More Malibu fun with the Meade DSI II OSC 26th April 2014

Its funny how things work out. My last session to Malibu prior to me returning home to the equator for a much needed family break was to be the last two session. Due to bureaucratic in-efficiancy, our trip was delayed yet again and here I found myself at yet another new moon dark sky weekend. Naturally I gravitated to going to Solstice Canyon, my semi dark sky getaway for some fun hours of imaging and observing. Going into the weekend, the weather reports did not look promising at all. The predictions were for cloudy skies and night showers on Friday. Saturday nights weather was supposed to be better, but with windy conditions and partly clear skies. Clear Sky Clock showed heavy cloud cover at midnight. However on checking the chart Saturday morning, the reading changed to 30% cloud cover with windy conditions. The trip was a go!

 "M13, The Great Hercules Globular"

Seeing how this trip was not planned, I had to go back to my star charts to see what I could image. Thankfully its galaxy season, and the Virgo-Coma region is just swarming with small elliptical's and spiral's. The only limiting factor was the wind and when I decide to start my imaging for the night, since my laptop battery only last approximately 2 hours before the battery starts to give the red flag. Turns out the skies behaved really well that night. There were some rather thick'ish clouds off to the south-east early in the night, but that went away pretty quickly. And midway through the session, some wispy high level clouds started drifting from the east and hung around the northeast quadrant of the sky. My solution to this was to ignore that part of the sky and image the clear parts. Thankfully this did not last very long. And contrary to the weather report, there was hardly, if any wind....thank goodness. Plus everything working like clockwork too, with Envisage only hanging once. its it nice to have nights when everything is humming along like a well tuned car engine?

"M61 Galaxy in Virgo"

I usually have with me a second visual scope when going to Malibu. Of late, my scope of choice has been the Edmund Astroscan as it is just so easy to use and carry. Plus it provides very nice bright wide field views, and it does not need a tripod. This time however, I decided to take my newly acquired richest field telescope (RFT), the Orion OmniVista 60mm on alt-az yoke mount. I have only had this scope for about 2 weeks so it was only natural I give it its maiden dark sky first light. Bear in mind that this is a RFT achromat so color is a problem with bright objects. But the purpose of this scope was not for highly magnified views, more so for super wide field views, much like my Edmund Astroscan and my Orion SkyScanner. I tested the scope on and off throughout my session, in between taking a break from imaging. While the scope is easy to use on the alt-az yoke, pointing it was a bit of a pain without a proper finder scope. I had to point in the general direction and pan around to find my objects. And DSO's were dim. I guess I am spoilt as I usually use scopes in the 3" to 10" range. The views were comparable to the previous 60mm scopes I have owned in the past, with a much wider field of view (previous scopes had focal lengths of 700mm versus the 420mm on this wide field scope). Views, as noted, were much "warmer" too due to chromatic abberation. Scope was good for objects covering a large area of the sky though...like open clusters.

Star Map Pro to the rescue 

 "M65 Galaxy in Leo"

Anyways since this trip was not planned, I did not have a list of objects to image. I managed to bag all the objects I had on my important to do list. What is a person to do? Whilst on the bus on the way to work,  I coddled together a list of objects using my favourite iPod app, Star Map Pro. How times have changed. In the past, prior to every trip to Leyburn I would spend so much time rearranging SkyAtlas 2000.0 charts I had printed out in a clear sheet folder, together with a list of objects to hunt down on a piece of paper. These days I do all my visual and astrophotography planning on my iPod Touch, using Notepad and Star Map Pro. Speaking of which I have not realized how much I have come to rely on this good old app. Granted its price of $20, it was not a cheap app by any means. But seeing how many features this lil Star Map/ database holds, I say its worth every penny. It surpasses any of my printed star charts by miles! I have to thank my bot crew buddies (Jenny Lee cut cut, Cher Liew, Kevin FM and J Man Jake) for the iTunes gift card that allowed me this indulgence! Briefly this app pros include:

 "M66 Galaxy in Leo"

• Huge database of 2.5 million stars and 13,200 deep-sky objects
• Unique tools for telescopic observers
• Gives the user almost complete control over what is and isn't displayed
• Easily accessible brightness controls
• Extensive help screens 

 "M108 Galaxy in Ursa Major"

It allows one to zoom in an out of  a specific area of the sky, give useful information of DSO's such as rise and set times, transit times as well as images of most of the major DSO's, gives a simulated view of how the FOV will look in a certain eyepieces (yes you can user configure this by putting in your telescope and eyepiece specs and it does automatic simulations) so star hopping is easier, plus you get complete control of the background brightness (and it has a night vision saver feature that allows you to turn the screen red), as well as date and time scrolling (so you can look ahead and see which constellations are up and such)! What's not to like? I think i will be using this app for many years to come!!!!!!!

"NGC 2903 galaxy in Leo"

With that I came up with a huge list that should last me well through spring. Some of the notables in my list galaxies include ones from Virgo, Coma Berenices and Canes Venatici. The ones I did bag that night were M61 in Virgo, M108 in Ursa Major and NGC3521 Leo. I did try for M109 in Ursa Major, but for some strange reason it did not come up. Also re-imaged a couple of objects in Leo, M65, M66, NGC 2903 and NGC 3628. Spent two hours imaging and the last two hours doing some visual astronomy of the summer constellations. Overall a very pleasant trip out to darker skies. next stop...observing from the equator.........

"NGC3521 (top) and NGC 3628 (bottom) galaxies in Leo"