Malibu Strikes Back....yet again part deux (November the 1st 2013)

 "Getting set up. Photo courtesy of Terry Nakazono"

Its my b day month...its my b day month. And what better way to kick off the month of November with a bang. Dark sky weekend is upon us yet again. Weather patterns have been all over the place. Last weekend we were down at Escondido,CA at the Welk Resort. Had my StarSeeker II 130mm f/5 OTA on Porta Mount as the skies there are pretty amazing. My plans for some casual stargazing did not come to fruition however. As soon as the skies got dark, a thick marine layer rolled in...bummer. This past week has been pretty iffy too. We had heavy dark clouds and rains even on Monday and Tuesday........but it has been nice, transparent and clear the last two nights. Accu-weather and the Weather Channel predict clear skies for Malibu on Friday. Friday rolled around and YES gorgeous blue skies in the daytime and dark transparent skies at night. So yes time to pack the car up and head out to Malibu.

This time my aims were to image in wide field using the Celestron Travelscope 70 on the NexStar alt az GOTO mount, seeing how I recently acquired a dinky lil 5x24 finder for my littlest baby scope. Targets for the night include some objects that I have imaged in the past, but with the longer focal length 102GT OTA. Objects include; the Veil Nebula in Cygnus (FOV too narrow in the longer focal length scope); the Helix Nebula in Aquarius; M33, the Great Triangulum Spiral; M77, the Cetus Galaxy; NGC 246, the Cetus planetary bubble; M74, dim face on in Pisces, and if time permits and my laptop battery does not die M31, the great galaxy in Andromeda and its companions; M42, the great nebula in Orion, the double cluster in Perseus and M1, the Crab Nebula in Taurus. Also have plans to use my C8 for a bit to test out my new/old 2" SCT diagonal to see if it is as good as my Orion 1.25" dielectric diagonal.

Solstice Canyon here we come!

Left the house pretty early and got there at about 9.30pm. When we got out of the car, we were surprised at how warm it was over at our observing spot. The Santa Ana winds sometimes cause this  and we get warm gust of wind. It was pretty windy when we got there too (almost Pinos like but warmer). Seeing how the bulk of my night was allotted to imaging, I was kinda bummed. Terry reassured me that the winds usually die down at about midnight so that kept my hopes up.

"The perks of seated big scope visual stargazing. Photo courtesy of Terry Nakazono"

First order of the night.....visual observing through my C8. That was the first scope I set up. Easy enough to just slip on the 8x50 dovetail finder into its shoe, extend the aluminum legs on the Vixen Porta and slide the Vixen dovetail on the C8's OTA into the dovetail slot on the Porta. Since I only brought my super uber portable Travelscope 70, my Orion bag had room for both the tripods. I carried the C8 OTA with my other free hand. Its funny how I use the Losmandy dovetail plate as a handle when hauling out the C8 OTA. Guess I won't be getting rid of it anytime soon since it is just so convenient to carry using this. One thing I do need to do though is to move the finder dovetail bracket. Its annoying as the slow mo knobs clash with my finder and therefore I have to attach it at a very inconvenient angle. Something to get sorted before my next observing run.

Anyways started off the night with some easy and bright objects. Summertime objects were fast sinking into the western horizon. Took quick peeks at M57 and M27. Views were awesome in C8, but I could not push the magnification very far. Views were very wavy, even for DSO's. I decided that the OTA was not sufficiently cooled so I left it on the Porta Mount and setup my imaging rig. That did not take very long as well since the NexStar is pretty easy to alight. Just extend the tripod legs, level the tripod using the built in level bubble, slide on the OTA (super lightweight light cup, my Celestron Travelscope 70!), plug in the battery pack and the NexStar hand controller, plug in the time, date, daylight/ non daylight saving's time, set the time zone you are in, then chose you method of alignment (two star align is the best one and it works everytime). Alignment worked with Deneb in Cygnus and Mirfak in Perseus. Tested the GOTO on a couple of objects to make sure everything was working fine. As it turns out, the GOTO worked brilliantly the whole night, placing most of the objects either dead center or off to the bottom left of the center.

"NGC 253,  Silver Coin Galaxy in Sculptor 6 x 1 min. Lower image dark frame subtracted"

I went back and forth between both scopes, prior to imaging to see if the C8 had sufficiently cooled off. Turns out the night's seeing was not the best. Jupiter looked dreadful as it rose over the hills. The views got better later in the night, but even then views were not super. So as usual I started my night imaging, even though I had planned to do more visual observing this time round. Went through my list of objects to image and started off with NGC253 in Sculptor. I had the galaxy in both scopes, and naturally the C8 showed it heaps better, with mottling indicating its spiral arms. The wide field image turned out really nice. It showed more breath, but I felt the image I had previously taken showed more in the way of details.

 "M77, Seyfert Galaxy in Cetus 6 x 1min"

Next up was M77 in Cetus. The galaxy itself appeared small in the 70mm visually. This galaxy however has very high surface brightness, and this showed up in the CCD image I took. The central nucleus was blazingly bright. The C8 showed its core very well. After imaging the brighter galaxies, I decided to try for M74 in Pisces. This one eluded me for some strange reason. I could see it visually in the 70mm. Not sure what the problem was so I moved on to M33, the Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangulum. The galaxy was easy in the 70mm, with its wide field. What showed up on screen was just the nucleus after a 45 second to 1 minute sub (yes the longer wider FOV of the Travelscope allowed me to push the subs for way longer before trailing occurs). I was doing the same 6x subs, but this time with exposures between 30 seconds to 1 minute. Processing using PS with curves allowed me to pull up the spiral arms. Don't you just love post image processing?

 "M33, Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangulum, 6 x 1 min. Top image dark frame subtracted"

I also shot for the Veil Nebula. Visually, the nebula was visible faintly with the NPB filter and the 24.5mm Meade SWA eyepiece. However the CCD image did not reveal the smoke like wisps. After processing the image, I though I could make out hints of the bridal veil, but maybe this one requires the use of UHC filters. Will try for that the next time if Cygnus is high enough.

 "M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy in Andromeda 6 x 1 min"

I also re-imaged some of the other sprawling objects, as planned. I hit M31, which did not appear very different in the processed imaged other than the fact that it was framed a little better with the galaxy not taking up the entire frame. I though the dust lanes could be made out easier. I still could not fit M31 and its close companion M32 in one field!

 "M42, the Great Orion Nebula in Orion, 6 x 1 min"

M42, the great nebula in Orion was just a revelation. Images appearing on the screen as I was imaging only showed its central nebulosity. Post image processing brought out its outer wings. This is one object I never get tired of looking at (The C8 threw up fantastic views of its outer wings visually.....appearing as it does in my 10". Again I found the views sans the NPB filter more aestatically pleasing. The E and F component were not doeable tonight due to the extremely bad seeing!)

 "M1, Crab Nebula supernova remnant in Taurus, 6 x 1 min"

Since I did not convincingly image M1 the last time I was here in Malibu a year ago, I decided to re-image this supernova remnant. Again M1 was easy visually, appearing as a featureless S shaped blob in the 70mm. Images appearing in real time also showed this featureless blob. Again post processing was required to bring out definition in the object. The background was however too bright and I will probably need to re-image this again at some stage. I think the 102 would give a better view as the crab appeared too small in the image taken with the 70mm Travelscope.

 "M45, Pleiades Seven Sisters in Taurus, 3 x 15 sec"

Last two objects I imaged were open clusters. They are a pain to sketch, but are superb objects for imaging, especially the richer clusters. I could only fit the dipper portion of M45, the Pleiades in the FOV of the DSI chip, and just barely! Next time I will try to center Merope and see if I can snag the reflection nebula around it! I was happy with what I got with M45!

 "Double Cluster in Perseus, 3 x 15 sec"

The double cluster in Perseus, however was a revelation. This rich cluster is just one object that screams to be imaged. It is just so choke full of stars. The dimmer members are easily brought out with post processing using curves in PS, as with faint nebulosity and spiral arms in galaxies. The last image I took of this was from my light polluted site in Culver City, so this time I got the whole diamond dust on black velvet effect in my shots....niceeee.

So all in all, I had a very productive night. I hit every object I planned to hit, missing out on only M74 in Pisces, the Cetus Planetary Bubble NGC 246 and the Helix Nebula in Aquarius. The GOTO performed flawlessly this time round. The laptop battery lasted longer than usual as well, which was strange. Well I did allow it to power down midway between imaging sessions. The C8 threw up visually pleasing views of the popular objects and the 2" Orion SCT diagonal performed flawlessly. One thing I really miss was seeing everything in wide field, as all my scopes have been short focal length scopes till now. Maybe I will use the focal reducer the next time we are out here in a months time...or maybe I might just use my old C6. Have not had my old faithful out for a while now. So till we meet again........here are some nice CCD images to tide you over.

 "Imager hard at work. Celestron Travelscope 70OTA on NexStar alt az GOTO mount with Meade DSI I color imager. Photo courtesy of Terry Nakazono"