fzxtchr/ then scroll down the left frame and select B2K Wedge.

My wedge is a slight adaptation of Tom's and isn't anywhere near as well made as his, as you can see from the accompanying  photograph. Whether it will work correctly and track accurately enough for piggyback photography has yet to be determined.

The next few clear nights may be very busy for me. As well as testing the wedge I'm also planning to check whether the Olympus 2020Z digital camera is at all suitable for Astrophotography. Watch this space!

13/04/20001Last Friday was the first clear night in weeks.  I took  the Nexstar outside for an airing intending to do a little piggyback photography with the new digital camera.  Unfortunately since last using the scope the problem with alignment has changed to the point where I get a permanent slew in R.A (using batteries) and it won't even power-up with the external battery pack.  This Saturday I'm taking it in to Hinds' to get a circuit board replaced. 

Instead of piggybacking the camera I just placed it on the ground, pointed it vaguely in the direction of Ursa Major, and took a couple of shots on full manual control at an exposure of 10 seconds at F2.8 with a setting of ISO 100. I was pleasantly surprised but not overwhelmed with the result.  A few nights later I took a few more but this time at the ISO 400 setting for the maximum 16 seconds.  Again, nothing too special but a definite improvement over the ISO 100 settings. I've uploaded a 35K version of the picture which shows most of the detail available on the 692k original. The "square" of the constellation is at upper left.

21/04/2000

The trip to Hinds' last week to take the Nexstar back and the trip today to pick it up after repair have proved expensive. On my shopping list was a x2 Barlow, a Night Vision Flashlight and a Radial Guider.  Well, I bought the Barlow ( a Celestron Ultima SV series) and flashlight but decided the Guider was a little extravagant, especially as I still haven't tried the wedge. Instead I got a universal 1.25 Camera Adapter/Tele Extender and a copy of Observing the Caldwell Objects by David Ratledge. published by Springer-Verlag. This lists all the 109 Caldwell objects and provides a photograph, finder chart, visual description and object description for each. For £19 this looks like a good buy.  Not to be outdone in the spending stakes my wife bought Comet of the Century by Fred Schaaf.  Incidentally, Hinds' say it wasn't a fault in the circuit board after all but a looseness in the DEC arm itself.; the whole arm unit was loose in the mounting. The cure was to tightening the nuts behind the plate covering the base of the arm near the power input and on/off switch. If you look back at my comments on the 14/03/2000 you'll see that the GOTO in R.A. was almost perfect whereas the DEC was out by about a degree each time. I hope the skies clear over the Easter weekend to give me an opportunity to check out what improvements the repairs have made.

I've also been ordering bits for the Olympus 2020Z digital camera. A filter set and 41mm - 37 adaptor tube from Bugeyedigital  (reference PNF202) and a 37mm - T mount from Ckcpower, both in the U.S.  The intention is to mount the Olympus via the T mount for some eyepiece projection photography. The filter set and tube arrived this morning but I'm still waiting for the T mount. There's a nice Olympus site that covers astrophotography and image processing , among other topics,  at www.cliffshade.com/dpfwiw/

Later that same evening: Contrary to all my expectations the evening has been relatively clear. I've just done a two star alignment using Arcturus and Regulas and then slewed to Mizar, Spica and Denebola.  Each time the GOTO was almost spot on. I've also done a GOTO and spotted my very first Globular Cluster, M53 in Coma Berenices. It's only a small smudge in the FOV of the standard eyepiece but it's definitely there. And if that wasn't enough in the same FOV over to the right was another very faint smudge only visible with averted vision.  This apparently is NGC 5033. Wow! two Globular Clusters in one go. I think I can safely say the GOTO is now working.

25/04/2000

The weather forecast for most of the U.K. over the Easter holiday period didn't look hopeful. I must have been extremely lucky then to get two clear nights from a site in North Dorset which doesn't suffer light pollution to the extent London does.  The first night I re-checked M53 and couldn't spot NGC 5033. This is not surprising as it shouldn't be in the same FOV anyway in spite of what I said a couple of days ago!  I also saw M51 and NGC 5195, my very first Galaxies. Just a couple of fuzzy smears of light but they was definitely there.  According to David Eicher in his excellent book The Universe from your Backyard  a 4 inch scope should show the two patches in contact, whether I saw this is debatable. Observations were made with the standard 25mm Plossl eyepiece.

The second night I extended my collection of Globular Clusters to M5 and M3.  Of the two M3 showed a definite concentration at the center whilst M5 was just a blob.  At higher magnifications using the Vixen 15mm LV eyepiece there didn't seem to be any appreciable difference in the view. Next on my list were four bright Galaxies, M104, M64, M87 and M49. All of these were again just smears of light but the elongated M104 was clearly visible. I'm wondering also whether I saw something of the core. According to the sketch I made there were two stars to the West of the smear whereas charts only seem to show one. M64 was easy and I even just managed to spot the "Blackeye". Looking through the 15mm eyepiece only seemed to make the images dimmer.

31/05/2000

Three weeks waiting for a combination of a cloud-free night and no sky-glow!  Last night I jumped at the opportunity to do a little viewing and took a look at the Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules and the Galaxy M81 in Ursa Major. M13 is bright, even from my location in the suburbs of London where the sky is never really dark. I expected something dim like M5 or M3 but there was no mistaking the globe hanging in the sky.  I spent a good 15 minutes viewing the cluster and noticed a definite elongation extending off to one side.  It's difficult to say whether individual stars were resolved - it seemed to resemble a pile of salt where you can see the granulation but not the individual grains.

M81 was also pretty easy, but faint. The central core at Mag 6.8 was clearly visible as a small elongated smear and some of the halo around it was just discernable with averted vision.

09/06/2000

The first and only time I'd seen M57 (the Ring Nebula in Lyra) up until yesterday was in 1988/89 when I briefly caught sight of it in my old 6 inch Newtonian reflector using a Lumicon UHC filter.  This was just before I stopped my viewing to concentrate on other hobbies. Last night I used the Nexstar more in hope than anything else, fully expecting not to catch even a glimpse of it without the UHC filter. Contrary to all my expectations the small hazy patch was clearly visible without any filter, even in a sky partly illuminated by the glow from the Moon.  With the standard eyepiece I could just make out that the center section of the ring was darker than the outer and with the LV 15mm eyepiece this was even more evident.