Bill's Sky

  The area I set up in last night wouldn't really be a good one for an observatory. Distance to power is over 100ft, and a building would obstruct seeing the driveway from the house. I need to take those sight lines into account, as well as obstructions to observation. I found a 24" x 36" board to use as a portable table top. I set it on top of two plastic sawhorses. It makes is a great surface for holding the eyepiece case, atlases, journal, and other odds and ends that I use. It sure beats using the Black and Decker Workmate to set things on.  Two layers of a white handkerchief over the Celestron red flashlight dim it just right when my eyes are dark adapted. Without that even on its lowest setting if it hits a white page the reflection is pretty bright, and can actually almost dazzle my eyes. A note on sketching. The 0.5 or 0.7mm mechanical pencil isn't the best tool. I need to take a regular wood #2 pencil so I can shade images better. It is also almost impossible...

  First target was the Wild Duck cluster, M11, using the 32mm eyepiece. The main cluster has an almost square shape with a brighter star to the right center of the square. There were many stars visible, and the longer I looked the more became visible. There were several that were so faint they were only visible with averted vision.  Where I set up, the large (birch?) trees were a significant factor. Next target was M8, the Lagoon Nebula at about 23:25MDT. Found it in the 32mm, switched to the 25mm. Before I could start sketching it it started to dim as it went behind the tree limbs. Saturn had come up, so I moved over to it. Saturn with the rings almost edge on and two of its moons were easily visible. Tried different eyepieces and a couple of filters to see if that would let more detail come through, but all the filters did was dim the view. Adding a 2x Barlow only made the image very unsteady. Only had about 15 minutes before it too went behind the trees. Next target wa...

  This entry doesn't have any sketches. It is actually about an event my wife and I attended the evening of 21 July at the Montana Learning Center, located on Canyon Ferry Lake, east of Helena. They have an outreach program called " Under The Big Sky " with monthly presentations and viewing using their large telescopes. They have the two largest public access telescopes in the state. Their main astronomy page is here . This image shows the two large Roll Off Roof observatories. The actual site is much larger, including classrooms, dorms, etc.  This picture was taken from where we were sitting for the presentaion. The main page is slightly out of date. Instead of the remote robotic telescope, they now have a 24" Ritchy-Chretain on site.   This sits on a Software Bisque mount, and he controls it using "The Sky" software. Tscope in the background is a Takahashi set up for solar imaging.  This is the 25" Newtonian on a Dobsonian style mount. Unfortunately ...

  I set up the scope about 22:15 MDT, waiting for it to get dark enough to align. My goal tonight is to see some of the objects listed in the July-September section of  "Turn Left at Orion" (TLAO).  I had watched a You-Tube video on using Star Align on the Nexstar mount, and thought I would give it a try since it uses three stars instead of two. I started with Altair, then Arcturus, then Delta Cassiopeia. Used Mizar as a test, and it centered that fine, but then was consistently off. Redid alignment using 2 star align with  Altair and Arcturus. Targets were consistently in FOV of the 32 or 25 mm eyepiece after that.  The first target was the Ring nebula, M57. Easily visible with the 32mm eyepiece as a round, grayish shaded shape. The 25mm was brighter and a little clearer.17mm gave the best view, the ring shape is easily discernible. Tried  the 8mm, but the image became too unsteady, so went back to 17mm.At times I thought I was actually able to see a very ...