Dew Buster project is DONE!

Yes it is true,
last night I officially finished the three year dew buster upgrade (cowers in fear). A fun project, learned a lot, thanks to John Flamini for the use of his awesomely constructed resistor ladder-block which enabled quick soldering, sweatshop fashion! Installed a cigarette socket for the dew buster near my control panel, I just couldn't bring myself to cut that (albeit fat and ugly) cigarette plug off the new dew buster. Plus it is fused, so I wanted to keep that feature. Which reminds me to add 'fuse all electronic lines this winter' to my todo list.

I built three heat wraps, one for each end of the optical finder, and one for the eyepiece, large enough to handle the 31mm hand grenade. All tested out perfectly last night, which makes me very happy, now I actually have time to think about what I need to pack before BFSP for a change.

Here's a shot of the complete system last night, the cigarette socket isn't quite visible, but the dew buster and rats nest of wires are. I'd like to clean that up somehow, another winter project!

Quick viewing from my light-polluted location, daughter Kelly and I whipped around to the following:

ET Cluster

carbon star in Cass

albireo

M27

coathanger

and Jupiter through the trees. 4 moons and 2 bands is all, but not bad for shooting through the trees.

September 14, 2009 2100-2200 UT
Millcreek, PA

Great evening was had by all, successful project, all prepared now for BFSP '09 baby!

See y'all there!
Bill

Observing Report April 1, 2009

It was just me, Tom and my friend Missy, but the skies were fantastic even with the moon. I even got my first real good split on Gamma Leonis! Anyways the items we observed were:

Saturn and 4 of it's moons

our own moon

Eta Persei, Gamma Andromedae, Tau Canis Major cluster, the "winter Albireo" just above former, Gamma Leonis and previously stated, Cor Caroli, and I think it was Castor that we looked at in Gemini - for stars

globular clusters were - M53, M3, M13, M68 and M5

open clusters were - M103, M34, M37, M44, M48, M93, M41, M50, M46, M47, NGC 2423, the double open in Perseus, NGC 2169 in Orion and Stargate and the Arrow in Virgo (if they're considered opens).

galaxies - M81/82, M108, M109, M106, M101, M51, M64, M65/66, M84/86, M49 and M104.

and also the following nebulae - M97, M42/43, NGC 2392 Eskimo, NGC 3242 the Ghost of Jupiter, and NGC 4361 in Corvus.

Those are the ones I can remember but there were probably more. Did I forget anything, Tom?

Is was a beautiful night and we stayed out until about midnight before coming in to hang out around the table for an hour of friendly chit chat. Thanks to both Tom and Missy for coming out!

Tom and Tracey's Messier Observing Report March 22, 2009

At Tracey's place, we had a super-clear night, but very cold so I only lasted
until around midnight. The comet has really faded down to just a fuzzball with
a very faint tail, in Gemini.
So we started kind of a mini-Messier marathon, hitting the western sky early
after Venus (picture enclosed that Tracey took with her cell phone thru the
18 inch)....it's slightly fuzzy due to all the atmosphere.

Hit Messiers 77, the Andromeda group, 45, 34, 76 52 and 103, 35 early.....
Then Tracey using her 13 inch hit all those in the south, 93, 50, 46, 47. 41, 79.....
we both hit 42, 43 combination. (forgot 78).....and Saturn of course.
Then after a warming break, we walked thru the 16 Virgo Supercluster galaxies
plus M 3 and 53. At which time I had to quit because of the cold temperatures,
well below freezing.
So Tracey will have to finish the report.................

At the end of the night Zachary and I viewed all but 10 of the Messier's. Five of them just because I did not feel like dragging the scope around the other side of the house at the end, (could kick myself now). We had already moved it three times thru the night and the sun just came up too quickly. So in addition to Tom's list I can add:
M33 - almost positvie I saw it, twice
78
1
37, 36, 38
48
44, 67
95, 96, 105, 65, 66
81, 82
97, 108
109
40 - and a very nice fuzzball in the same field, NGC 4195
106, 94, 63
51
101
53, 64
3
68
83
104
5
13 - along with the galaxy NGC 6207 in same field
92
57, 56
29, 39
27
71
107, 12, 10, 14, 9, 19, 62
4, 80
6, 7
11, 26
16
17, 18, 24, 25, 23
21, 20
8
28, 22
15


So the only missed ones were 74 in Pisces, 54, 55, 69, 70, 75 in Sagittarius, 2, 72, 73 in Aquarius and M30. Jupiter and the crescent moon put on a spectacular showing just before sunrise as well. Next time I will get more!! The skies turned out beaitful as the night wore on.

Randy Cox Observing Report - 03/21/09

All,

I also enjoyed our trip to The Starshine Observatory (Hap’s Farm). Hap has a very nice gentleman’s farms, with lots of land and very dark skies. Larry, Jim and I arrived at Hap’s shortly after 6:00 PM. We scouted the locale for a good spot and we were set-up by sundown.

The sky cleared shortly after our arrival and we were blessed to have average to above average seeing and transparency (as predicted by the Clear Sky Clock). I had a very difficult time predicting the weather for Saturday evening. In the end, the combination of visible satellite observations, several different weather prediction models and the clear sky clock, all came together.

We have decided to monetarily reward Mr. Danko, the creator of the Clear Sky Clock. His model, which uses data from the Canadian Meteorological Center, is almost always correct (more accurate than our local boys). Each time that we use the Clear Sky Clock to predict a clear evening, and the model predicts and s an accurate astronomical forecast, we (Larry, Jim and I) will each donate a dollar to the Clear Sky Clock fund. At the end of the year, we will forward our collected funds to Mr. Danko.

Larry had a great list of objects that was published in Starry Night. In addition to Larry’s list, I generated the following list of targets:

M53, M64 Black Eye Galaxy, Sleeping Beauty Galaxy, M106, M3, M51 Whirlpool Galaxy, Question Mark Galaxy, M63 Sunflower Galaxy, M94 Croc's Eye Galaxy, M102 Spindle Galaxy, M13 Hercules Globular Cluster, Great Hercules Cluster, M92, M65, M66, M95, M96, M50 Heart-shaped Cluster, M42 Orion Nebula, NGC884, M93, M101 Pinwheel Galaxy, M81 Bode's Galaxy, M82 Cigar Galaxy, Ursa Major A, M93, M104 Sombrero Galaxy, M49, M60, M61 Swelling Spiral and Saturn.

Around midnight, the good Doctor began working at a feverish pace. In the remaining three hours, Larry observed many of the viewable Messier items.

We had a wonderful evening! Special thanks goes to our host, Hap, thank you for your hospitality. I look forward to visiting Starshine Observatory in the near future.

Randy Cox

Larry Kuklinski Observing Report - 03/21/09

Yesterday was a crowning jewel of a night for myself, Randy Cox, Jim Kalvota and Hap.
The former three of us met at Hap's farm near Cochranton.
The night sky as predicted by Randy was near perfect until about 02:00 when weather moved in from the north. Hap is a club member with a burning interest in the night sky. In conversation, he is interested in expanding his passion with educational programs for the schools as well as establishing a permanent observation post on his beautiful, unobstructed land situated east of Meadville.

Randy had his 12" RCX up and running before twilight while I had issues with my Obsession. Before long the sky tuned dark and we were up in running.

The British magazine Sky at Night featured an Observing Challenge in their March issue. They presented a list of some 40 stunning sights to see in 8 hours. Because of the clouds we were able to view for nearly six hours. We missed several of the late sites because they had not risen: Summer Triangle, Epsilon Lyrae, Albereo, M27 and M29. Had the sky cooperated we would have completed the entire list.

Well what did we see? Early on we kicked off with the Orion Nebula and The Running Man Nebula just above the former. Other easy targets included the Pleiades, Saturn and its moon Titan, Aldebaran and the Hyades Open Cluster. The variable star Algol was on the list and the magazine asks us to reobserve it on March 25th and compare notes. In Andromeda we caught NGC752 before setting. M76 or the Little Dumbell Nebua was our next challenge and unfortunately we were unable to visit its brighter namesake M27.Staying in Perseus we moved over to M34 an open cluster. Over in the northwest we glimpsed the stunning Double Cluster. Rounding out the early sky was M38 in Auriga.

The March Observing Challenge was divided into four sessions of ten objects spaced apart in time. The sessions were: 20:10; 22:10; 00:00 and 03:30.

The second session included: M36, M37, M35 the Rosette Nebula (with an O3 filter), NGC2264 (The Christmas Tree Cluster), M48, M44, the twin star Castor and finally The Eskimo Nebula. We spent a lot of time on NGC2392. It was the battle of the scopes. My image of the Eskimo was brighter, but Randy's showed better resolution. Another planetary nebula, not on the list was The Ghosts of Jupiter. A most beautiful site in both scopes.

Next session included beautiful M13 and of course M92 and M5. Following the list we continued on to M95, M96, M66, M65 and M64, the Black Eye Galaxy. Last for this session was Alcor and Mizar.

The final session was scheduled for 03:30, but was cut short around 02:00 because of cloud cover rolling in from the north. The last object was spotted by Randy and it was the beautiful Ring Nebula.

The night was my best observing session. Besides the Observing Challenge numerous other objects were spotted and for completeness sake I will list some of them: M106, M104, "M40 the double star", M51, M97, numerous galaxies in the "Virgo Coma Cluster"-WOW.

In all it was a great night sky, no dew, no frost just some great fellow observers.
It is these attempted near all night sessions that kindle the flames of interest in Astronomy.

Hap, thank you for your hospitality.

Sincerely,

Larry Kuklinski

Observing report - March 15, 2009

So I decided to step out back last night and observe to get away from that light and to "practice" for the Messier Marathon. I figure if I freshen up last night and tonight, then Tuesday night I'm going to give it a try. It looks like I will have great weather so far. Except the moon, but it won't clear my trees until 3:30 or so and then it's just the last quarter. I'm going to do it just in case we don't have any clear skies when the moon's new. So anyway this is what I looked at last night, mostly off the top of my head. Tonight I will "plan" a little to pick up the ones that I missed or aren't real familiar with (Virgo), and the ones missed due to the moon.

M1
M13
M31/32
M33
M34
M35
M36
M37
M38
M41
M42
M43
M44
M45
M46
M47
M48
M50
M51
M52
M63
M67
M76
M78
M79
M80
M81
M94
M97
M101
M103
M106
M108
M109
M110

I also looked at NGC's

7789 - open cluster
457 - ET cluster
2392 - Eskimo
3877 - galaxy in UMaj
4565 - galaxy in Coma
3190 - Leo
2903 - Leo
3242 - Ghost of Jupiter

Dew Buster to the Rescue!

Hey guys,
Just thought I'd share a little construction retrofitting project I've been (lazily) working on. It's the Dew Buster from Ron Keating http://www.dewbuster.com/ Twas recommended to me by none other than our very own John Flamini as he's tried just about everything on the market. He's the "goto" guy to validate if you have a brand new invention or if someone has already made that product, lol.



Anyway, so I'm retrofitting this Dew Buster to my 24", so far so good. Last night I finished up the cage, mounted a 4-port RCA jack thing, you can see on the lower right there, very close to where the rear set of trusses join at the cage. That way there will only be a short cable hanging out of my trusses. I plan to thread the wires up through somehow, kinda difficult once you install the threaded inserts. Please click these small pics, larger ones will load allowing you to see the detail.

So, here it is, and here is my little work area showing the tools I'm using. The Weller soldering iron is a GODSEND! I highly recommend throwing away that cheap hunk of $2 iron you typically get at Walmart (no offense Walmart) and investing in one of these babies. From pluggin in to ready to solder in about 2 seconds. Plus the extreme fine tip allows you to get in really tight areas, normally inaccessable wth the other junk.

Again, click the pic for a larger version.

So, one heating wrap done, for the 50mm finder objective, three more to go. I plan to have one for the eyepiece end of the finder, one for the largest EP I own (the 31mm Nagler hand grenade, which will also work on the smaller 1-1/4" EP's) and possibly one for the telrad.

But, the hard part is done, I believe, in building the mount for the 4-port RCA thing and installing it to the cage. Just need the other three wraps and mounting the controller to the mirror box. I am hoping that my currently installed 12Ah SLA battery will handle the extra load. It is currently only powering a Primary fan and the Secondary dew heater from Astrosystems http://www.astrosystems.biz/, which works like a charm btw.

Clear skies and See y'all later!
Bill Mitchell

Tracey's Observing Report for Monday 2/16/09

Well the skies were perfect! The only reason I am done so soon is because my eyepieces all have frost on them and the tel-rad is completely frozen over. It's pretty chilly, but other than that it's just perfect (except for that damn light down at the corner). I'm just going to give a list of what I saw unless there was something special to note about it.

S Cephei - found it in about 10 seconds, which surprised the heck out of me. Looked beautiful of course, not as red as I have seen it before, but still good.
M81/82 galaxies in Ursa Major
M97 the owl nebula - I really must invest in an OIII filter.
NGC 7789 Caroline Herschel's cluster
WZ Cass
Eta Cass - one of my favorite doubles
NGC 457 - he's doing a headstand
Iota Cass - only the first split
M31/32/110 Andromeda
M34 - pretty open appears to be full of doubles
Eta Persei - another favorite double
M35 open cluster in Gemini
NGC 2266 another open in Gemini
NGC 2392 the Eskimo/Clown Face - put high power on this and was actually impressed
NGC 2269 the Cone Nebula
NGC 2237 the Rosette Nebula
M37 - my favorite open in Auriga
M36 - open cluster in Auriga
M38 - open cluster in Auriga
M45 - all the stars had neblosity - it think it was frost on the eyepiece ;-)
M1 - the crab nebula
NGC 2169 the XY chromosome as Tom calls it - my 6" was too small to make it look like that, but this new scope sure does!
M78 - two headlights in the fog
M42/43 - Orion nebula
M41 - open cluster in Canis Major
M46/NGC 2438 - the new scope is big enough to see the planetary in this open cluster!!
M47 - open cluster next to M46
M44 the beehive cluster
M67 - open cluster in Cancer...I think Tom said one of the oldest??
NGC 2903 - one of the brightest galaxies in Leo Major
Gamma Leonis - almost split it tonight, at least I could tell it was two stars, it kinda came and went - maybe an aperature stop would help this one.
Saturn with 4 visible moons
Cor Caroli
NGC 4565 took about 2 minutes to find but worth it!
I saw 2 quick meteors and one that was bright enough to leave a green tail for 3-4 seconds over an area about 6-7 degrees. All meteors were heading from the zenith westward.

I put the scope away around 10:30 due to frost. I need to make a dew shield for the Tel-rad on this scope. I forgot just how necessary this is. I also am going to have to move the Tel-rad on the scope. I need to move it closer to the focuser and back a little bit. It sits too high and too far forward for me to use without leaning on the scope. Next time it's nice I think I am going to try to collimate it too and then I think I will be very happy. Very glad that I purchased this scope, I can tell I am going to have hours of fun this summer!