Observing Log for Mike Durkin
8/31/2006 7:30AM-8:30AM
Forest Hills, NY
Transparency: 2/10, Seeing ??/5
Coronado PST
Technically first light of the Personal Solar Telescope from Forest Hills. The weather has been lousy recently, and this is the first day
where the clouds were thin enough to see a little bit of the sun. I went out early near by the local high school before I left for work with
the PST. I didn't have a mount so I just leaned the scope against the car to try to hold the scope steady. The sky was still very cloudy,
however I was able to make out the disk, but I saw no details and there seemed to be a haze surrounding the disk. I don't know if that was
because of the eyepiece that came with the scope, which I have heard is not so good, or because of all the clouds. Hopefully there will be a
clear day soon when I can give this a better test.
8/18/2006 11:00AM-12:30PM
Monterey, Massachusetts
Transparency: 6/10, Seeing 4/5
127mm Mak
Today just for kicks, I decided to try to take some pictures of the moon during the daytime. I used my
Nikon Coolpix 995 and the 18mm(85x). I did take some pictures and I was able to get some detail out of
it with processing, however that also brought out "dust dounuts", which is probably caused by dust on the
primary mirror of the telescope. You can see the results at:
unprocessed daytime
moon image
8/17/2006 8:00PM-12:30AM
Monterey, Massachusetts
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 4/5
10x50s and 127mm Mak
First visit with a telescope out to the lake house. Nice and Dark skies. Easily able to make out the Milky way after dark, including some dust lanes in Cygnus. Unfortunately there are a bunch of trees, which blocks quite a bit.
Started with the 10x50 minoculars, looked at Milky Way around Cygnus and Lyra. Very impressive with some rich star fields and clusters. I didn't match up the clusters with the catalog numbers. I Also saw the Andromeda galaxy, M31, thru binoculars low on the horizon. I think this is the most extended I have seen it. In the Mak with a 30mm (51x) eyepice, I'd say it seemed about 1.5-2 degrees and had a very clear oval shape, and one edge of it almost seemed sharp which I think may be one of the dust lanes. I also saw the coathanger cluster (aka Brocchi's Cluster or Collinder 399) in the binoculars.
With the 127mm Mak, tried to see M57 (Ring Nebula) from up here. It took a while to find it, but I was able to and I was a little let down. I was hoping that it would be more impressive up here.
Also tried splitting the double double in Lyra. It took a while, but I'm pretty sure I was able to split it, one pair was more obvious than the other. So this would seem to be about the resolving limit of this scope.
To finish off the night, I tried to find the Blue Snowball nebula (NGC 7662). It took me a while to star hop to the proper location, but I did find it. Rather than a nebula, it appeared as a bright star on all expcept for the highest power (7.4mm). At that point it seemed to be a light blue star that would not focus. I had to move the field of view to get some stars to make sure that I was in focus. No significant detail other than the color. This would probably look more impressive in a larger scope.
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