A really enjoyable
EAA session last night. Again, the conditions were not ideal but using a camera instead of your eye gives you a little more latitude when it comes to observing opportunities
A new book had dropped (like a stone) through my letter box that very morning. Deep Sky Wonders by Sue French. This is an amazing book and I really wish I had purchased it years ago. I decided to observe the objects in two of Sue's January sections: Northern Lights (Where Camelopardalis and Cassiopeia meet...) and Heavenly Beauties (Triangulum and Andromeda border). In hind sight, a little too many objects for a casual night of observing.
My
EAA setup starts with my 14 year old Celestron CPC-800, still going strong after all these years and purchased for visual use rather this new-fangled
EAA Three years ago, I added an Altair Astro 294C colour camera and a Celestron Electronic Focuser. This allowed me to move indoors and not sit in negative degree Celsius conditions of last night. The advantage of indoor observing (other than not freezing) is that is gives me the opportunity to read-up on the objects I'm observing which adds to the enjoyment of the observing experience. Below is an image of the setup. The plastic box houses a laptop and power supplies for the scope and dew heater. Inside I sit at my desktop computer at the remote distance of 5m! CPWI, SharpCap, ASTAP (plate-solving), ASPS (plate-solving) and
ASCOM Remote Server run on the outside laptop. Inside the desktop uses MS Remote Desktop to access the laptop and through the magic of MS PowerToys combines the laptop apps with the desktop running apps of AstroPlanner and Stellarium on a 4k monitor.
I take a snapshot of each of the objects I observe and use AstroPlanner to store my notes and images together for future reference. The images are saved as seen from SharpCap and cropped/scaled in
GIMP (for SkySearchers). I would not have the patience or expertise of astro photographers to process the images and I only keep the final stacked image in any case. My approach stems from my use of
EAA as a natural next step in visual observing. Personally, I see no problem in viewing an object in near real-time and then processing the stack of images again, at your leisure, to bring out more exciting detail. But, that is not for me, yet
The observations below are the highlights from the evening session. Rest assured I viewed all of Sue French's objects as listed in her excellent book.
My first object was
NGC 891 (Silver Sliver Galaxy) an edge on galaxy in Andromeda. I have observed this object before but it is quite a site, with its central dust lane. The great thing about
EAA is that you can zoom into an image and see the structure of the dust lane as it bisects the core and breaks up as it moves to the outer extremities of the galaxy.
15s subs x 110 frames, gain 900, dark, flat, background subtraction - blended offset.
The next object is part of M33 and is the huge nebula designated
NGC 604. Sue's book informs us that it 50 times bigger than our own galaxies Orion Nebula! I really enjoy observing this mighty face on spiral galaxy but zooming into
NGC 604 and seeing the structure was amazing.
NGC 604 is the bright knot of gas, up from the centre and slightly to the left.
15s subs x 92 frames, gain 900...
From galaxies to an open star cluster, Stock 23 (Pazimo's Cluster) on the border between Camelopardalis and Cassiopeia. This cluster is a little large for the
FOV of my setup but the view was still enjoyable. The two top, horizontal bright stars, in the image below, point to a right-hand smaller star, surrounded by nebulosity. A dark nebula extends from the top-right of the image and winds itself down and under the star cluster. The dark nebula is quite hard to see in the image.
15s subs x 33 frames, gain 900...
The next object was the planetary nebula
NGC 1501 (Oyster Nebula) in Camelopardalis. A slightly oval, green/blue planetary nebula. A bright central star and mottled, darker interior. I believe this is the first time I have visited this planetary. Thank you Sue French! The nebula is set in sea of stars and is a very pretty sight.
15s subs x 40 frames, gain 900...
The final object is the galaxy IC342 in Camelopardalis. It is has a very low surface brightness due the extinction of its light by the dust and gas in our galaxy. In my observation notes, I wrote. 10 minutes in and the spiral arms are starting to show blue knots of star clusters. It is a really large galaxy. Such a pity the Milky Way's dust is obscuring its true majesty.
15s subs x 88 frames, 900 gain...
I hope you found this
EAA observing account enjoyable. I would be very appreciative to read about your adventures in
EAA.
Have fun.
Pete
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