Second go
Last night I was out again with the new telescope. I must remember to buy some gloves today or I run a serious risk of losing some fingers with the temperature as low as it is at the moment.
Yesterday I had the chance to read the manual that came with the telescope. A lot of it is completely foreign to me and will take some more reading to work out. There's lots of stuff about polar alignment, declination and right ascention that means very little me and isn't made entirely clear in the manual.
The good thing was that I worked out how to use the red dot finder! My first mistake was not turning it on...
My second mistake was assuming that it would have been aligned with my telescope. What this basically means is that on Saturday when I couldn't find the moon even though I had it centered in the red dot finder it was because my telescope was pointing in a completely different direction.
Anyway, I did some basic alignment during the day and found the moon immediately in the evening. Once centered on the moon I could then adjust the red dot finder even more accurately and all of a sudden I was a celestial object finding machine!
I had another go at tracking down the M42 nebula but didn't have much luck. I decided to go for something a little closer to home - Mars. I loaded up Stellarium - a software program that shows me in real time exactly where everything should be in the sky. As it happened, Mars was supposed to be exactly between Betelgeuse and Capella (two bright stars) and Betelgeuse and Capella were forming a perfect right angled triangle with the moon:
It's not a great starchart but you get the idea. Fortunately Betelgeuse is the top left star in the Orion constellation which made finding it very easy. I was amazed how easily I could see Mars with the naked eye. Admittedly it looked just like any other point of light and would therefore be easily misidentified as a star but once you start maginifying the image, you can clearly see that it's a bit close to be a star:
Unfortunately my lack of camera mount means that the photo is marginally blurry. Also my camera adjusted for the mostly dark image by brightening everything up so mars looks like a big flash but you get the idea. Coupled with the fact that Mars isn't in a great position right now (Mars is close to Earth every two years - right now it is moving away from us) and this is a pretty good shot.
That done, I decided to take one last crack at the M42 nebula. For some reason none of the stars lined up with my star chart even though I knew that I must be in the right region because my red dot finder was now so accurate. I panned around a bit and then suddenly I saw something I recognised. There was a series of stars that looked suspiciously like something on my star chart, only upside down.
My telescope is a reflector so to some degree this makes a huge amount of sense since images in mirrors are flipped and all of a sudden I knew where I was. A little bit more adjusting and jackpot!
Look at the two blurry stars in the middle. The colouration in that area is the M42 nebula. Now, don't be too disheartened by this image. Bear in mind that the odds are stacked against me in getting a decent picture. By this point my hands are freezing - I can barely feel the camera, let alone hold it still. That accounts for the blurring. The major issue, from my limited understanding, is light pollution. Because I'm sat in the back garden, in South Manchester, there is a huge amount of light competing with the very small amount of light given off by M42. The fact that I can see anything at all is probably a miracle. Once I take the telescope out into the coutryside where there is no light pollution I should be able to get much better images of this nebula.
All in all this was a far more successful evening than Saturday night. I worked out how to track stuff down quite easily and saw some amazing sights. It's a shame that I can't get better shots with my camera but until I get a mount most of my pics will probably be quite blurry.
ttfn
Yesterday I had the chance to read the manual that came with the telescope. A lot of it is completely foreign to me and will take some more reading to work out. There's lots of stuff about polar alignment, declination and right ascention that means very little me and isn't made entirely clear in the manual.
The good thing was that I worked out how to use the red dot finder! My first mistake was not turning it on...
My second mistake was assuming that it would have been aligned with my telescope. What this basically means is that on Saturday when I couldn't find the moon even though I had it centered in the red dot finder it was because my telescope was pointing in a completely different direction.
Anyway, I did some basic alignment during the day and found the moon immediately in the evening. Once centered on the moon I could then adjust the red dot finder even more accurately and all of a sudden I was a celestial object finding machine!
I had another go at tracking down the M42 nebula but didn't have much luck. I decided to go for something a little closer to home - Mars. I loaded up Stellarium - a software program that shows me in real time exactly where everything should be in the sky. As it happened, Mars was supposed to be exactly between Betelgeuse and Capella (two bright stars) and Betelgeuse and Capella were forming a perfect right angled triangle with the moon:
It's not a great starchart but you get the idea. Fortunately Betelgeuse is the top left star in the Orion constellation which made finding it very easy. I was amazed how easily I could see Mars with the naked eye. Admittedly it looked just like any other point of light and would therefore be easily misidentified as a star but once you start maginifying the image, you can clearly see that it's a bit close to be a star:
Unfortunately my lack of camera mount means that the photo is marginally blurry. Also my camera adjusted for the mostly dark image by brightening everything up so mars looks like a big flash but you get the idea. Coupled with the fact that Mars isn't in a great position right now (Mars is close to Earth every two years - right now it is moving away from us) and this is a pretty good shot.
That done, I decided to take one last crack at the M42 nebula. For some reason none of the stars lined up with my star chart even though I knew that I must be in the right region because my red dot finder was now so accurate. I panned around a bit and then suddenly I saw something I recognised. There was a series of stars that looked suspiciously like something on my star chart, only upside down.
My telescope is a reflector so to some degree this makes a huge amount of sense since images in mirrors are flipped and all of a sudden I knew where I was. A little bit more adjusting and jackpot!
Look at the two blurry stars in the middle. The colouration in that area is the M42 nebula. Now, don't be too disheartened by this image. Bear in mind that the odds are stacked against me in getting a decent picture. By this point my hands are freezing - I can barely feel the camera, let alone hold it still. That accounts for the blurring. The major issue, from my limited understanding, is light pollution. Because I'm sat in the back garden, in South Manchester, there is a huge amount of light competing with the very small amount of light given off by M42. The fact that I can see anything at all is probably a miracle. Once I take the telescope out into the coutryside where there is no light pollution I should be able to get much better images of this nebula.
All in all this was a far more successful evening than Saturday night. I worked out how to track stuff down quite easily and saw some amazing sights. It's a shame that I can't get better shots with my camera but until I get a mount most of my pics will probably be quite blurry.
ttfn
Labels: Astronomy
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