[Chaos-l] Observing Report

[Mark South]

Impressions:
This was a really great session.  
M3 looks really great in both the 10" and the "beast"
M104 (Sombrero) on video was spectacular.  
73P comet was one of my favorites.   

Computer-control: 
Enjoyed Starry Night computer control of my small ETX.  It is so easy-- unlike the standard buggy Meade software that comes with the scopes.  I had no interface problems whatsoever, whereas with the standard software, you can barely get the computer and telescope to talk.  I highly recommend Starry Night for computer control if that is your interest.  I plan also to get a Red Acrylic screen from www.idealastronomy.com since software red vision does not work (you still are getting all the other visible light wavelengths, i assume) and I want to keep my night vision.  Supposedly, it is so clear that you can still work with focusing if you are using a CCD camera.  

Finally, I love the "flip" version on Starry night for 2 reasons:  1) star-hopping and 2) matching what you see in your eyepiece.  I cannot mirror-image anything in my head, so this feature is worth the product alone for me because I can put in all my eyepieces, finderscope, Telrad, etc. and it will automatically give you the field of view that's required to star-hop (for non-computer control) or know which star is what in your eyepiece.  So if I'm star-hopping without computer control- I can still match what I see in my finderscope and jump around.  Another example, I can match the view of Jupiter and it's moons/bands based on my eyepiece/telescope.  

I think it's exciting what technology is available for amateurs. 
thanks
mark

On Sunday, April 02, 2006, at 10:17PM, Robert Nielsen <robertnielsen at nc.rr.com> wrote:

>On Saturday night, three of us CHAOS members (plus one) went to the 
>dark sky site for our monthly observing session.   Mark South and 
>Kara, Greg Dillon, and Robert Nielsen attended, although Robert 
>showed up too late to actually see the occultation of the Pleiades by 
>the Moon.    There were some widely scattered thin clouds at the 
>beginning of the evening, which disappeared around 10 PM.
>
>Mark was working on getting his telescope under computer control and 
>seems to have succeeded, showing people the Christmas Tree Cluster 
>and views of Jupiter and other sights.   Greg had some fun using a 
>new video camera on his "beast" ... coming up with some pretty decent 
>pictures of the Sombrero Galaxy (M104).    Later, Greg introduced us 
>to Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, and we all tried to find it using 
>RA and Dec figures from his drive.
>
>I spent the night investigating Coma Berenices and looking at 
>globular clusters in particular.   Saturday night, you could see M3, 
>M5 and M13 (the Great Hercules Cluster) all at the same time.  In 
>Coma, there was a really interesting and fine edge-on galaxy, NGC4565 
>which I had never seen before.   That, along with Greg looking at the 
>Virgo galaxy cluster, urged me on to look at other more well-known 
>Messier galaxies ... and objects such as M51 and M64 as well as the 
>aforementioned Sombrero actually looked better than I had ever seen 
>them before through my scope.
>
>Mark left earlier, and Greg and I gave up around 12:30 AM.  The skies 
>were nice and stable ... although the contrast was not as good as 
>it's been at the site.   Perhaps this was due to high clouds or 
>moisture in the air or something.   The fact that Saturn was nice and 
>steady makes me think this was true.
>
>The one bad thing about Saturday was that we showed up *unannounced * 
>at the site ... I had forgotten to call the folks who live 
>there!  Next time, one of us that is planning on going needs to call ...
>
>Robert Nielsen
>
>
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Mark South
500 Market Street Ste. 204
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
http://homepage.mac.com/md_south