Thursday, December 18, 2014

	Location:	Home Driveway, under Christmas Lights and Giant Santa
	Weather:	Some clouds, it had been raining, but pretty clear
	People:	Just me
	Equipment:	Ed Beck 16" Dob, Nexus, iPad, mostly with 11mm Nagler
	Goals going in:	Get videos of the SkySafari in action, verify encoders accuracy, finally get first light on a low-contrast DSO (Orion Neb) and catch a first look at Jupiter.

Summary

Well the observational highlight was without a doubt the Orion Nebula, which I have, of course, seen over a hundred times.  This was second best.  This is impressive because out of the 100+, only the SDAA TDS 22-inch Lipp telescope showed more contrast and detail (and only AFTER that scope was recently refigured).  The Lipp image was Hubble-esque.

I recently learned that one of the primary values of a well-shaped mirror is that, because more of the light goes where it is supposed to go, that the light parts of the image are brighter and the dark parts of the image are darker.  This = High Contrast.  This means a well-figured smaller mirror will show you detail that a poorly-figured larger mirror will not. 

The Ed Beck 16" mirror, in my light-drenched driveway, 1000 feet off of I-5, gave me a view of Orion, bested only by a professional 22" RC scope in a very dark sky.  It showed a TEXTURE in the main part of the nebula that I had only seen once before as well as an extended arm quite clearly that hadn't ever been prominent to me.  All of this in an extremely bright sky.  The Trapezium showed all six stars (the two dims were very clear).  One of those "stick in your mind for a very long time" moments.

Jupiter is finally rising at a decent hour, so another highlight was my first look at Jupiter through the Ed Beck.  It was still low in east, the air was ripply, but the two bands were very clear, with minor bands visible above, below and between.  I kept the 11mm Nagler in so views were at around 160-180x (I observed with and without a Paracorr Type 2 (frankly, I cannot really see any difference on this mirror with and without a Paracorr.  I certainly don't have a well-trained eye in that regard.  I'll have to see if good mirrors have less of a need for them)).  So Jupiter was better than I had seen in a couple of years (better in the thick air than through my old 17.5" in good air), but I expect that I should be able to get well above 300x when it's further overhead).

Other targets were somewhat haphazard as I was primarily testing and filming the operation of the Nexus/Skysafari on the iPad.  A bunch of clusters, stumbling upon them from the iPad, oh yes:  M46 with its planetary even though it was really low.  That's always been a favorite: a nice cluster with a planetary nebula right in front of it.  I have been able to see it from home with an OIII filter and perhaps without (I should keep better notes).  But, yes, that was a highlight at 160x without a filter in the low sky.  Eskimo Nebula was very bright and a good sight.

To me the Holy Grail of Faint Structure is the Whirlpool Galaxy.  I recall seeing the arms pretty "clearly" with a big scope out east once and then only imagining them faintly upon every other attempt.  I'd love to get mirror to a dark site and see the arms.  Consider it my litmus test. 

Links to videos from the evening:

Rolling Out the Ed Beck dob (1 minute)

Running a Telescope from a Tablet: Demo with a dob and Nexus (3 minutes)

SkySafari on iPad 2 Quick Planetaries + Instant Info

Summary of Computer Equipment dob-to-iPad (1 minute)