Telescope Reviews: NIAAS--Bragan 16th October 2009-- Witten by Stevie

It was a family night out at Bragan last night, and it was great to see. Present were Mark and his daughter Michelle, Brian and Naomi, Darrin and Andrea, Eamonn, Simon and me.

It was a lovely night up until about 1.00am, at which point the dew became overwhelming. Both the Lightbridges were badly effected, and even Simon's Orion was misting up.

Eventually, at around 4.00am, we had to give up, as the fog was quite thick and there was a lot of cloud around.
But the views seen earlier in the evening were very good, and I still managed to pack quite a few objects in.

The Milky Way was prominent early on, but rather faded as the night went on, although the section through Cygnus to Cassiopeia was visible for most of the night.

I borrowed Darrin's Hyperion Zoom eyepiece for a while, and it performed really well, it is a great boon to be able to alter the magnification without having to constantly swap eyepieces, and the Hyperion gave outstanding views of some familiar objects.

My only gripe with the eyepiece was that I could not get a good focus at 24mm, but apparently this has been reported by many people who have used it. There were no problems from 21mm to 8mm.

As a warm up, I started off with M57, and it was seen really well at 21mm. But the view at 8mm was excellent. Simon reckoned he could see the central star, although I couldn't.

Next was old favourite M101, fairly low in the sky, but still visible. The central part of the galaxy was quite prominent, although I could not clearly see any of the spiral arms.

I then moved on to my old nemesis M33, and found it very easily. The view was quite good, although I needed averted vision to make out most of the shape.

I had been reading Stephen James O'Meara's "Hidden Treasures" recently, and had made a list of 12 targets for the night. Unfortunately, several of these were in Cetus and Eridanus, and that part of the sky was poor all night.

But I managed to track down a few. One of the best was NGC1502 in Camelopardalis, the lovely cluster at the end of Kemble's Cascade. I counted 23 stars in total, forming a triangular shape, with two prominent yellow stars in the middle.

Several people had a look at this one, and Andrea was particularly taken with it. I then had a look at the Cascade itself in the binoculars, as I have not seen it for a long time.

I then moved down a couple of degrees to NGC1501, a planetary nebula. This was a tiny object, fairly bright, but I could not discern any real detail. A search for the galaxy IC342 was unsuccessful.

I then moved on to one of my favourite constellations, Delphinus. First up was Gamma Delphinus, a lovely double star, both slightly yellowish. Also in the same field of view was Struve 2725, a much fainter and quite close pair, but the Hyperion split it easily enough.

Again, both stars were yellowish, especially the secondary. A shift of a few degrees led to the globular cluster NGC7006.

This was pretty dim, and difficult to resolve into any individual stars. It is a very remote object. Another few degrees in the same direction led to the Toadstool asterism.

There was a bit of scoffing about this at first, but there is a nice diagram in Sue French's Celestial Sampler, and the scoffing soon changed to (reluctant) murmers of appreciation.

The asterism took up much of the field of view and is a nice object.

The Hyades were well in view by now, and I had a quick look around them before moving on to another O'Meara target, NGC1647.

This is a large cluster, with a prominent pair of yellow stars near the centre. There are also two quite bright stars towards one edge.

There are about 60 or so stars in total, of a fairly regular brightness, A nice object.
During the course of the evening, I also saw many lovely sights in other scopes, including a memorable Jupiter and excellent NGC6934, both in the 16" Lightbridge, and a splendid M31 in Darrin's Celeston Nexstar 8.

We used the directional buttons to move the centre of the galaxy from the field of view, on both sides of the galaxy, and were rewarded with some fine views of the spiral arms.
I took a break for tea, and unfortunately things started to deteriorate from then on, as detailed elsewhere.

But the night as a whole was positive for me, and the view of NGC1502 will live long in the memory.

My Nexstar beside 12" and 16" Dob

http://www.epkmusic.co.uk/astro/bragan1.jpg

--------------------
Celestron NexStar 8SE
Bresser 10x50 Binoculars
Hyperion Zoom 8-24
Plossls 25mm

Edited by Darrin (11/03/09 01:30 PM)