Telescope Reviews: Brussels by night

Belgium is having fabulous weather since about May 2nd. High temps in the 70s-80s and very stable air masses at night. Thanks to a nice high pressure zone.

Transparency is not always on par though, but at least the weather is fantastic for an observing session on my urban balcony in Brussels. No need for a red LED flashlight though

This night I decided to set up the 8" TAL-200K on my balcony. I have access to the southwestern horizon.

During a 3 hour observing session with NELM 4.5 to 5.0 skies I observed the following objects, not without difficulty due to the lack of visible stars for star hopping.

The seeing was not perfect, around 7-8/10 at best. Not bad in an urban environment littered with poorly insulated buildings that radiate heat at night. I have to collimate the scope but could not find a decent star for a star test.

M3 - one of the nicest northern hemisphere globulars. Star hopped from Sigma Boo to Rho Boo, then moved in RA in the direction of barely visible Beta Com. NGC5466 was invisible. At first it was a very bright patch, which started to resolve in tens of individual stars when cranking up the power from 60x (32mm TV Plössl) to 105x (19mm Pan), to 133x (15mm Pan). the best views were in the 19mm and the 15mm. I played with the Nagler zoom 3-6mm but the image started falling apart quite rapidly. The granularity of M3 struck me!

M53 - star hopped from Beta Com to Alpha Com to find M53. A little bit less majestic than M3 but still one of the best for us 'northerners'. Observed M53 mainly with the 19mm and the 15mm Pan. Again no major problem to discover the granularity of this bright globular cluster in my urban skies. I could resolve some stars in M53 but less than in M3. Granularity appeared quite obviously though.

M81 and M82 - took me over 1 hour to get to both bright monster galaxies in UMa. Eventually I decided to get my 8x50 optical finder as I could barely see any stars for star hopping. I went from Alpha UMa towards the NCP until I saw 4 stars of 5m to 6m that form an arc (HIP53257, HIP52425, HIP52338 and HIP52577. I centered the scope on HIP52425 and then moved in decreasing RA until I hit M81, which has almost the same declination. The elongated cigar shape of M82 was pretty obvious, and I had the impression I could see a ragged "contour". The best view was with the 19mm Pan. I did not expect to see that much detail from my urban skies!

Both galaxies are almost within the same field of view when I use the 32mm Plössl. I could see the bright core but no features were visible. The shape of M81 was quite round, but the apparent size was smaller than M82. Again best views in the 19mm Pan. No other galaxies were visible in the vicinity, not even the brightest members in Markarian's chain (in Virgo).

M60 was the last galaxy of the night. The view was comparable to M81, although I had the impression M60 was a bit more "elliptical".

M13 was the night's last object. It's probably the best known northern globular as it can be seen with the unaided eye from a dark location. I could not see it in my 8x50 finder but it was pretty bright in the scope. Hundreds of stars were visible, right to the core. Granularity was very apparent. It was a good object to close the night

I tried quite some other objects but to no avail. I'm still trying to see M65 and M66 from urban skies in Belgium, and again they were totally hidden. I hope to do a tour in Leo and Virgo from a darker spot in the near future!

Cheers

Olivier

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Computer entomology: study of computer bugs

Tal-200K (#199) with JMI NGF-Mini2M focuser on GEM3 • Astro-Tech AT80ED • Orion Sirius EQ-G with wireless EQDIRECT • Astro-Tech Voyager • Celestron Regal LX 10x42 • Helios 15x70
ATM 14" f/5 (redesigning) • ATM 10" f/6 Portable Truss (polishing) • ATM 10" f/25 Dall-Kirkham (optics)
AstroForecast

Edited by Olivier Biot (05/14/08 03:50 PM)