Observing Log for Mike Durkin
5/31/2024-6/1/2024 about 10:00PM-2:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 50-65 degrees
Equipment: Meade Lightbridge 16 inch
First some visual observing.
M104, Sombrero Galaxy - Was just barely able to see it. A definite oval shape but
could not detect the dust lane.
NGC4762 - egde on spiral. Saw a sliver and not too hard to see at least some of it.
M53 - globular cluster. A little smaller and compact than I expected. Also didn't
seem totally spherical in shape. I could start to resolve some stars, but not very
distinct.
M64, Black Eye Galaxy - seemed to be able to see some of the more extended disk. I
wasn't certain however if I could make out the "black eye" part.
M57, Ring Nebula - this actually looked pretty nice, maybe by best visual observation
of it. The ring shape was apparent and could tell that it was slightly oval. No
central star that I could see however.
I also tried using the ASIAir, ZWO mini camera, and the Star Analyzer 100 to try to
see how some spectra would look. I had a little bit of trouble finding the right combination
of tubes to get to a length that would focus, but by using the "Camera Adapter" tube
typically used for eyepiece projection, I was eventually able to get some videos.
I took videos of Polaris, Deneb, and Lyra.
I did have an issue during the evening where the 32mm Plossl eyepieve fell apart and
hopefully I've put it back together correctly.
I am also a litte concerned about the how sharp an image I am able to get with this
scope. The focus seems a little "soft" when using high magnification eyepieces. I
beleieve that the scope was decently collimated, but maybe I need some one else to
verify this for me.
EDIT 2025-03-09:
I finihed looking at the videos from the spectroscopy videos I took. Most of them
did not look too good and the only one that was half way decent was the one of Vega,
but even that one was not as good as other spectra I was able to obtain with a
different setup. The only positive thing I saw was that the spectra did go fairly
deep into the infrared, perhaps around 9000-10000 Angstroms, but the Balmer lines
in Vega were not too sharp.
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Raw spectrum of Vega using Meade Lightbridge 16 inch Star Analyzer 100 ASI 174mm mini ASIAir Plus. Siril for alignment and stacking Rspec for spectrum calibration and graph |
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Calibrated spectrum of Vega using Meade Lightbridge 16 inch Star Analyzer 100 ASI 174mm mini ASIAir Plus. Siril for alignment and stacking Rspec for spectrum calibration and graph I'm not too happy with the end result, perhaps due to some bad colimation or other factors that seems to give poor spectral resolution. |
5/25/2024 about 11:00PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: N/A, Seeing N/A
Temperature: N/A
Equipment: Meade Lightbridge 16 inch
Not really an observing session, I wanted to check out an equipment configuration.
For the spectrographic grating, I wanted to see if I could connect the ZWO 174MM mini
to the telescape with all the cable to the ASIAir and the Jackery battery. I had
to use the folding card table, but when using that, all the cables seemed long enough
that this should be very easy to set up. I had the camera in the eyepiece hole, connected
to the ASIAir on the table, which was also plugged into the bettery on the same table.
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