STARGAZING SESSION IN CALIRAYA , LAGUNA |
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May 7-8, 2005 by Jett Aguilar |
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A small group of 4 "ALPers" had their rendezvous We left for Caliraya at about 4:40 PM and arrived safely at our
destination at past 7 PM. During dinner, James completed his work on the
home-made dew heater for my 8 inch SCT with some help from Mon. A few days prior to
the trip I asked James' help about making a dew heater since I don't want a repeat of my
previous imaging sessions at Caliraya where I was dewed out by early morning.
James constructed the dew heater using 18 pieces of 0.47 ohms resistor (1 watt each) which
he stringed together in series and attached to a cigarette lighter adapter. I
brought an extra car battery with me and we tested the dew heater at the canteen while We then set up our equipment at our usual place at the bridge near the fishing pond. Polaris was easily visible and I did my polar alignment without difficulty although I can see ominous intermittent lightning flashes low in the horizon. James was not worried about the lightning flashes since the sky was mostly clear in our area. I got my newly acquired but second hand NGF motorized focuser (courtesy of Prasad) from James and attached it to my SCT without much trouble. It worked like a charm and will allow me to do fine focusing once I get the hang of using it. I also attached the dew heater around the outer diameter of my corrector plate and turned on the power ready for a full night (and morning) of imaging. Previously I made a list of the DSOs that I planned to image After M 104, I turned my attention to M 64, the Blackeye galaxy. This distant galaxy (25 million light years) is a small target to image and I decided to remove my O.63 focal reducer. Even without the focal reducer the galaxy was tiny on my LCD screen and I again had trouble focusing my image. I accumulated only a few images at almost 2 minute exposures each. The processed image is quite bad (poorly focused), but the galaxy with its "shiner" (characteristic dark lane) is still recognizable. I'll try to image it again next time.
After the disappointing Blackeye galaxy I re-attached my focal reducer and
slewed my scope towards Sagittarius which was previously covered with clouds to image the
delightful and colorful Trifid nebula (M 20). Everything worked well this time and I
believe I did justice to the beauty of this object. The three dust lanes are
prominently I ended my session by imaging another colorful object, the Dumbbell nebula (M 27) in Vulpecula. This is one of the nebulas closest to us (1,000 light years) and its brightness and moderate size (8 arc minutes) makes it an easy object to image. It was almost twilight and I had to hurry my shots to capture its colors. I noticed some tracking error and inadequately focused stars but the bluish and reddish nebulosities easily came out. We left for Manila mid-morning after a short rest with a feeling of fulfillment and raring to go to back again next month, weather permitting.
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For Comments jkty@astroleaguephils.org |
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