OR: Cepheus etc.

Location: near Eagle Lake, TX
Date: Saturday December 11, 2004
Telescope: 14.5" f/5.4 Newtonian reflector
Seeing: 4/10
Visibility: Mag 6+ at zenith
Moon: none

This weekend Houston was treated to beautifully cool, clear skies.
Since I had a couple new accessories for my scope to play with, I
arrived at my Eagle Lake site well before sunset to get everything in
order. The new toys were a right-angle 80-mm finder and a tracking
platform. I was particularly interested to learn how the DSC
controller would compensate for the manual reset of the tracking
platform once it had completed its hour of travel. For this purpose
I'd printed out several sections of the Argo Navis controller manual
and brought them.

It was not to be. After doing a two-star alignment with the DSCs, I
tried to locate an object and it was way off. After retrying the
alignment twice and getting nowhere, I discovered that the center bolt
for the groundboard was a bit loose and this was causing the azimuth
encoder for the DSCs to not turn properly. Unfortunately I didn't have
a wrench on hand for that bolt, so I had to go without DSCs tonight and
skip learning the controller's procedure for how to deal with the
tracking platform.

No big deal, I had my new finderscope to help me star hop around.
Lumicon had shipped me this unit a few months ago but had accidentally
sent a mirror diagonal instead of the Amici prism erect-image one.
Well, I finally got it replaced and tried it for the first time
tonight. I have to say, the combination of a Telrad and an
Amici-equipped finder is a mighty fine setup. No more craning my neck
with my eye against the finder eyepiece. With the scope pointing high,
I can stand at the ground and use the Telrad's infinite eye relief to
point at a bright star near the object. Then step up the ladder,
rotate the finderscope's diagonal for comfortable use, and look in to
see a view that matches that drawn in the star atlas. Wonderful!

The Lumicon 11x80 unit is pretty nice. The view is sharp and most of
the brighter DSOs are easily visible. The focuser is the helical type
and isn't as friendly as a rack & pinion setup, but since it's a
finderscope you just set it and forget it. This unit accepts any 1.25"
eyepiece. The supplied crosshair eyepiece is a Kellner, so the AFOV is
rather restrictive but it serves the purpose. Though the crosshairs
are rather thick and don't have a gap in the middle like I was used to
with my Takahashi 7x50. Anyone know of any nice wide AFOV crosshair
eyepieces?

My only issues were with balance. At f/5.4, this scope has a long
moment arm and the required counterweighting changes dramatically with
where the scope is pointing in altitude. For example, with the
secondary cage fully loaded (80-mm finderscope, Telrad, Nagler 31), and
with the scope pointing at about 40=B0 or lower, I need a full fifteen
pounds of weights strapped to the mirror box! But with the same load
pointing near zenith, I have to remove all counterweights altogether.
In between, it requires using either the 5-lb or 10-lb pack alone.
Juggling all the counterweights was certainly the most annoying part of
the session, but I guess that's the price for using such a heavy
finderscope.

Tracking was provided by an Equatorial Platforms Compact Platform made
by Tom Osypowski. The design is somewhat different from the one I
bought from him three years ago for my 8" Dob. In his current design,
the swiveling table completely replaces the groundboard of the scope.
This has the advantage of less added height and it also eliminates the
possibility of the scope sliding off the platform, since the central
bolt now directly connects the two components. This was my first time
using it and I found the motor to be much quieter than that in my old
platform and in fact couldn't hear it while using the scope. A small
handheld controller box contains the power switch and speed control.
After aligning with Polaris using the optional polar alignment tool,
tracking was very good, allowing me to step away from the scope for ten
minutes and return to find the object still near the center while at
nearly 300x.

Seeing was quite lousy tonight, though transparency was excellent.
There were many shooting stars this night; I suppose it's because it
was near the peak of the Geminids shower.

Struve double star references below are to the catalog ordered by RA.
-------------------------------------
I=2E Solo Star Hopping

I had a couple hours to observe solo before friends were to show up, so
I flipped open Garfinkle's "Star-Hopping" to the chapter on November,
which includes a couple star hops in Cepheus and Cassiopeia.

Alderamin, Alpha Cephei, was the beginning of the hop. Garfinkle notes
that this blue-white star will be the pole star in about 5000 years.
James Kaler writes that Alderamin rotates very quickly, at least 125
times as fast as the Sun.

The page of the Millennium Star Atlas with Alderamin on it was chock
full of Struve double stars, so I took a good while to stroll through
these.

Struve 3874 is a nice dim double at 64x. At a higher power of 166x, a
blue-gold contrast is evident. At 284x, the blue component was
revealed to be a *very* tight double.

About 2=B0 south of Alderamin is a colorful line of three stars: gold,
white, and red. Struve 3937 is a rather tight double (1.5" in catalog)
just southeast of the northernmost (gold) star in the line. Split
nicely at 166x.

Not too far away and nestled within what looks like a supernova remnant
in the MSA (labeled Sh2-129), Struve 3909 is a close bright double at
166x (1.1" separation).

From here I worked my way towards the famous variable Mu Cephei.
Several doubles lay on the route. Struve 3887 is an attractive
equal-brightness pair at 90x. Struve 3913 is a much closer
equal-brightness double and required 166x to split but was better at
284x. It's surely closer than the 1.3" shown in the catalog. The
orbit has probably closed since that measurement.

Struve 3931 is a beautiful pair at 90x, consisting of a Mag 5.8 deep
orange primary with a dim Mag 10 companion. At the same power, Struve
3965 is an attractive close unequal pair, while close-by Struve 3964 is
a wide double with a tinge of blue-gold color contrast.

Just south of these doubles lay Mu Cephei, also known as Herschel's
Garnet Star. A red hue was evident even in the finderscope, but the
color was strikingly deep golden through the scope. It made all the
other stars in the field look uniform and plain white.

The next stop on Garfinkle's hop was the open cluster NGC 7160. I
found it to be unimpressive at 90x, consisting of a coarse arrangement
of only of a dozen or so stars. However, a point of interest is that
the eclipsing variable EM Cephei is one of the bright stars in the
middle of the cluster. It has a period of 0.81 days and a 0.15
magnitude variation.

Nearby Struve 4043 is a nice wide equal-brightness double, while Struve
4054 is a very pretty unequal blue-gold pair. Both of these were
observed at 90x.

I got a call on my cell, my friends had just turned onto nearby FM 102
and were looking for the dirt road leading to the site. Well, I had to
abort my star hop a bit early.


II. Some Showpieces

My friends arrived and so it was time to shift into showpiece gear.
Well, I can't say that I wasn't looking forward to my first time
observing all of these objects with my larger scope.

We began with M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. My finest view of that object
was in 2000, when I'd observed with my 8" in central Texas in very dry
conditions and under Mag 7 skies. Since then, I hadn't seen M31 even
close to as good. Well tonight I was treated to a view that pretty
much matched that view. At 64x, the galaxy extended completely across
the field. The dark dust lane was very defined and very long, with the
halo continuing for a good ways on the other side. On the M32 side,
the halo nearly reached the small satellite galaxy, which was also
quite bright. The other satellite M110 was a bright oval smudge.

I was curious to see how bright M74, one of the most difficult of the
Messier objects, would be in the 14.5". Well, at 90x though it was
easy to spot it was dimmer than I'd expected. The core was bright but
the spiral structure was only hinted at.

M33 was nicer. At 64x it covered most of the field and the two inner
spiral arms were quite obvious. The central region looked distinctly
like a bar connecting the two arms.

For a rich open cluster I turned the scope on to NGC 7789 in
Cassiopeia. At 64x it was a superb view, though it was difficult to
locate the boundaries of the cluster. For an even better treat we
observed the Double Cluster in Perseus. Though at 64x I was not able
to completely frame both clusters, it was still a fabulous view that I
could easily have stared at for twenty minutes. The denser cluster,
NGC 869, has a "mini-cluster" right in the center that forms a ring,
with a bright red member along it.

We then moved on to M42, which was absolutely stunning even if not high
enough for optimal viewing. The texture of the nebula immediately
surrounding the Trapezium was too complex to describe the details of.
It looked like smoke and I would not have been too surprised to see it
in motion. An OIII filter further enhanced the view. We used powers
ranging from 64x to 284x on this object. The E and F stars of the Trap
were not immediately obvious, suggesting poor seeing tonight.

Saturn was even lower in the sky and combined with the poor seeing did
not give a great view. The Cassini Division was just barely visible at
166x and even then only at the ansae. The equatorial belt was only
hinted at. I counted six probable moons around the planet.

A quick look at Castor confirmed the poor seeing. Though the double
was still attractive at 90x, the separation wasn't clean except during
brief moments.

Sirius was just dazzling. So bright that when I left the scope I
couldn't see hardly anything out of my right eye for a good ten
seconds. In addition, the poor seeing smeared the star into a sizable
disc and gave it the illusion of being very close, like how the Sun's
disc would perhaps look naked eye from Pluto.

The last object we looked at was the open cluster M37 in Auriga. A
comparison against the view I remember in my 8" is instructive. I will
quote from my observing log earlier this year when observing M11,
because the exact same comment applies to M37:

"In the 8", most of the members were a bit fuzzy due to their faintness
and the central red star was the only hard point. In the 14.5", nearly
*all* the members are hard bright points and the
central star is brilliant. What a difference."

On 12 Dec 2004 23:26:29 -0800, "Axel" wrote:

Location: near Eagle Lake, TX
Date: Saturday December 11, 2004
Telescope: 14.5" f/5.4 Newtonian reflector
Seeing: 4/10

Thanks for the report, Axel. Enjoyed it.

Les Blalock
http://www.txastro.com

I have to say, the combination of a Telrad and an Amici-equipped
finder is a mighty fine setup.

I would like to add that there's a downside to this arrangement.
Because the image in the finder is erect, it's reversed from what's in
the eyepiece. This made it difficult for me to move the scope in the
correct direction while looking through the finderscope, since the
reversed view is so ingrained in me. Even with practice, I'm not sure
I'll be able to quickly switch "on the fly" mentally between the two
views. For the star hops, I could see exactly where I wanted to go in
the finderscope but I had to really work to get the crosshairs centered
there. I now certainly have an appreciation for what dyslexic
individuals have to go through.

Strangely, I have no trouble whatsoever with using the Telrad, which of
course shows an erect-image as well. Maybe it's subconscious: whenever
I stare into an eyepiece I expect the reversed view.

Cheers