this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

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mikemarotta
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#41

Post by mikemarotta »


realflow100 wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:20 am... back door of apartment still has bright streetlights ...
The background sky around the stars is very obvious and visible grey-blue-yellow-orange muddy brown color. ..
I understand and appreciate the fact that you do not have a car. I went without one for about six years while living in a city with good public transportation. Can the library be a resource for you? I ask because there seem to be no astronomy clubs nearby.
astro clubs sc.jpg
But my thought is that if you can put up a contact card, you might meet other stargazers. Libraries are usually open to serving as meeting places for non-profit civic clubs. Despite the huge university here, Austin, Texas, is not an intellectual town, but our local astronomy club has always had great relationships with all the public libraries in the area. So, that might be an option.

Also,, of course, when you cannot view the stars, you can read about them. As much as we all enjoy going out to observe, most people here probably spend as much or more time reading in order to understand what weI are seeing.
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#42

Post by Don Pensack »


To the OP:
You really need to take your scope to darker skies.
My first scope was a 4-1/4" reflector and I can remember viewing the Orion Nebula a lot with that scope, and it looked like this:
http://www.deepskywatch.com/Astrosketch ... ketch.html
But I lived in a place where the Milky Way was always visible, and naked eye stars were always seen well past magnitude 6.
Today, my scope is much larger (12.5") and I travel a lot farther to get to dark skies, and M42 looks a lot more like this sketch:
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/3991 ... sonian-22/
The key is to get to dark skies, and if the skies are not dark, to use a narrowband nebula filter, like a Lumicon, Astronomik, TeleVue or DGM
A filter will make SO much more nebulosity visible that it is worth the investment.
Look for these specs on the filter:
>90% transmission at 486nm, 496nm, 501nm
22-28nm bandwidth at full width, half maximum.
And remember to use the filter at 10-12x/inch of aperture at maximum, and even LOWER powers. Filters lose their effectiveness at higher powers.
Make sure you are fully dark adapted (30-45 minutes outside away from lights)
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realflow100 United States of America
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#43

Post by realflow100 »


Its not possible to be fully dark adapted. Even just the bare sky itself is bright enough that it hurts my dark adaptation alone (Compared to being in a very dark room with the blinds closed. the room brigter right after i wake up in the moddle of the night and look outside my bedroom window while crouching down to block off any streetlight glare for just a couple minutes i close the blinds again and the room looks much darker and hard to see anything in my room. so even just looking at the sky itself is hurting dark adaptation at that point. i see less and less things

Ive tried an svbony UHC filter and it just didnt do anything. Made the background sky significantly darker. but did not make any nebulus details pop out any more. Didn't help but didn't hurt either. no difference.

More than like 5 minutes of dark adaptation does nothing for me. i just wont see any more than after about 5 minutes.
I can walk outside in the middle of the night right after waking up from sleeping (maximum potential dark adaptation.) and the sky seems bright and gray. and then slowly gets darker over a minute or two until its only as bright as if i let my eyes adapt for 5 minutes. even though I was asleep and my eyes were adapting for hours and hours. (Didn't turn any lights on in the house either on my way out)
and nothing is any easier to spot either. I dont see any more stars even. Same amount of stars as before. No deep sky objects visible in the night sky where I live naked eye. pleiades is the only one. and its set right now.

My eyesight is also about 20/40 to 20/50 because of quite strong astigmatism so stars are blurry and extra hard to see. very very very faint. I probably see 2 or maybe even 3 magnitudes less stars than someone with perfect eyesight would see.
I can only see stars as faint as about magnitude 3 approximately naked eye no matter WHAT I do.
Im getting glasses so I will hopefully have close to perfect eyesight. maybe i will be able to see more stars then.
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#44

Post by Don Pensack »


realflow100 wrote: Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:25 am Its not possible to be fully dark adapted. Even just the bare sky itself is bright enough that it hurts my dark adaptation alone (Compared to being in a very dark room with the blinds closed. the room brigter right after i wake up in the moddle of the night and look outside my bedroom window while crouching down to block off any streetlight glare for just a couple minutes i close the blinds again and the room looks much darker and hard to see anything in my room. so even just looking at the sky itself is hurting dark adaptation at that point. i see less and less things

Ive tried an svbony UHC filter and it just didnt do anything. Made the background sky significantly darker. but did not make any nebulus details pop out any more. Didn't help but didn't hurt either. no difference.

More than like 5 minutes of dark adaptation does nothing for me. i just wont see any more than after about 5 minutes.
I can walk outside in the middle of the night right after waking up from sleeping (maximum potential dark adaptation.) and the sky seems bright and gray. and then slowly gets darker over a minute or two until its only as bright as if i let my eyes adapt for 5 minutes. even though I was asleep and my eyes were adapting for hours and hours. (Didn't turn any lights on in the house either on my way out)
and nothing is any easier to spot either. I dont see any more stars even. Same amount of stars as before. No deep sky objects visible in the night sky where I live naked eye. pleiades is the only one. and its set right now.

My eyesight is also about 20/40 to 20/50 because of quite strong astigmatism so stars are blurry and extra hard to see. very very very faint. I probably see 2 or maybe even 3 magnitudes less stars than someone with perfect eyesight would see.
I can only see stars as faint as about magnitude 3 approximately naked eye no matter WHAT I do.
Im getting glasses so I will hopefully have close to perfect eyesight. maybe i will be able to see more stars then.
There is a lot to unpack in your post:
1) You are describing severe light pollution (Bortle Class 9), which is like my environment here in Los Angeles. When we have haze in the air, 2nd magnitude Polaris becomes hard to see.
However, you will still dark adapt more over a 30-45 minute trip outdoors. You can block local lights with screens, and even under a very bright sky, you will dark adapt somewhat--not to the maximum, but enough to enable you to see more in the scope.
For what it's worth, the brightness of the night sky affects maximum dark adaptation even at pristine sites with zero light pollution.
2) The Svbony UHC filter is more of a broadband filter than a true narrowband UHC filter. Broadbands are too gentle for light polluted environments. You need a true narrowband for nebulae, like those from Astronomik, TeleVue, DGM and Lumicon. You will see an effect there.
I did a scope demonstration once in downtown LA where only 5 stars were visible in Orion, yet the Orion Nebula stood out in the eyepiece with a Lumicon UHC filter.
3)Yes, you should use glasses to look at the stars. If your glasses correct your vision, stars will be tiny points. I pick up over a half magnitude when I wear my glasses to look at the night sky compared to no glasses, and I have fairly mild astigmatism.
4) One trick I learned from reading a book written in the 19th century, when ALL observers were visual was that if you want to see deeper in your scope, find the object in the scope and then stare at the ground for a while (1-5 minutes) and then through the eyepiece without looking at the sky in between. You will see a lot deeper than if you stare at the sky in between.
5) One other trick for star clusters and anything stellar is to bump the magnification up. Stars don't get dimmer as you increase magnification, but the background sky in the eyepiece does.
The sky in the eyepiece is 75% dimmer at 100x than it is at 50x, and when it comes to seeing fainter stars in the eyepiece, the improved contrast helps immensely. I get a good look at M11 in my 4" refractor here in LA at 143-179x, but I can barely see it at all at 50x.
So try bumping up the magnification when looking at open clusters or globular clusters.

And if you get an opportunity to go to darker skies with some friends, do it. I grew up without a car, but I had friends that liked to get away to darker sites and I would tag along. I would show them some sights in the sky and we would sit in chairs and talk almost all night long.
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#45

Post by turboscrew »


Instead of looking down for a couple of minutes, I close my eyes. Sometimes keeping my eye at the eyepiece for the whole time. But this time of year, even that won't help.

It doesn't get darker than this (taken at 01 AM local DST time) until the beginning of August. (If that's of any consolation.)
IMG_0783.JPG
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#46

Post by realflow100 »


I just got my glasses and WOW they make a big difference. Most noticable in lower light/indoors than if its daytime outdoors

Kinda seems to make things POP and if I look at the grass outside it looks crazy texture. every blade of grass pops like a crazy 3D effect
Almost like a subtle sharpening halo artifact around things (like if you sharpen an image too much) but its not actually a sharpening artifact. things just pop really sharp

I think its possible my eyesight could be improved even more if I had a more accurate/perfect eye prescription. contact lenses or eye surgery lol

Hopefully in a few days it will clear up enough at night to be able to see any stars and I can report any findings!

My glasses are fully anti-reflective coating type with cheap metal frames but large lens shape (to cover as much vision as possible. instead of a tiny peep hole to look through) Untinted

I see green reflective coating on both sides

And it seems to be the slight farsighted/+sph correction hasn't affected my distance vision! HURRAY!
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svbony UHC 1.25 filter + astromania 1.25" O-3 filter + also an svbony H-B filter.
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#47

Post by GCoyote »


@ realflow100 - That's great news. I can't get new glasses until my doctor says my right eye is back to normal. May be getting an injection this week. Glad you finally caught a break on something.
Any metaphor will tear if stretched over too much reality.
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#48

Post by realflow100 »


I'm definitely in a straight bortle 9 for sure based on no matter how long I try to adapt my eyes to the dark i see no improvement after 5 minutes. and still can't see any DSO fainter than pleiades naked eye. even in the best of conditions. no moon. perfectly clear night.
is this as good as orion nebula will look in a telescope for me in bortle 9?
Svbony SV503 70mm ED F6 420mm FL refractor telescope (New)
Canon EOS 100D/SL1
Tamron 18-200mm F3.5-F6.3 II VC lens
canon 50mm STM F1.8
svbony 8-24mm zoom eyepiece
svbony goldline 66 degree 9mm and 6mm + 40mm plossl + 2x barlow.
svbony UHC 1.25 filter + astromania 1.25" O-3 filter + also an svbony H-B filter.
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#49

Post by Don Pensack »


realflow100 wrote: Sun Jun 27, 2021 2:36 am I'm definitely in a straight bortle 9 for sure based on no matter how long I try to adapt my eyes to the dark i see no improvement after 5 minutes. and still can't see any DSO fainter than pleiades naked eye. even in the best of conditions. no moon. perfectly clear night.
is this as good as Orion nebula will look in a telescope for me in bortle 9?
I'm in Los Angeles, the home of light pollution, and even here, a good narrowband nebula filter allows one to see details in a lot of the larger, brighter nebulae, like M42/43.
Some examples of good narrowband filters:
Astronomik UHC Visual
Lumicon UHC Gen.3
TeleVue BandMate II Nebustar
DGM NPB
Just remember:
--be dark adapted as much as possible (30-45 minutes outside, away from lights).
--use low magnifications (under 10x/inch of aperture)
--view the object above 30° off the horizon, not lower.
--view the object AFTER the end of evening astronomical twilight (which is very late at your latitude)
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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#50

Post by StarBru »


Congratulations! Now that you've got your glasses and your vision is better corrected, maybe what you see in the eyepiece will be a better experience.

I hear your frustration! I applaud you on wanting to still go outside to observe even under the oppressing conditions surrounding you. I can only suggest for you to go with what you do know:

1) Stay positive! Work with what you have and make the best of it. Eventually, when possible, purchase one if the UHC narrowband filters that Don Pensack mentioned.
2) Observe in the hours before daylight whenever possible to hopefully avoid any possible violence. (Tell the landlord to avoid more complications.)
3) Use whatever recommendations you can from everyone here on this forum even if it seems impossible for you. Write down each suggestion and try each one. It may make a slight difference which is better than no difference at all.
4) Start with the stars you can see, learn their names, specifications, and type of star. Then expand from there by looking for stars you can't see. (Your telescope will see what your eyes cannot.)
5) Expand from single stars to double or multiple star systems. Then expand to DSO's from there.
6) Keep an observing notebook to describe what you see with any relative information, date, time, etc. Add sketches of what you see and as you gain experience with observing, look back to compare for any improvements in your detection of finer details.

Hopefully this will help you and eventually your environment and circumstances will change for the better. Definitely, if possible, move to a safer, darker location where street lights are not a problem and light pollution is less. Here in Arizona I improved my night skies by only moving 10 minutes North of where I lived before to less light pollution. It made a big difference, especially after midnight when most people are asleep in my neighborhood.

You are doing the right thing by reaching out to this community of very knowledgeable people. And once again I applaud you for your efforts.
Bruce

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Re: this is what I see of orion nebula in my telescope. is this what I should expect?

#51

Post by GCoyote »


I hope realflow is able to use some of this advice and I know it's helping me in my Bortle 7 suburb.
Right now, the high summer humidity is only making things worse but every clear night is a chance to try new techniques.

Thanks everyone!
Any metaphor will tear if stretched over too much reality.
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