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[atomant]

It's hard to plan ahead, being at the mercy of weather.
With this bubble of heat upon us during astronomical winter, clouds pop up unannounced.
A clearing came on Tuesday.
With a few messages back and forth, Patrick and I met up with Paulie down in darker skies Indy for a taste of galaxies.

This time, I decided to test out my high powered 7in DK Cassegrain.
At f/12, it is a "slowwww" scope. Great for visuals when narrow views of planets, lunar surface and double stars work.
How would it do on small DSOs?
I had sold both my high powered astrographs: AT6RC and Vixen 8in CAT.
End result, not too shabby. A bit of vignetting, I can accept.
I added a Meade 6.3 reducer/corrector to help speed it up a bit.
With my entry level DSLR, I go happy, a snappin.

Before I start the tour, let me wrap up last tour of winter open clusters with 2 more.
Riding on the back of Big Dog:

M47, an open cluster with strings of stars.
30sec, iso1600, 1134mm


M46, a two for one cluster.
See the lil planetary nebula ngc2438.
It looked neat thru Patrick's 9.25 cat.
90sec, iso1600, 1134mm

Let's also say sayonara to the lil comet that could.
Comet Garradd is nipping at Draco's tail here.

120sec, iso1600, 1134mm

Now to the galaxies,
Moving from the Comet toward the Big Bear, we find the famous pair: M81

150sec, iso1600, 1134mm

and M82.

240sec, iso1600, 1134mm

Here is the "Cigar" cropped.


At the other end of the Big Dipper is M101, the other "Pinwheel Galaxy" with the supernova.

Do you still see it?
120sec, iso1600, 1134mm

On the other side of the handle is the beautifully big and bright M51, Whirlpool and the hit-n-run ngc5195.

120sec, iso1600, 1134mm

Not far away is M63, Sunflower.

120sec, iso1600, 1134mm

In Berenice's Hair we find one with a shiner, M64, Black-Eye.

160sec, iso1600, 1134mm

Moving toward Leo's privates we find a fine pair of jewels,
M65 and M66:

120sec, iso1600, 1134mm

Moving towards Leo's underbelly, we temporarily find Mars pointing out two more pairs of galaxies:
M95

120sec, iso1600,1134mm

and M96.

150sec, iso1600, 1134mm

Moving along, we hit upon a fish-in-a-barrel patch of galaxies in Virgo: Markarian's Chain.
aka Paulie's new favorite observing playground.
How many "billions and billions" do you see in the narrow field of the Cass?
M86 is the bright one.

270sec, iso1600, 1134mm

Speeding away toward the Crow, we find a space oddity,
M104 Sombrero. Visible from inner city skies.

180sec, iso1600, 1134mm

We end this galaxy tour with the southernmost Messier galaxy in Hydra, M83, Seashell.

180sec, iso1600, 1134mm

In place of the quickly setting Jupiter, we find its apparition in Hydra: ngc3242, the Ghost of Jupiter!

30sec, iso1600, 1134mm

Here it is cropped. aka The "CBS" logo


So bring out your light buckets and pray for clear skies, for it's galaxy season!

Upcoming tours, globular clusters....

[-=CROMAN=-]

Wow... those are some very cool images.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Bill does it again.

Sweet shots I tell you.

[patrickm]

Those are awesome, Bill! Hopefully I'll make time to finish mine up. A really great, long night with four planets up at one time.

[Paulie pchris00]

Hopefully this is just a little preview of tonight's Messier Marathon.

[patrickm]

Bill and I had a great night. As always, it was great to see Paulie and catch up a little bit, and also to say hi to some of the CAS regulars whose names I can never remember but who are always nice when I bug them.

Here's a few of my pics. Bill focused on AP all night and I was doing visual and trying to shoot a few pics of the skies and surroundings just with my camera. Bill called many of my targets. Most of the night, we just ran back and forth between scopes seeing what the other had tracked down. Toward the end of the night, an ending which lasted a few hours, I finally attached the camera to the scope to see what I could get. My mount and scope where not precisely aligned for AP, but I still got a few neat shots. I think I hit the bed about 06:30 after many "one last things."

Posting all of them is a chore I don't have time for right now, so go to my Flickr set to see the rest.

Last quarter moon


M57 Ring Nebula


M51 Whirlpool


Saturn


I hope we get a chance to do this again some time. Bill is so very patient with my questions and ignorance. There is a saying, Chinese I think, "A single conversation across a table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books." I love books, but I can vouch for the validity of that saying.

An incomplete list:

3/13 Conway Observatory
Messier 95
(Spiral Galaxy in Leo)
Messier 96
(Spiral Galaxy in Leo)
Mars
(Planet in Leo)
Saturn
(Planet in Virgo)
Sombrero Galaxy - M 104
(Spiral Galaxy in Virgo)
Bode's Nebulae - M 82
(Spiral Galaxy in Ursa Major)
Bode's Nebulae - M 81
(Spiral Galaxy in Ursa Major)
Owl Nebula - M 97
(Planetary Nebula in Ursa Major)
Whirlpool Galaxy - M 51
(Spiral Galaxy in Canes Venatici)
Messier 52
(Open Cluster in Cassiopeia)
Messier 46
(Open Cluster in Puppis)
NGC 2438
(Planetary Nebula in Puppis)
Orion Nebula - M 42
(Bright Nebula in Orion)
Ghost of Jupiter Nebula - NGC 3242
(Planetary Nebula in Hydra)
Messier 68
(Globular Cluster in Hydra)
Messier 83
(Spiral Galaxy in Hydra)
Ring Nebula - M 57
(Planetary Nebula in Lyra)
Double Double - Epsilon1 Lyr
(Double Star in Lyra)

[Paulie pchris00]

Mar 18, 2012 18:57:33 GMT -6 patrickm said:

There is a saying, Chinese I think, "A single conversation across a table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books." I love books, but I can vouch for the validity of that saying.

Why do you think Bill gets so many invites out to Conway?

[atomant]

I blame my 6th grade teacher, Mrs Castronova, for giving me a book by H.A. Rey called "Find the Constellations"

Hmm, supernova in M95, checking photo..........