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desertstars
Deja moo
Reged: 11/05/03
Posts: 29969
Loc: Tucson, AZ
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I do most of what is listed above: staying hydrated, keeping the blood sugar levels steady, sitting comfortably (staying warm or cool enough, relative to the season), and breathing. Ditto averted vision and experimenting with eyepieces to find the magnification that works best on a given object under the current conditions.
I also take a lot of time observing. Once I've more or less settled on an eyepiece (and I don't always settle on just one) for viewing an object, I relax and observe. How long depends on the object, but I doubt I generally give even a faintly fuzzy galaxy less than ten minutes. Rich open clusters or a complicated bright nebula might keep me going for half an hour or more. For such, I break it up by getting up, stretching, walking around and talking to other folks when I'm at a star party. Then I sit back down and compare what I see with the previous impressions. It's usually at this point that I make a sketch of what I'm observing. Making the sketch doesn't use up much time; getting to where I'm confident of what I'm seeing does. It's not unusual for me to observe far into the wee hours of the next morning and observe only seven or eight objects. (The most I've done in one night was twelve - not counting Messier Marathons, of course.)
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Tom W.
SVP8 'She turned me into a 3-legged Newt' EQ
Ralph, the All-Purpose 102mm Refractor
Under the Desert Stars
"If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going." Professor Irwin Corey
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Lard Greystoke
super member
Reged: 07/27/08
Posts: 185
Loc: Ohio
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Be sure to eat your vegetables, including vitamin A sources.
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Lard Greystoke
10" Odyssey Compact
"With Tantor, the elephant, he made friends. How? Ask me not."
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GlennLeDrew
professor emeritus
Reged: 06/18/08
Posts: 572
Loc: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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Use eyepieces with large apparent fields. The larger, low contrast objects are better framed and hence detected, and more of your sensitive outer retina is utilized.
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Home-made 11X50 right angle bino, 8.1 deg. FOV
Modified 26X100 bino, 3.5 deg. FOV
Mediocre minds discuss people. Good minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas.
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AZStarGuy
super member
Reged: 05/05/08
Posts: 152
Loc: Scottsdale AZ
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Fresh clean pair of contacts when I go to dark sky sites - minimizes scatter from protein & fat deposits usually found degrading the old ones. I'll even take my contacts out for a few hours before observing just to give my eyes a break. I also bring re-wetting drops. I tend to get dry eyes in AZ when observing. Probably because I'm not blinking as much.
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Ron
8" f6 Eq Newt
24PAN, 13T6,7T1,6RAD,5RAD,4 & 3.2 Planetaries
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rogerandgarf
super member
Reged: 06/01/05
Posts: 193
Loc: Arlington, Wa
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I utilize a quality brand of bilberry supplement to aid in reducing general, overall eye fatigue...works well for me.
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Roger Johnson
12" upgraded Dob
TV Genesis/LXD75
5" Mak
Denk II BVs/x switch
Swarovski 7x42, Leica 10x50,
Fuji 16x70, Obie 25x100 IF/Unimount
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Jeff Morgan
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 09/28/03
Posts: 1511
Loc: Prescott, AZ
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Quote:
I utilize a quality brand of bilberry supplement to aid in reducing general, overall eye fatigue...works well for me.
I read about that being used by the RAF during WWII. Apparently the US Navy or Air Force studied it and found no benefit. However, I figured it can't hurt and I take the supplement too.
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Jeff Morgan
Prescott, AZ
Wile E. Coyote School of Telescope Making
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mv1000
super member
Reged: 05/27/07
Posts: 110
Loc: WI
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If using a dob, use light baffles. Most dobs don't have enough extension of the tube on the front. And the back of the truss dobs are typically wide open. Using a darker shroud that blocks more light helps too. It doesn't make a huge differance, but any little bit helps.
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Starmaster 14.5 Hybrid/Sky Tracker
TV 60 (Finally! A nice finder)
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GlennLeDrew
professor emeritus
Reged: 06/18/08
Posts: 572
Loc: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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Narrow band filters, such as the UHC, O-III and H-beta, are more like mirrors than anything else (they reflect MUCH more light than they transmit), so be sure to keep stray light from getting *into* the eyepiece from behind and to your sides by using some kind of shroud. This is most important for eyepieces having long eye relief and/or large diameter eye lenses.
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Home-made 11X50 right angle bino, 8.1 deg. FOV
Modified 26X100 bino, 3.5 deg. FOV
Mediocre minds discuss people. Good minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas.
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PeterSurma
member
Reged: 08/24/06
Posts: 75
Loc: Heidelberg, Germany
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Let me add my 2 pence:
- dob drives and equatorial platforms are pretty good to keep full concentration on the object (and not on Dob-guiding by hand)
- I use a tube-like dark cover wrapped around my neck to keep any unwanted light out of my eyes. It helps seeing fainter detail, I'd say, but it's a little bit tricky especially in winter because you tend to breathe humid air on your eyepieces...
- moving across objects definitely helps seeing faint stuff (evolution taught us to be cautious about moving stuff in the night, right :-)
- especially if you have bright nights or light pollution, you should tend to observe high-surface brightness objects (stars, quasars, PNs+) + use pretty high magnifications. Even nights with moon can provide some rewarding hours then ...
- examine the baffling of your telescope: can you see any non-black parts of the scope (or behind the mirror ?!) through the open focuser ?
- some people use small baffles directly in front (towards the mirror of course) of the eyepiece in order to minimize stray light
- it's pretty hard (costly, hard to transport etc) to provide better views than a 20" scope, so - in some way - it makes no big sense to struggle further (in terms of buying bigger ones)
- I try to optimize observing time by preparing my object list and minimizing search efforts: From my (html) list I directly jump into my chart program + directly find the object I am looking for, (here it is:
http://eyes4skies.de/Internet/Astro/CrossRef/Crossref.htm#english ) I also have a 6" f/5 Bigfinder on my 20" f/4 dob, I always rotate charts to exactly the view that I see in the scope (using Guide 8.0 on a notebook), I use a 31mm Nagler on my Bigfinder to maximize field size and then jump to a 20mm Nagler on the dob
- finally I repeat the fun of observing by writing obs reports, they simply make me remember things again more clearly, asking myself questions about the objects and thus getting a closer understanding of everything as time goes by
- for me observing gets more thrilling if I understand a little bit more about the objects + asking myself 'what do I really see here ?' Even pretty simple things can be very thrilling with the right thought's in mind.
Peter
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Web: http://www.eyes4skies.de/home_EnglishVersion.htm
Edited by PeterSurma (08/02/08 07:49 PM)
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Jeff Morgan
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 09/28/03
Posts: 1511
Loc: Prescott, AZ
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Quote:
use a tube-like dark cover wrapped around my neck to keep any unwanted light out of my eyes. It helps seeing fainter detail, I'd say, but it's a little bit tricky especially in winter because you tend to breathe humid air on your eyepieces...
Not to be too flip ... but ze Germans came up with the answer to that problem about 65 years ago - the snorkel.
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Jeff Morgan
Prescott, AZ
Wile E. Coyote School of Telescope Making
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