The Caldwell Catalogue

Here's something I didn't know ... there exists a list of objects similar to the Messier Catalogue, but made with the amateur astronomer in mind. (As opposed to just being a list of fuzzies that are "not-comets")

This list is called the Caldwell Catalogue, and is named after its creator - Sir Patrick Moore (huh?  What-the?)  He used his other surname 'Caldwell', since the M for Messier was already taken.

This list consists of a better mix of interesting objects that are achievable for the amateur astronomer with moderate equipment, and deliberately includes an even mix of Southern as well as Northern hemisphere objects.  There are 109 of them, to give it the same flavour, with a mix of planetary nebulae, open and globular clusters, galaxies and nebulae.

I found this when I was downloading the Messier Catalogue from AstronomyLogs.com.  There was this other PDF there for the Caldwell Catalogue, and a quick trip to wikipedia cleared up the question.

So now I have a new list of objects to start collecting, well - the more Southern ones, anyway.

Getting cold out there

Friday, 8 April.  2230-0030

A cold cloudy day fined up during the evening and the sky was too clear to pass up, so another few hours on the front step was called for.

The transparency and seeing were great, I'd say about a 8/10 for both.

The obvious first target for the night was Jupiter.  At its highest point on the ecliptic in the North at the time.  These are some of the best views of Jupiter I have ever enjoyed, tonight the air was clear enough that the image in the 6mm ep was nice and still.  There was no GRS visible, but I could easily make out four bands across the face of the planet - one smaller and one larger in the North and South hemispheres.  As always the planet and moons make a spectacular image - tonight two on the left in close and two on the right out further, at about a 30 degree tilt.

I had a quick look around Leo for M95, M96, M105, M65 and M66 but couldn't find anything standing out easily so I'll park those as targets for the Dark Sky night planned for May.

Took a moment to check the collimation of Dobby by pushing the focus way out while looking at a star - the dark circle of the secondary within the blur of the primary mirror looked about dead centre so I'm thinking that it is fine.  The blur of the primary mirror seems to show some marks that could do with a clean.

Mars was next, as it stood out so clearly in the Eastern sky.  The 17mm ep showed a bright orange disk, but no detail was evident.  I then tried the 6mm ep and in the moments of stillness there seemed to be some shadows on the disk that hinted at surface detail.  Awesome.  No white on the poles evident, but I think they are small at the moment due to it being summer in the facing hemisphere.

 

Tried some of the filters; numbers #21, #12, #58A didn't do much other than alter the colour.  #80A made it worse, losing what detail there was, and #25 is way too red.  #56 turned the image green, but did seem to bring out a little more detail.

 

Hey, what is that brighter star a bit further down? OH!  That's Saturn!  I forgot that was going to be there.  What a beautiful view!  The 6mm ep gave an amazing view when the air settled down.  Although no bands are visible, the rings look fantastic and I love being able to see the dark line on the right of the image as the shadow of the planet falls across the ring where it goes behind the disc.  There was a faint line visible on the left of the rings that may have been the Casini division, but it was not that clear tonight.  

 

The final target for the night was M4, selected on the basis of being close by in Scorpio to where I was already looking at Mars and Saturn.  Another chance to work on my star-hopping skills, I did a bit of research out on the step on my phone checking out GoogleSky and FreeCharts.com to find the right series of stars.  It turned out to be quite dim in tonights sky, but I could make out the central bar structure as described in the star maps.  I found it first in my 30mm ep as a small faint group of stars, and then I zoomed in progressively with the 17mm, 13mm and 6mm eps.  All were still faint, but I could resolve the cluster of stars and the structure.  The 13mm seemed the best balance of seeing the whole cluster and best brightness. 

It was getting colder, so I went inside finally at about 12:30am.

Setting up an Equatorial scope

Sunday, 20 March

So, T has this 6" Reflector on a equatorial mount that needed some TLC and practice setting up - therefore this Sunday just gone we got together and had a 'learn everything you can about Eq scopes' session.

First up I had to correct my mis-remembering of the types of mounts - I had them backwards for some reason.  So to clarify, Alt-Az mounts are Altitude/Azimuth mounts giving your basic Up/Down and Left/Right motion like Dobby.  Equatorial mounts (or 'German Equatorial Mounts' as we learnt from YouTube) are the same but mounted on a third axis that is tilted to be perpendicular to the axis of the Earth.  The Altitude and Azimuth are then named the Declination and Right Ascension respectively.

After watching a few YouTube clips,we had all this down and were ready to look at setting up the mount. We worked out setting up the axis that pointed due South, and raised to about 37.4 degrees (for Melbourne), and found which knobs controlled the RA and Declination.  T had the great idea to label everything (as in the photos below).  We also worked out the balacing of the tube and the counter-weight and after all that it looked like it was ready for use.  Not as impossible as it first seemed.

We also decided that it was worth risking taking the primary mirror out for a cleaning, as it was pretty dirty.  I had already watched a couple of clips about this, so we (well, T had the screwdriver) undid the screws holding it in and carefully removed the mirror cap and then released the primary mirror from the cap.  We first tried using my air-brush to blow the dust and fibres off the mirror, but they had been there for a while and were not going to shift.  I then provided a large container of luke-warm water with a drop of washing liquid in it and some cotton make-up swabs.  T carefully and *very* lightly swabbed the surface of the mirror with the cotton.  A change of water was soon required, as it was full of floaties, and after a second swabbing the mirror was looking like new.  We dried it off with my airbrush, using the air-stream to  blow the water off the edge and evaporate any drops.  The result was spot and streak free. 

We then started discussing the inevitable collimation of the scope, and I observed that the primary didn't have a centring dot on it, so we made one using a rig of  two rulers taped together at right angles that allowed us to determine the centre and gently press a dot of black electrician's tape on to the mirror.  

Reassembly was simple, as was re-reassembly after we noticed a bit still needed to go in behind the mirror and had been left out.  Fortunately the secondary was still clean, so we didn't have to try removing that.

That left us with re-collimation of the mirrors.  Again, I had watched several YouTube clips about this and I had made a basic collimation tool with an old 35mm canister with the end cut of and a small hole in the cap.  Looking through it I could see the mirrors were out of alignment, but I couldn't see the collimation tool cap, which made it harder to align everything.  I blu-tac'd some aluminium foil onto the cap and that helped a lot.  Working together we adjusted the primary mirror until we could see the concentric circles we were told to expect in the YouTube videos and the paper instructions that came with the scope.  We also tried without the film tube and worked on the alignment by eye - literally, as we then were seeing our own eye in the reflection.  Hopefully this adjustment is as accurate as it seemed, as it looked pretty good.  When T gets it out on a night and checks a point source, we'll know for sure.

And that was it.  Mounted, cleaned and collimated.  A good afternoon's work!

Jupiter quickie

Tuesday, 15 March
With Jupiter in opposition I grabbed another chance to drag Dobby out on the front step at about 2200 for another look.

I couldn't spot the GRS tonight (get it?), just didn't time it right. Tried a couple of the filters to try to improve the contrast and enjoyed a long look at the bands.  87A seems to get the best results for my eye.

Wrapped up when clouds rapidly rolled in.   

Jupiter in opposition

A hot Autumn night! It's the 9th of March, and yet it is still 30℃ out there at 1:30am!

Jupiter is in opposition, it is a beautiful night with great transparency, but the seeing leaves a lot to be desired. There is a lot of shimmer going on.
However, as I stared at Jupiter the seeing occasionally cleared enough to focus on the main bands and see some other cloud detail. I also was able to make out the Great Red Spot, which is great - I'm very happy with that. You get spoilt by the photos of the GRS, it doesn't as great or red from here.  But I'm still sure I found it and am calling that a tick!
Started with the 30mm to dial in the finder scope, the progressed to the 17mm and then settled on the 2x Barlow and the 6mm EP.
Also tried filters 89A, 86, and 22 with some success. I think 86 was the best at showing some extra cloud detail tonight.
The four moons were clear, one on the left of the FOV and the other three making a flat triangle to the right.
Mars was up, but lower on the horizon where the seeing was even worse due to the hot air.

Achievement unlocked! Five in a row!

Did it! Got out of bed at 5am and Weis and I viewed the cosmic wagon train of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury and the Moon stretched across the sky.

As predicted by Stellarium

We even got a bonus ISS sighting at 0530 as well - well, Weis did, I was distracted fiddling with the camera and didn't realize what she had spotted.

When we first got out Jupiter was clear to the left of the pine tree, and then heading Eastwards there was Spica, then Mars, then the bushes and fortunately Saturn was on the other side of those.

Jupiter

Spica and Mars

Acturis and Saturn

 
We checked out Jupiter, Mars and Saturn with Dobby - I'm really enjoying the range of EPs I now have (even if they are simple Skywatchers) Used the 17mm, the 8mm and then the 8mm plus the Barlow on Saturn. Magnificent views as the sky continued to offer great seeing and transparency!  I would estimate the seeing as an 8/10 and the transparency could have been 10/10.

Jupiter was beautiful.  The bands clearly visible and the four moons clear with three on the right of the planet and one to the left.  No details were clear on Mars, but it was bright and very salmon coloured.  Tried a few of the filters, but they didn't help to reveal any extra details this time.  Saturn at high magnification with the Barlow and the 8mm was absolutely gorgous. 

I took a few photos using 6 second exposures, the best of which are below.  Some trailing is evident.  I set the ISO to 100, use manual focusing and let the camera determine its own apeture.

By now Venus and Mercury were rising, but Dobby couldn't get the right angle on those.So I took the finder scope off Dobby and used that hand-held to check out Venus.  Always like seeing the phases of Venus - this time it was gibeous.

Then a thin crescent moon rose and I snapped a bunch of photos as dawn broke, and it was clearly time to wrap up the observations and head back to bed to grab a few more hours of sleep.

Scorpio and Saturn

A great shot of Scorpio

Venus and Mercury over the house

Shot of the evening: Venus, Mercury and the crescent Moon

Another fine night

05/06 February
 
Finally the clouds have parted for a promised week of decent summer weather, and I've been able to get out for another Friday night with Dobby.
Being the same time and only a week after the last observations, much the same part of the sky was on offer. So I started with another attempt at viewing M41 in Canis Major. This time I started with the 30mm EP, and a better idea of where to look, and managed to find it promptly. Its a large object, a beautiful open cluster, that fills most of the EP.  Tried also with the 25mm  and the 17mm EPs, the 25mm gives a great view but the 17mm is too close, loosing the effect of the cluster.

I then returned to M42 with the 30mm.  I'm loving the FOV on this EP.  The seeing tonight is about a 9/10, very little twinkle happening.  I then tried the 17mm and 6mm with and without the Barlow, trying to make out more detail.  Mostly seemed the same, just closer.  Perhaps darker skies will help. 

M43 is another part of the same nebula complex, but I'm having trouble discerning it.  Either I can't see it from here, or I just can't tell the two apart.  More research is required, I'd say.

Checked out Jupiter again, looked great but still can't identify the GRS, if it is visible tonight.  Tried the filters again - looks like the Yellow and Light Blue are probably the best results tonight.

Then went looking for Omega Centauri (NGC 5139), but it was down behind the roofline for Dobby.  So I checked out the Jewel Box Cluster in Crux, which was beautiful with a small cluster of red/orange stars amid a cloud of tightly packed diamonds.  View through the 30mm, 17mm and the 13mm EPs.  The 13mm seemed best in this case.

Then I moved Dobby down the path towards the gate.  The street lights are brighter there, but I had my back to them to look South.  Now I could see Omega Centauri - I star hopped from B Centauri to E Centauri and then drifted a bit further on and could clearly see the fuzzy blob.  Using different EPs:

30mm - A cloud-like misty blob
17mm - Could start to resolve some stars
13mm - Not bright, but can see a magnificent cloud of stars
8mm - About full FOV now.   Absolutely awesome.

I'll have to revisit this object in a nice dark sky.