A Short Visual Report From an Imaging Guy

[Juno16]

Hey all,

Like the title says. I rarely take a scope out for a visual spin. But, visual is how I started and even though I want to get out to view more, I rarely do.

I’ve been tripping over my old Nextar 130SLT for this past year. It was my start in astronomy and I was keeping it set up was my idea to get me inspired to get it outside. Yesterday, I set it outside just in case I felt like getting up early the next morning. Since I hadn’t used it in a year, I had no idea how things would work.
My wife turned in early, so I went outside to play.

The rig is challenging to use. The lightweight tripod is very shaky. I do use it with an Orion Accufocus motor which helps a lot.
I tried many moons ago I tried mounting the 5” newtonian tube on a EQ mount and even though it provided some challenging contortions to view, it was rock solid and was a joy to use. Huge difference! Need to try that again soon.

Tonight is was on the Nextar mount and anything that I accomplished was a plus.

After a couple of attempts, I connected the Celestron wifi module to my ipad.

First pass at star alignment was successful and I was off!

Conditions were very nice, cool at ~55 deg. F, little wind and Bortle 7 skies. I used the Agena 1.25” 12mm for most views (54X).

First up was the Double Cluster, NGC869 and NGC884. Beautiful view in the 12mm Agena 1.25” eyepiece. Very nicely framed closeup at 54x.
The cool thing with viewing the Double was that I recently imaged this beautiful pair and I could compare the view to the image. The are quite different!
Both are great to look at, but the image is so much more brilliant. I counted over 32k stars in the image (Pixinsight ImageSolver script.
On the visual side though, the clusters look really great. I switched to a 32mm plossl (20x) and the view was so much more pleasing and beautiful.

Also imaged recently, was NGC 7789 Caroline’s Rose cluster. I sent the scope there and it took me several minutes to resolve the dim stars in the cluster. Not a remarkable sight at all!
The imaged version tells a very different story!

From there a quick trip to visit Jupiter. It has been a year since my last view and even at only 81x (Agena 8mm), the view was breathtaking and crisp.

On to a few doubles. I had no premeditated plan, so I was just looking on the ipad and firing the scope all around the sky.

I viewed Almach (of course), Shedar, Alfirk, and Miram. All wonderful views and with the 12mm eyepiece, they were all somewhat close, but not too close for this shakey mount.

Topped it off with a few more clusters. NGC 633, NGC 559, Struve 2, and M103. All wonderful views.

Last up was the good old familiar Garnet star. Gorgeous bright orange-red beauty.
That was it for me. Two hours of fun!

Thanks for reading!

[Lady Fraktor]

Very nice Jim, glad you had good skies to enjoy.
The provided tripod is the worst thing Celestron provided with these SLT mounts.
I switched mine out for a EQ-3 aluminium tripod and never regretted it.
It was stable enough to use my Stellarvue 80 mm with binoviewers.

[Bigzmey]

Nice session Jim! I totally agree with your assessment, visual and AP provide quite different views, but both could be beautiful.

[Graeme1858]

Sounds like a good visual session, just to make a change Jim!

Must be interesting viewing a target visually after the familiarity of having just spent time processing the same image!

Graeme

[JSBach1801]

It's always fun to just look without the headache of imaging and all that goes with it. Nice report, Jim!

[Juno16]

Very nice Jim, glad you had good skies to enjoy.
The provided tripod is the worst thing Celestron provided with these SLT mounts.
I switched mine out for a EQ-3 aluminium tripod and never regretted it.
It was stable enough to use my Stellarvue 80 mm with binoviewers.

Great idea Gabby. I will look around. The mount heads works surprisingly well. All of my goto's last night were not far off center with the 12mm. Can't complain about that!

You mentioned the weather. Extremely unusual for where I live. The weather has been very stable. Lots of clear nights (as opposed to last year having poor skies for a 4 month run through the summer).
Really weird. Usually, the weather is all over the place with several hurricanes in the warmer months (or threats). This year none (only one in the gulf nowhere near me). Also, little to no rain. We are almost -30 inches for the year!
Take care and thanks!

Nice session Jim! I totally agree with your assessment, visual and AP provide quite different views, but both could be beautiful.

Hi Bigz! Yes, it really was a lot of fun!

Yes, the visual to AP comparison for the two clusters is very different, but each has their charm for sure.

Sounds like a good visual session, just to make a change Jim!

Must be interesting viewing a target visually after the familiarity of having just spent time processing the same image!

Graeme

It really is Graeme. The image is very nice and defiantly has more resolved stars. In the case of Caroline's Rose cluster, the difference is a very weak visual view compared to a pretty nice image view.
I can barely resolve galaxies with the 5" in my skies and the only nebula that I have seen is M42, so imaging gives me a much nicer view of these targets.
Stars are very beautiful though and I really like to view doubles and clusters.
Thanks Graeme!

It's always fun to just look without the headache of imaging and all that goes with it. Nice report, Jim!

Good point. Quick and easy for sure!
Two very different ends of the hobby. With imaging, it is somewhat of a technical exercise where the work is done up front (for capture anyway), then they software totally runs the show and I rarely ever go outside unless there are issues. Visual, is way different being under the stars in the dark. A very nice experience!

Tonight I am set up to image another small cluster, the Owl cluster, NGC457. I viewed it last night and it was nice, but not a wow view. Images I've seen on AB are much nicer, but not the smashing effect as something like the Double cluster. But, hey, its fun anyway!

[messier 111]

glad you had the chance to do visual work, I'm still paying my debt to mother nature for my new mount...
a pleasure to read you, thx.

[Juno16]

glad you had the chance to do visual work, I'm still paying my debt to mother nature for my new mount...
a pleasure to read you, thx.

Thanks Jean-Yves.
It was a lot of fun and I’ll be back at it again soon.

I got out for an imaging session last night. Imaged another star cluster, The Owl Cluster.
The cluster is small, so I went with the 102mm this time.
Another excellent evening!

[Juno16]

@Lady Fraktor

Hi again Gabby!

Is this tripod similar to yours?

Again, thanks for the info.

[Lady Fraktor]

Very similar to it, just the plastic spreader bars/ tray are different.
I also painted mine because I was bored.
I also made some small adjustments to stiffen mine up, total cost was about € 20.

[kt4hx]

Very nice to see you doing some visual work again Jim. I know as one's sky degrades it does create more issues for the visual observer, causing us to perhaps change tactics. Your move to primarily AP has been impressive as your images are quite nice indeed.

As for the comparison of NGC 7789 when viewed with a 5 inch scope Bortle 7 environment its appearance would definitely be different from what you can image. Using AP gives one a lot more flexibility and more light capture capability. With visual you get what you get based on aperture, conditions and observing skill. All that said, I am very pleased to see you back to using your eyes, even for one evening. The stars missed you brother! I think a VROD is definitely warranted here.

FYI, just for the fun of it, here is what I noted about NGC 7789 a couple years ago using the 17.5 inch from our Bortle 3 dark site. Obviously one can't directly compare that to 5 inches under Bortle 7, but thought I'd toss that out there anyway.

NGC 7789 (Cassiopeia, open cluster, mag=6.7, size=25.0’, class=I2r):
Aiming the scope now at mag 2.3 Beta Cassiopeiae (Caph) I drifted nearly 3° SSW of the star and quickly scooped up this fine open cluster in the 8x50 RACI optical finder between Rho (mag 5.1) and Sigma (mag 4.9) Cas. In the finder it presented a small and round diffuse glow with no stars resolved. However, it was clearly evident and invited closer inspection. Moving to the eyepiece (94x), the sight was a stunning round mass of stars, far too many to count with any reasonable accuracy. In fact, the amount of stars visible was dizzying and confusing – but beautiful all in the same moment. As I studied the cluster’s field more, I began to get a sense of darker voids of less stellar density within its structure. I could trace flowing curves of these voids as they wound their way throughout the cluster body. This lent a very curious maze-like appearance to this wonderful cluster. While I have seen it previously with smaller apertures, the view in this scope was simply overwhelming.

[Ylem]

Nice report Jim, a little visual must be fun for you

[Juno16]

Very nice to see you doing some visual work again Jim. I know as one's sky degrades it does create more issues for the visual observer, causing us to perhaps change tactics. Your move to primarily AP has been impressive as your images are quite nice indeed.

As for the comparison of NGC 7789 when viewed with a 5 inch scope Bortle 7 environment its appearance would definitely be different from what you can image. Using AP gives one a lot more flexibility and more light capture capability. With visual you get what you get based on aperture, conditions and observing skill. All that said, I am very pleased to see you back to using your eyes, even for one evening. The stars missed you brother! I think a VROD is definitely warranted here.

FYI, just for the fun of it, here is what I noted about NGC 7789 a couple years ago using the 17.5 inch from our Bortle 3 dark site. Obviously one can't directly compare that to 5 inches under Bortle 7, but thought I'd toss that out there anyway.

NGC 7789 (Cassiopeia, open cluster, mag=6.7, size=25.0’, class=I2r):
Aiming the scope now at mag 2.3 Beta Cassiopeiae (Caph) I drifted nearly 3° SSW of the star and quickly scooped up this fine open cluster in the 8x50 RACI optical finder between Rho (mag 5.1) and Sigma (mag 4.9) Cas. In the finder it presented a small and round diffuse glow with no stars resolved. However, it was clearly evident and invited closer inspection. Moving to the eyepiece (94x), the sight was a stunning round mass of stars, far too many to count with any reasonable accuracy. In fact, the amount of stars visible was dizzying and confusing – but beautiful all in the same moment. As I studied the cluster’s field more, I began to get a sense of darker voids of less stellar density within its structure. I could trace flowing curves of these voids as they wound their way throughout the cluster body. This lent a very curious maze-like appearance to this wonderful cluster. While I have seen it previously with smaller apertures, the view in this scope was simply overwhelming.

Hi Alan,

The somewhat unplanned trip out back was a lot of fun. Just common targets, but lots of fun to see them live again (well, you know what I mean).

Yes, Bortle 7 with the 5" is challenging, and it gets tough to dig in much. Actually, I have never viewed or imaged anywhere else besides my backyard, so I don't know any better!

I really enjoyed this very modest scope when I first started out (I had a blast!). I would get so fired up with very modest views and amassed 91 Messiers until I just ran out of catchable photons. That was 7+ years ago and the sky has degraded significantly since then.

That is what drove me to AP and even though the lp still has a large effect on the experience, still reasonably good results can be drug out. The techno experience of the capture is a kick and processing is magically fulfilling (and very often frustrating). Sky quality has a major effect with AP too. I watch Adam Block processing video's and am amazed that his raw data looks almost like my finished product! Such is life.

Thank you for your nice comment my friend! Also, thank you for sharing your notes about NGC7789. Your elequent description rings with me since I just viewed and imaged this beautiful cluster.
When I first sent the scope to NGC7789, I thought that the goto was off since I saw nothing notable. My observing skills slim, but I closely studied the view both directly and averted and started to see the dim, but dense central star cluster. I was thrilled!

This is an approximation of the view with Astronomy Tools (not factoring in the sky quality) with my 5" and 12mm eyepiece.

I also viewed NGC 457, the Owl Cluster which I recently imaged. Looking forward to processing that data!

Take care and thanks!

[Juno16]

Nice report Jim, a little visual must be fun for you

Yes, very much so!

I really enjoy doubles, but like I mentioned, the biggest kick was to view the two clusters that I recently imaged.

Thank you Jeff!

[kt4hx]

Hi Alan,

The somewhat unplanned trip out back was a lot of fun. Just common targets, but lots of fun to see them live again (well, you know what I mean).

Yes, Bortle 7 with the 5" is challenging, and it gets tough to dig in much. Actually, I have never viewed or imaged anywhere else besides my backyard, so I don't know any better!

I really enjoyed this very modest scope when I first started out (I had a blast!). I would get so fired up with very modest views and amassed 91 Messiers until I just ran out of catchable photons. That was 7+ years ago and the sky has degraded significantly since then.

That is what drove me to AP and even though the lp still has a large effect on the experience, still reasonably good results can be drug out. The techno experience of the capture is a kick and processing is magically fulfilling (and very often frustrating). Sky quality has a major effect with AP too. I watch Adam Block processing video's and am amazed that his raw data looks almost like my finished product! Such is life.

Thank you for your nice comment my friend! Also, thank you for sharing your notes about NGC7789. Your elequent description rings with me since I just viewed and imaged this beautiful cluster.
When I first sent the scope to NGC7789, I thought that the goto was off since I saw nothing notable. My observing skills slim, but I closely studied the view both directly and averted and started to see the dim, but dense central star cluster. I was thrilled!

This is an approximation of the view with Astronomy Tools (not factoring in the sky quality) with my 5" and 12mm eyepiece.


IMG_6066.jpg


I also viewed NGC 457, the Owl Cluster which I recently imaged. Looking forward to processing that data!

Take care and thanks!

Hi Jim. I can well imagine that over 7+ years, your sky quality would have noticeably degraded. Back then, mine was a solid Bortle 5 in the backyard. I could easily see M31 with the naked eye, M32 was always visible in any scope and M110 only went unseen in the worst transparency conditions. We are now a solid Bortle 6, and I anticipate further degradation over the coming years as they continue to build farther out from town. We are fortunate to have our dark site location. I think if I could get you over there you would be astounded at just what one can see both with the naked eye and even modest aperture.

I checked out the site you used for that approximation of NGC 7789. It is an interesting tool, which would have been better if they would factor in a user's light pollution level. That certainly would have an impact on the results because of the limiting factor on visible magnitude. It is an unfortunate sign of our times, but I am happy for you that the AP side of the hobby has renewed your interest and enjoyment. Keep at it my friend and enjoy the night sky.