#86 Small Telescope Adventures, Part 7

The Olcott Project:  Adventures with a 2" Telescope--Night 8

I am pretty far behind in my reporting on this blog.  I still have one more entry to complete for the Sagittarius deep sky report with the 12".  Watch for it soon.

This observation with Space Eye, our 2" 600mm refractor, took place back on Nov. 2nd, a warm and very clear night.  Six objects were added to the list, including four Messier objects (all clusters) and two double stars.

Object #26--Messier 39:  31'; mag. 4.6; Br. * mag. 7; 25 *s

This large, loose open cluster in Cygnus makes for really fine viewing in our 2" glass.  Easily found near Pi 2 and P Cygni, it is best viewed at 25x and 30x.  Its large size fills the eyepiece with stars, both bright and dim.  A nice showpiece for Space Eye.

Messier 39

http://www.celestronimages.com/data/media/5/m39.jpg

Object #27--Messier 29:  10'; mag. 6.6; Br. * mag. 9

Tiny and intriguing at 30x, this little cluster bares magnification well, showing a dozen or so stars at 60x and 75x.  Not a showpiece in the 2", it is none the less a fun object to view.  Located not far from Gamma, which is in a grand area of Cygnus for slow motion sweeping at low power.

Messier 29

http://www.pictorobservatory.ca/html/messier.htm

 Object #28-- Sigma Cass:  5.1-8.7/3"

This is a really fine object in the 12" at 136x.  Would Space Eye have even the ghost of a chance of splitting it?  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  At 30x it was not split.  At 60x and 75x I thought I saw something very close, very faint, and very tiny.  For the first time we used our 6 mm eyepiece, giving the 2" refractor a power of 100.  Split!!  Very tricky, and for expert double star observers only, and in very good sky conditions.

Sigma Cass.

http://www.deepskywatch.com/images/sketches/Sigma-Cassiopea-sketch-s.jpg

Object #29--Lambda Aurigae:  5.2-8.7/104"

Three companions can be seen some distance away from the primary star.  We took the brightest one as the object Olcott reports on.  This is a lovely area filled with interesting star fields.  Take some time and look around.

Lambda, along with 3 Messier clusters in Auriga.

Object #30--Messier 38:  15'; mag. 6.4; Br. * mag. 8; 160 *s

Large but quite faint, it resembles a sizable hazy cloud.  Resolution is fair at 30x, but better at 40x.  A 2" glass has to work full out on this one!  It is a lovely sight, though too faint to use 60x effectively.

M38 

http://i2.wp.com/www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/m38.gif

Object #31--Messier 36:  10'; mag. 6; Br. * mag. 9; 60 *s

A bright and glorious open cluster in a 2" scope; the full range of magnifications can be used effectively.  25x and 30x give fine views, but increasing to 40x and 60x is even better.  While the stars are not countless, there are an impressive amount of them.  Highly recommended for small scopes!

  M36

We tried unsuccessfully to locate M37, and will try again another time.  In the meantime we are nearly a third of the way through our project.  I hope you will continue to follow our adventures, and feel free to comment on your own views with small scopes.  Until next time, may you have clear skies.

Mapman Mike

#79 Small Telescope Adventures, Part 2: First Light with the Space Eye 50 mm Refractor

First light for Space Eye came the same day we received it (see Part 1).  However, the night was mostly cloudy, very windy, and pretty chilly.  We didn't even bother setting up Deb's 6".  Set up time from car to observing takes about 2 minutes, so we really liked that part of our evening.  We were at our favourite dark sky site outside of Windsor, ON, though we may as well have observed from our light-polluted back deck at home.

Our first project with the new scope is a tribute to a fellow blogger who appears to have abandoned his cause, or perhaps run into some other type of difficulty.  His idea for observing objects with a 2" scope got me thinking.  Here is his blog, not updated now for many years:

http://small-telescopes.blogspot.ca/

His project was to observe 50 objects with a 2" scope; ours is 60 objects, one for each dollar spent on the scope.  Like him, we will limit ourselves to only 10 lunar sites.  However, we are going to use William T. Olcott's "Field Book of the Skies" to select our objects.  So here we go!

 My own copy of this incredible book.

Object #1: Mizar, Ursa Major:  First light went to the Horse and Rider, Mizar (mag. 2) and Alcor (mag. 5).  Both stars were seen in the 5x20 finder.  At 30x there is a fainter star midway between the two naked eye stars, forming a triangle with them.  Deb then went on to split Mizar first (2.4-4/14"), at 30x.  My eyes were watery from the wind, but I eventually got it, too.  At 60x it is a beautiful object, with a possible slight colour difference, the fainter star yellowish and the primary white.  Star images seemed excellent, despite passing clouds and a lot of turbulence tonight.  Had this been the only object seen tonight, it would have been enough to tell us that we had a very good little telescope on our hands.  This was no toy.  Unfortunately, the wind hampered most steady views.  Olcott tells us that this was the first double star ever discovered, by Riccioli in 1850.  In 1889, Professor Pickering discovered that the star was also a close binary.  He goes on to say that the star has the distinction of being the first one photographed by Bond, using the collodion process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion_process).  To us, it looked something like this at 60x, minus background stars:

http://www.perezmedia.net/beltofvenus/archives/000603.html

Mizar is a gem object in a good 2" glass, and we are glad we chose it to be our first object!

Object #2: Oc 457, Cassiopeia:  Mag. 6.4; 20'; Br. * mag. 8.6:  This object appears on Olcott's map of the constellation, south preceding Delta.  In the comments section he is rather concise:  "The cluster NGC 457 is an elegant group."  Who could resist a come-on like that?  In the 6" and 12" mirrors this is a great showpiece cluster.  What would it look like in a 2"?

Despite several attempts at long looks at oc 457, the clouds and wind thwarted us.  30x showed us about a dozen bouncing stars, using averted vision.  60x gives a much better view, and many more stars can be seen.  However, we enjoyed our best views (a few seconds at a time) using my Epic 11 8 mm eyepiece, giving 75x.  I am not adverse to using other eyepieces, provided we used the given ones first.  It becomes pretty amazing at this range, with a ton of resolved stars showing clearly, along with the two brightest ones.  I did not have enough clear sky time to actually count stars, but there were more than 20.  Perhaps I will return on a better night.  However, it does seem that this telescope will shine prominently in the study of open clusters and double stars!  It looked a bit like this to us, only jiggly.

NGC oc 457

http://www.graphitegalaxy.com/index.cgi?showsketch=8 

Object #3:  Messier 15, Pegasus:  Mag. 6.3; 18'; Br. * mag. 12.6:  Easily picked up at 30x, the globular cluster appeared remarkably bright and concentrated.  60x will show the brighter star just north.  At this range the center is very bright and star-like, surrounded by a larger area of bright haze, and then again by fainter haze.  Obviously we will not be resolving many globulars with this scope, but the bright ones will be easy to see.  Olcott includes this as the only deep sky object on his telescope map of Pegasus.  His brief text line reads: "The cluster M15 was discovered by Maraldi in 1745."

 M15.  No stars resolved for us, but the star north could be seen.

http://www.astroimages.de/pics/gallery/full/M15-20080928.jpg

Object #4:  B Cygni (Albireo):  3.2-5.4/35":  Easily the highlight of the night, colours and star images were outstanding!  We have a winning scope on our hands!  Deep golden yellow and very blue, surrounded by a rich star field.  Viewed at 30x and 60x, in between the clouds.  Olcott claims yellow and lilac, and says "very fine."  He continues below the chart with: "Many consider B Cygni the finest double star in the sky.  Its contrasting colours, gold and blue, are very beautiful."

Albireo.

http://i1.wp.com/astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2013/07/Albireo-Chumack.jpg?resize=960%2C762

Object #5:  Alpha Ursa Minoris (Polaris):  2.5-8.8/19":  Olcott claims this to be "not an easy object in a 3" glass."  Ponder, then, the plight of the lowly 2" glass.  However, we split it!  I spotted it first at 75x, impossibly tiny and faint and quite close to the primary.  When it comes to star images and splitting doubles, refractors rule.  We were able to (barely) glimpse it afterwards at 60x, once we knew where to look (just above it in the eyepiece, as in 12 o'clock high).

Polaris

http://jeffreysboldlygoingnowhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Polaris.jpg

Three doubles, an open cluster and a globular later we packed up our gear (3-4 minutes) and headed home.  We are now five objects into our 60-object Olcott project.  I hope you will join us for the rest of them in the coming months, under the heading "Adventures with a Small Telescope."  I doubt that a new astronomer on his/her first night out would have had our success, especially with the crappy weather.  Our long experience with telescopes, the night sky, reading charts, dark adaptation for the eye, and using averted vision all came into play.  We were able to turn an otherwise unusable night into a modest success!

 

Mapman Mike

 

#78 Small Telescope Adventures: Part 1, The New Scope

It was a completely exhausting and wonderful September observing session, and we actually had five fine nights in a row, along with three others.  So Sagittarius is now completed with the 12", and will be summarized here soon.  October is already turning out to be one of the worst sessions, joining several other months from 2015 for that dubious distinction.

One of the more charming astronomy blogs out there was this older one, concerning a man in Singapore trying to observe 50 objects with a toy 50 mm refractor which he purchased from Toys R Us.   http://small-telescopes.blogspot.ca/.  I had enjoyed reading and following this blog in the past when it suddenly ceased to update.  I thought that someday I might wish to do a similar project.  After all, observing Messier objects with a 12" scope isn't much of a challenge, though it is fun and they are awfully bright.  I began to wonder how many of them could be seen with a 2" scope.  One night after observing and getting the big scope packed up and back into the vehicle, I took my 2" finderscope (8x) and had a look around.  I was amazed at the detail I could see in several bright objects, and this got my brain ticking.

The upshot is that Deb and I have just purchased a 2" refractor, and we have found an initial project to carry out with it.  Due to the fact that the Singapore blogger either lost interest in his project or has become incapable of observing, or is deceased (if anyone has info on him please contact me), Deb and I wish to follow in his footsteps, with a few differences.  First of all, we did not want a "toy" telescope, but rather the best instrument we could find at a very inexpensive price.  We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.  Secondly, we did not wish to observe from massively light-polluted skies as our blogger colleague had, but rather from our usual dark sky site at our club's observatory near Comber, Ontario, Canada (Hallam Observatory).  Thirdly, we have chosen to observe 60 objects (related to the price we paid) all selected from Olcott's wonderful "Observing Handbook of the Skies," 1954 edition updated by Mayall.  This was my very first astronomy book back in the day.  We will use only the charts and objects from within the pages of this amazing little reference book.

Now, on to the new scope itself.  After extensive on-line research (and following up on a good lead) we chose this one:

 To say that I absolutely love the large box it came in would be a gross understatement.  I felt like a kid again, getting his first scope!

 Yup.  Slow motion controls on a 50 mm refractor.  And apparently you can switch eyepieces!

 Apparently this scope is about the actual size of Jupiter!  Look at all that detail we will be able to see!!

 Seriously, though, besides the slow motion controls this box of goodies features eyepieces with two magnifications, ones that are actually usable!  Well done, Vixen!!  There is no 575x to be seen, nor a 3x Barlow, nor any Barlow, but two decent 1.25" Plossls, non-plastic.

What's in the box?  An amazing tripod (Vixen uses the same one for their 70 mm scope) and solid alt-azimuth mount.  A 600 mm F12 2" refractor, and a 5x20 finderscope.  While many parts are plastic, they seem quite solid.  The tripod is aluminum.  The two eyepieces are Plossls (20 mm and 10 mm).  The rack and pinion focus is tight and very responsive.

 From box to assembly took around 7 minutes.  Here is the finished, ready-to-use scope.

 Usually seen at the eyepiece of a 6" Orion Star Blaster Intelliscope, Deb contemplates the daytime universe with the newest addition to our telescope domain instead.  She is looking directly at the sun (just joking).

 Himself, awaiting first light.

 

And now, on to the price.  The scope retails in Canada at around $125, with free shipping.  Added to the price is our miserable HST, which at 13% would raise the price to $140 Can.  However, since we live in a border town with the USA, we are able to order from there, fetch it from our UPS mailbox, and cross over the border and back home with it.  We found the scope on-line for $60 US at B & H in New Jersey.  Free shipping.  Free red flashlight bonus.  No tax, as it was being shipped to Michigan.  We declared the scope (and some martial arts attire) when coming back home, and were not asked to pay duty.  So, the scope cost us exactly $59.95 US.  We had to cross to Detroit anyway, so no real extra cost was involved.  Thus we will search for 60 objects from Olcott's book, costing us $1 US apiece!  Object #60 will be a bargain at $0.95!

All we needed now was a dark and cloudless sky.  The next post will deal with our "first light" experience with the Space Eye.  I hope you will join us.

 

Mapman Mike