Dave Mitsky
01-October-2006, 11:31 AM
My friend Tony Donnangelo and I spent the nights of September 21, 25, and 26 at the best of the ASH dark sky sites deep in Pennsylvania's Tuscarora State Forest (http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/forestry/stateforests/tuscarora.aspx). M13 was easily visible to the naked eye and the Milky Way looked very good indeed at the beginning of the night, although the relative humidity increased as each of the nights progressed, thus decreasing the transparency somewhat as time passed.
Using Tony's Paracorr equipped 14.5" f/4.3 Starmaster Sky Tracker Dob, we observed quite a few obscure objects, including the Footprint Nebula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footprint_Nebula) (M 1-92), the supernova remnant Sh2-91 (http://www.angelfire.com/id/jsredshift/sh2091.htm) just north of M 1-92, the orangish red planetary nebula known as Campbell's Hydrogen Star (http://www.astrosurf.com/jwisn/pk64.htm) (PK64+5.1), the faint annular planetery nebula Jones 1 (http://astrim.free.fr/pk104-29_1.htm) (PK104-29.1), and the open clusters Turner 1 and Turner 8, which Tony became aware of through a search at the Messier45.com (http://www.messier45.com/) web site after reading Sue French's recent Sky & Telescope article on Vulpecula. Located within the Turner 8 is the emission nebula GM 3-10, which was enhanced with the use of an Orion UltraBlock filter.
We also viewed the standard late summer, fall, and early winter deep-sky fare, along with the periodic comets 177/P (which was quite diffuse and dim) and 4P/Faye (which is growing brighter and larger), numerous galaxies including a number of Hickson Galaxy Clusters, the planetary nebula Henize 2-430 (PK051+03.1), the very difficult Sh2-155 (http://www.concentric.net/~richmann/cave.htm) (the Cave Nebula), and the open cluster King 7.
I toured IC 1396 with Tony's telescope and made another observation of vdB 142 (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap031019.html) (the Elephant's Trunk Nebula). This cometary globule wasn't nearly as impressive looking as it had been through the 30" Tectron at New Mexico Skies last fall but I could certainly discern its namesake shape.
These clear nights gave me the opportunity to do a bit of planetary and deep-sky observing with the 4mm Burgess Optical/TMB Planetary eyepiece that I won at the 2006 Black Forest Star Party. Previously, I had only used the eyepiece to view the Moon through my 114mm f/7.9 Celestron C4.5 Newtonian and the Sun through my 40mm f/10 Coronado PST achromat.
I used the new eyepiece in my 101mm f/5.4 Tele Vue refractor (135x) and Tony's 14.5" f/4.3 Starmaster (423x) to observe such celestial objects as Jupiter, Uranus, Mizar, M2, M13, M15, M22, M92, NGC 6210, and NGC 7662, among others. The results were quite encouraging. There was less lateral color that with a Tele Vue Radian, which the TMB superficially resembles. The eye relief was generous. Field edge performance was very good and the field stop was well defined and quite clean looking. All this for a list price of $99.
Although none of the nights were perfect (clouds and dew were factors on two of the nights), we nevertheless had a chance to escape our everyday cares for a short tme and to observe hundreds of celestial objects.
Dave Mitsky
Using Tony's Paracorr equipped 14.5" f/4.3 Starmaster Sky Tracker Dob, we observed quite a few obscure objects, including the Footprint Nebula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footprint_Nebula) (M 1-92), the supernova remnant Sh2-91 (http://www.angelfire.com/id/jsredshift/sh2091.htm) just north of M 1-92, the orangish red planetary nebula known as Campbell's Hydrogen Star (http://www.astrosurf.com/jwisn/pk64.htm) (PK64+5.1), the faint annular planetery nebula Jones 1 (http://astrim.free.fr/pk104-29_1.htm) (PK104-29.1), and the open clusters Turner 1 and Turner 8, which Tony became aware of through a search at the Messier45.com (http://www.messier45.com/) web site after reading Sue French's recent Sky & Telescope article on Vulpecula. Located within the Turner 8 is the emission nebula GM 3-10, which was enhanced with the use of an Orion UltraBlock filter.
We also viewed the standard late summer, fall, and early winter deep-sky fare, along with the periodic comets 177/P (which was quite diffuse and dim) and 4P/Faye (which is growing brighter and larger), numerous galaxies including a number of Hickson Galaxy Clusters, the planetary nebula Henize 2-430 (PK051+03.1), the very difficult Sh2-155 (http://www.concentric.net/~richmann/cave.htm) (the Cave Nebula), and the open cluster King 7.
I toured IC 1396 with Tony's telescope and made another observation of vdB 142 (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap031019.html) (the Elephant's Trunk Nebula). This cometary globule wasn't nearly as impressive looking as it had been through the 30" Tectron at New Mexico Skies last fall but I could certainly discern its namesake shape.
These clear nights gave me the opportunity to do a bit of planetary and deep-sky observing with the 4mm Burgess Optical/TMB Planetary eyepiece that I won at the 2006 Black Forest Star Party. Previously, I had only used the eyepiece to view the Moon through my 114mm f/7.9 Celestron C4.5 Newtonian and the Sun through my 40mm f/10 Coronado PST achromat.
I used the new eyepiece in my 101mm f/5.4 Tele Vue refractor (135x) and Tony's 14.5" f/4.3 Starmaster (423x) to observe such celestial objects as Jupiter, Uranus, Mizar, M2, M13, M15, M22, M92, NGC 6210, and NGC 7662, among others. The results were quite encouraging. There was less lateral color that with a Tele Vue Radian, which the TMB superficially resembles. The eye relief was generous. Field edge performance was very good and the field stop was well defined and quite clean looking. All this for a list price of $99.
Although none of the nights were perfect (clouds and dew were factors on two of the nights), we nevertheless had a chance to escape our everyday cares for a short tme and to observe hundreds of celestial objects.
Dave Mitsky