Report: 29 July - Hedgehogs

I know it hasn't been long since the last one - but then the weather is meant to turn nasty for the rest of the week so was very grateful for the clear skies given to me this evening. I started out with my list of objects I wanted to try find, with their written mag and a rough idea of what they were. This saves me having to continuously go back in to look at a computer screen and lose my night vision. I attached the list for your interest! I started off with M34 and M15 - two clusters, sadly both of which obstructed by a hedge or a house. So I moved on to M92 and was straight away impressed, a really nice cluster to shoot - really recommend it.

M92

I then got a bit distracted by a rustling, sure enough, our local hedgehog has decided to come see what I'm taking photos of. I watched him for a bit with the red-light which doesn't seem to bother him - then told my girlfriend (who loves hedgehogs and wants to attract more to our garden) who then came out to see our spiky friend, who then didn't like the crowd and made a run for it.

Back to the telescope, after 10 mins or so exposure on M92, I moved onto M29 and M103, who seem to be quite different from your usual cluster. These two are Open (rather than globular) and therefore look like they have a small pattern of prominent stars grouped together. Again, another 2 lots of ~10mins exposures on each of these and I moved on.

M29

M103

I felt a bit sorry for the hedgehog, so I got some mealworms we feed the birds with and put some on the ground near where he was seen the last time, hopefully to tell him we're friends not foe and wish him to return!

Having already captured the targets I initially set out to get, I used my phone to navigate the sky and see what objects were visible and were located in the clearest areas of the sky. I then added M71 - a globular cluster to my list, and was very happy that it had just about cleared the roof of my house - another 10 mins exposure!

M71

While happily gazing into space and listening to the camera click, I heard another sound that caught my attention. It's difficult to describe what the slobbery sound was, but of course, it was the hedgehog feasting on the worms we put down. They are very loud eaters! I expect to find a load of dribble on our patio tomorrow morning where he had his feast, but was pretty happy we managed to lure him back!

I then discovered on my phone an object in clear skies called M40 - a Double star. Double star? What was Messier thinking? M40 - also known as Winnecke 4 - a double star in Ursa Major; stealing this from Wiki: "one of the few real mistakes in the Messier catalog," faulting Messier for including it when all he saw was a double star, not a nebula of any sort." Still, I was happy to capture it, and to tick it off my Messier list, even if it was one of his mistakes!

I then packed away my things, left the hedgehog to roam round the rest of the garden without fear of the red-light monster with a clicking contraption, and am now very happy having had such a pleasurable and successful evening capturing the stars.

Report: First light with Evostar 80ED

I returned home from work yesterday just to meet the delivery driver at the door, to receive my new Skywatcher 80ED telescope. Unboxing it I felt like a child at Christmas, slowly taking pieces out of their protective bags and looking at them wondering what each bit did and what goes where. I first mounted the scope on my CG-5 and just played around with the balances, counterweight, and just getting a feel for it. There it stayed until it got dark (my girlfriend wasn't too impressed with it being left in front of the TV and her being too afraid to move it knowing I've spent an entire months salary on it all).

Then a miracle happened, I had clear skies. They weren't perfect as here in the UK has been very hot and muggy, so there is a slight haze lingering around in the evenings, and I went out pretty early - Polaris was quite faint as it wasn't long after full sunset, but I was eager to get out there and playing. Having lined up the mount with Polaris, I had a look through the camera's viewfinder (camera attached with a t-ring to the back of the scope) and was greatly surprised to find Polaris in sight, not right in the middle, but it was there. I then aligned the mount with Arcturus, Dubnhe and Deneb? (I think!) and took this opportunity to line up the finder scope, which always surprises me by how much you can see through them.

First target was the globular cluster in Hercules (M13). I took a few exposures, and initially noticed I was slightly out of focus. To fix this I navigated to the nearest bright star using the GoTo and used the 10x digital zoom to make tuning much more accurate. The fine-tuning focuser really helped too. Back to Hercules and things were much clearer, though in fairness it did seem to come out similarly to when I was capturing it with my 300mm lens.

I tried out a few other targets, the pinwheel galaxy was unsuccessful, and I couldn't even make out the feint shape of it like I could with my 300mm. The Dumbbell nebulawas visible, but a little faint, and again similar result to the 300mm lens. So I decided not to get too disheartened and went back to the Hercules cluster. I took roughly 4 minutes worth of 30s exposures, and ended up with the following result:

I'm happy with the result, but it's a little darker than I'd have liked but I didn't want to burn out the centre as I have with my previous attempts.

Here is the same target with the 300mm lens and around 15 minutes of exposure, I took this a week or so ago:

When comparing the two, I think the ED80 clearly shows more details and especially from a shorter total exposure. I now just have to find a way to prevent the middle from becoming burnt out and over exposed.

I have to admit, my first impressions of the scope are good, but there is a little doubt. The results from this first session were very similar to what I was getting with the 300mm lens. I know full well that this telescope is a good tube, and I know i'll be able to get some great photos with it, but at the moment I don't think I'm seeing that just yet. There is clearly much more room to work on and more to learn, and hopefully I'll be able to see real improvements compared to images with the 300mm lens (otherwise I'll feel like I've wasted a bit of money!).