Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

M3 with Intelligent Denoise and cropping...

I don’t mean “where” as in “location.” I know where they are, they are in the backyards of a lot of imagers old and new. No, muchachos, I’m a-talking about where I stand with smartscopes and what their manufacturers are up to…

Oh, before I forget—easy for me to do these days—happy new year, y’all! I decided to forego the summing-up of last year I’ve been accustomed to doing as a January AstroBlog entry these many years. Doesn’t seem to be much point to it anymore. If you are curious as to what your Old Uncle was up to in ’24 (for some unfathomable reason), just cruise through 12 monthly installments. Easy enough to do. Ain’t like the olden days when there was a new article here every fricking week.

Anyhoo, this will be a fairly short one…maybe…y’all know how Unk do run on. Mainly because a lot went on at Chaos Manor South the previous week. Beginning with Winter Storm Enzo, which brought Possum Swamp more snow than we’ve seen since that hallowed, long-ago year of 1973. Then there was (amateur radio) Winter Field Day, which I was determined to participate in (and not from home) despite the cold. Finally, I had assignments from two astronomy magazines to get out the door. Be that as it may be… following the little old AstroBlog’s renaissance, I swore to get an article up every month, so here one is…

Unk

M33 stacked and processed manually.

Moi? One of those above-mentioned assignments was a Sky & Telescope Test Report on the ZWO SeeStar S30 smartscope. What did I think? I thought—well, you’ll have to wait for an upcoming issue of Sky & Telescope to find out exactly what I thought. But I will say this: the tiny 30mm APO amazed me. How? It allowed me to (easily) take images of legendarily faint nebulae from my backyard. Ones I didn’t think were doable from Chaos Manor South. Objects like the Heart and Soul Nebulae, The California Nebula, The Flaming Star Nebula, and the Horsehead. Scary dim ones like that. All fell before the S30 as dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly.

What else was notable about my time testing the S30? It showed me this scope (and the S50) are capable of a bit more than I thought they were. I am lazy these latter days, but I thought I should at least take a shot at downloading the fits subframes from the telescope and stacking and processing them manually with Siril (the free image stacking/processing program). That process will be the subject of a future blog post but let me say even for your bumbling old Uncle it wasn’t that difficult and hinted at what the S50 and S30 are capable of in skilled hands.

What didn’t I have time to do? Between the need to get those articles done, and the storm, I haven’t been able to get my “new” Unistellar Equinox back under the stars. Believe you me, that is Unk’s number one (astronomy) priority for the coming month.

ZWO

Is ZWO the king of smartscopes? Well, maybe in a way. Their two units, the S50 and S30, are inexpensive and are in the hands of a lot of amateur astronomers, old and new. Their app is also full featured and capable. Frankly, the company had a leg up thanks to years of work on their ASIAIR, which is a Wi-Fi-enabled widget that can turn your conventional telescope and goto mount and camera into something like a smartscope. Applying this technology to the SeeStars has made the little smartscopes nearly impossible to beat for their prices and ensures they really punch above their weight class. The company also continues to update their app/features at a nearly dizzying rate.

So, what’s the latest with the ZWO? A lot of folks are speculating about a “better” SeeStar. Maybe one with more aperture, say 80mm, yeah, an S80. Bigger chip. Built-in wedge for equatorial mode. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see some/all of that happen. But… Size doesn’t scale linearly with aperture, alas, as somebody who’s only gone up a mere 2 inches of aperture from 10-inches to 12-inches sure can tell you. And neither does price, my friends.

20mm more aperture makes the S50 considerably larger and heavier than the S30. Goin’ another 30mm larger than the S50 will do the same—on steroids. The result will be noticeably less portable and quite a bit more expensive. I would be surprised if ZWO could bring in an 80mm f/5 for 1000 US$ and keep the quality comparable to the 30/50. Going to a good 80mm APO objective will eat a lot of money all by its little self. Still, could happen. Probably will. However, the S30 is still new, and I don’t think ZWO will want to rain on its parade too soon.

What has the company done in addition to releasing Little Sister, the S30? Hoo-boy! They’ve added a feature to their app (same app works with both scopes) some thought was pie-in-the-sky: Mosaic (“Framing”) Mode. The SeeStars can now assemble multiple images into larger ones. The feature is easy to use; you just stretch and rotate the image “frame” in the star atlas. 

And ZWO ain't done yet updating their app yet. Not hardly. Next up according to the company is Equatorial Mode, which will make it possible to tilt the scope over to polar align it. That done, pictures will not suffer from the problems of field rotation inherent in altazimuth scope mounts. Some users have already been able to use EQ mode by tilting the scope over to point at the Celestial Pole and “fooling” the app. An official equatorial mode will make workarounds unnecessary and will also add polar alignment tools. ZWO says this will be in the app’s next update.

Unistellar

Equinox 2

Unistellar divides their five smartscope offerings into two classes, the Expert range and the Odyssey range. The former containing the new Equinox 2 and the Evscope 2 (which possesses an electronic eyepiece). The latter, their Odyssey, Odyssey Pro, and an Odyssey with a red tube and mount. They are all similar, though, with the big difference being the Odysseys have 85mm mirrors while the Experts are equipped with 114mm primaries (all the scopes are reflectors).

The latest? The Equinox 2, which improves on the original with a more advanced, higher resolution imaging chip and improved optics. My take from what little I’ve been able to do with my Equinox 1 so far? They are well-made telescopes, and it’s nice to have more aperture and focal length. The app that controls them is fine. I do wish it featured a Station Mode ala’ ZWO that would allow you to connect the Equinox to your network rather than to your smart device directly. But all in all, works well. Stay tuned for more on Unistellar when I gain more experience with this impressive instrument.

Dwarf Labs

All I know about the Dwarf II and III is what I’ve read on the Internet and seen on YouTube. I’ve yet to get my paws on one of these odd-looking little Smartscopes. That said, I haven’t been overly impressed by what I’ve seen of the Dwarf II’s output. The Dwarf III? That may be a different story. The new scope (Dwarf Labs is taking pre-orders now) appears to produce impressive wide-field images with its 35mm f/4.2 optics.  One big plus is it is EQ Mode ready and includes polar alignment software in its app. The app seems a lot more like ZWO’s take than Unistellar’s, containing a star atlas and other things comparable to what ZWO offers.

Caveats?  If you can believe what you read on the Cloudy Nights BBS, Dwarf Labs has had significant problems producing the Dwarf 3. Including QA problems. At any rate, when I last checked, there’s a 4 – 5 month waiting list.  

Vaonis

The latest from Vaonis, the Hestia, is an inexpensive ($300) smartscope. Or maybe it's not a smartscope or a telescope of any kind. It's a device that attaches to your smartphone and allows limited imaging of the sky. Maybe "advanced telephoto adapter that runs from an app on your phone" is a better description than "telescope." At this time, it is capable of producing decent solar and lunar images. It can image deep sky objects, too, but due to the Hestia's lack of tracking, they are mostly in the "I'm surprised you got anything at all" category. Vaonis says they intend to introduce a tracking mount for the widget in the future. We'll see. 

Celestron

I’ve still haven't used heavy-hitter Celestron’s Origin smartscope. Well, that ain’t quite right. I’ve used pieces and parts. Celestron, you see, was able to put a smartscope together from off-the-shelf/near off-the-shelf components. The mount is based on their time-tested Evolution Wi-Fi enabled mount. The tube is a downsized model of the Rowe-Ackerman astrograph— this model is 6-inches. The camera mounts to the scope via Celestron’s good, old Faststar corrector mounting. The app is based on SkySafari—Celestron has had a long working relationship with the SkySafari folks.

Celestron's Origin.

So, is the sum greater than the parts? Based on what I’ve seen and heard thus far, “yes.” The Origin appears to work well and produce impressive photos. But… Yes, there’s that dadgum “but.” The price, $4000, seems a trifle much for an altazimuth-only (currently) mounting, and a fairly low-resolution 6.7-megapixel camera.

Might Celestron fix some or all of this? Maybe. I haven't heard new smartscope news from them lately. The possibilities are there, however. There’s no reason to think the mount couldn’t be used in equatorial mode with an updated app. The Faststar camera mounting means a more advanced camera could replace the current one or be offered as an option. And the price might be brought down some after Celestron (Synta) earns back development costs.

Me? I am impressed by the Origin’s images…but… Remember, all I’ve seen is pictures of the scope. But… it looks to me as if we are getting into the realm of too-big telescopes, telescopes I am too lazy to use or literally unable to use anymore.

STOP THE PRESSES! The word on the street, the rumor, the scuttlebutt is the next release of the Origin app/firmware will provide support for equatorial mode and the StarSense autoguider.

On the Horizon at Chaos Manor South…

As above, my next goal astro-wise is to get friendly with the Unistellar Evolution. When? When it ain’t so freaking cold. Oh, its warmed up compared to our frigid conditions last week, but—wouldn’t you know it?—the warming trend has brought clouds with it.

 

 

 

Last season's SeeStar shot...

Muchachos, your old Uncle had been keeping a weather eye peeled—literally. The forecasts for Christmas Eve had been gyrating wildly: “clear” to “partly cloudy” to “mostly cloudy.”  Then, back to “clear,” but segueing to “RAIN” as the 24^th of December approached. So what? If you’re a veteran reader of the Little Old Blog from Possum Swamp, you’ll recall one of my yearly astronomy rituals is taking a Christmas Eve peep at that most numinous of ornaments, Messier 42, usually in as simple a fashion as possible.

This little ritual of mine has been going on for almost as long as I’ve been an amateur astronomer, getting started one Christmas in the 1960s when everything was on the cusp of great change. As it always seems to be when you are young. I kept it up over the years, but if not as an afterthought, not as something of great import either. It seems to have reassumed some of its old significance in these latter days, though. Maybe because I am old now, and the days when my friends, Jitter and Wayne Lee, and I admired the Hunter with new eyes seem strangely close.

Not to sound overly melancholy or sumpin’; it’s been a bright and calm Christmas, mostly, for me and Miss Dorothy. And, not completely ho-hum, either. There was the slightly raucous W4IAX (Mobile Amateur Radio Club) Christmas Party at Heroes Sports Bar and Grill. Your ol’ Unk had “some” cold 807s and a couple of shots of the Cuervo Gold but nevertheless managed not to run amok or even make a scene!

Other than that, though, ain’t no denying it was a quiet Christmas. That’s just the way it’s been with the kids grown and far away as the years of this strange new century have rolled on. Those enormous, storied Christmases at yore at old Chaos Manor South in the Garden District are but shadows of the past. Which is fine, since your curmudgeonly Uncle now much prefers, “Quiet, no rows, no thank you; I believe I shall just stay home.”

Enough of that malarkey and down to brass tacks. The scope I’d use if it cleared would be little Tanya, the rescue scope. Oh, my old Palomar Junior sits next to Tanya in my radio shack/workshop here, The Batcave, and that telescope would be nostalgia itself. Or I could go whole-hog with Zelda, the 10-inch Dob, and really see Orion.  But you know what? I’ve had more fun with minimalist Tanya than I have had with any visual instrument in many a long year.  More yearning for the simple astronomy of my youth? Yeah, prob’ly, and for my youth itself, I guess.

Christmas Eve dawned, and after I’d served the felines their breakfast, I took a critical look at the sky. What did I see? CLEAR AS A BELL! Why, it was a blue-eyed Christmas miracle! Maybe. While the dadgum weather channel admitted there’d be “abundant sunshine” during the day, they were standing pat with “partly cloudy” after sundown. It looked like this year might be a win visually. But I began to back off my idea of also imaging Orion with a smartscope.

That was a mite disappointing, since those CRAZY, new robo-scopes have been a big part of Unk’s amateur astronomy this past year. However, whether I’m using a SeeStar or big sis Unistellar, nothing is more aggravating or conducive to indigestion, actual or metaphorical, than drifting clouds. Why it’s worse than an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. Oh, well. There’ll be plenty of chances to snap Orion with the smarties in the coming weeks.

So, the cats fed, Unk settled in on Christmas Eve morning. I puttered around in somewhat dispirited fashion. Miss Dorothy was away—a dear friend had suffered a fall just before Christmas and D., who is renowned far and wide for her kindness, was staying with her to help. Maybe this Christmas Eve would be a little too quiet. Dorothy would be home for Christmas Day, but the felines and I would be on our own on the 24th. 

 

We preempt your regularly scheduled program… Originally, thisun was gonna be about me, your Old Uncle, turning my SeeStar S50, Suzie, and 10-inch Dob, Zelda, loose on the fall globulars chapter in UAG (“The Urban Astronomer’s Guide,” for the uninitiated). Then, as it sometimes does, everything—well, a couple of things—changed.

Thanks to the kindness of a friend of mine, Jack Estes, who is also a longtime friend of this here AstroBlog, and an amateur astronomer/imager extraordinaire, I was able to level up in the smartscope world. To the tune of Unistellar’s Equinox (the first iteration as opposed to the new Equinox 2).

“What in pea-turkey is they-at, Unk?” It’s a smartscope, Skeeter, you might say the smartscope that set the pattern for what these instruments would be like. Specifically, it is a 4-inch (114mm) reflector with its secondary replaced by an image sensor. It is made by a French company, Unistellar, which now offers several rather advanced smartscopes.

Other specifics? The Unistellar is as above a 114mm reflecting telescope, one with a focal ratio of f/4, meaning its focal length comes in at 456mm. Like almost all other smartscopes, it rides on a one-arm goto fork mount. Other than that? It features a Sony Exmor IMX224 imaging sensor with a field of about ½ degree. Also like her sisters, the Equinox is powered by a USB-C rechargeable battery and operated via wi-fi with an app on your smartphone.

That was what I had gleaned from talking to Jack, reading the manual, and watching cotton-pickin’ YouTube videos. That reading and watching (and downloading of the iOS app) done, I began anxiously awaiting the scope’s arrival at Chaos Manor South…

Your impatient old Uncle didn’t have long to wait. In just a few days, a largish box was on the doorstep of Chaos Manor South, and your decrepit correspondent had somehow manhandled it into the Sunroom, traditional staging area for new (or at least new-to-me) telescopes. I went to work, aided by Wilbur Wright, second in command of our feline detachment.

What was inside that box? An attractive and light—but not too light—and sturdy tripod. With the legs fully extended, it was a smidge over four feet in height; ‘bout the same as my Manfrotto. And there was the telescope herself, a pretty, two-toned black and gray thing on her one-arm-bandit mount. Finally, there was a small box of accessories that contained a charger, some extra knob-headed bolts (for the tripod I presumed), and a set of Allen wrenches for collimation. All in all, Unistellar’s box/presentation reminded me of what Apple might do if they sold telescopes. The lid of the inner box was emblazoned with the words, “Prepare to be Amazed.” We’d see, I reckoned.

Hot dog! New telescope (are there any sweeter words than those?)! I’d get her into the backyard and get ready to go! Not so fast, Unk, not so fast. In the excitement, your silly Old Uncle had forgot this was the evening of the Mobile Amateur Radio Club’s yearly TNXgiving Potluck dinner party with our sister club, the Deep South Amateur Radio Club. 

Being President of the MARC, it was incumbent upon Unk to be there, natcherly. I told Miss Dorothy, “Guess I’ll try the new telescope when we get home.”  She just laughed. Indeed, upon our return I was way too tuckered to do anything other than imbibe a few cold 807s in the company of the cats as we watched silly YouTube videos. “Tomorrow night, for sure!”

Strangely, the arrival of the Unistellar Equinox had coincided with a short span of cool and clear evenings. Only downer? There would be a fat Full Moon on the rise. I hoped to get in a few minutes with the Unistellar before Luna got too high. While Jack had provided me with some instructions to get me started beyond what was in the manual (typical of today’s manuals) and on the Unistellar website, I still felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants when I headed for the backyard with this sizable smartscope (still very manageable for Unk, nevertheless, at about 20 pounds).

Out in the back forty in my customary spot adjacent to the deck, I got the scope mounted on the tripod—by means of lowering its base into the custom-style head and fastening a couple of retaining bolts. Now to wait for darkness, which, thankfully, is arriving at a decent hour now that that dadgum DST has been turned off. Standing there in the gloaming, I had to admit the Equinox looked impressive—and a lot more “telescopey” than the oddly shaped (sorry, girl) Suzie.

When darkness fell, I finally got started. First step was powering up the Equinox via a pushbutton switch not unlike that on the SeeStar. Scope on and button illuminated a purplish hue, I connected to the scope with the Unistellar app for the first time. Now, I relied on what Jack told me to do in his quick start instructions, beginning with leveling the tripod, which I did in rather hurried fashion. Your jaded old Uncle had to admit he was now right excited about this 4-inch telescope.

Hokay, the app said I was connected to the scope, so this was rubber-hits-road. Next step would be moving the OTA to an altitude of about 45 degrees. After a bit of fumbling around to figure out Unistellar’s onscreen joystick trope, I got the tube pointed at said 45 degrees. Hell, y’all, I even remembered to remove the aperture cover! I gotta tell you I was heartened by the sounds the Equinox made as I slewed her. None of that old-timey Meade-style weasels with tuberculosis noise. The sound emitted by her altitude motor was sure and steady.

Next up? Time to do what Unistellar calls “orientation.” What I call it is a “plate solve.” Mash the appropriate button on the app, and the Equinox takes pictures and figures out where it is from the star field. It seemed to me this worked—near as I could tell from what the app said. Before trying a goto, however, I would need to take a manual dark frame, which Unistellar refers to as a “sensor calibration.” I might have figured that out on my own eventually, I reckon, but thank goodness I had Jack’s quick-start instructions.

The Equinox does not have automatic focus, so you focus manually by turning the large knob at the rear end of the tube, which I assume moves the primary mirror forward and back leaving the secondary (the camera) undisturbed. While the quick-start instructions Unistellar furnishes advise you just to focus on a starfield by eye, Jack told me to go whole hog in Bahtinov mask function.

With only a mite of fumbling, I found Altair in the app’s object list (the Unistellar app works with lists rather than a star atlas) and sent the scope there. The Equinox hummed reassuringly, headed in the proper direction, and soon had Altair in the frame. I centered up a little bit and installed the Bahtinov mask—a plastic one that is normally stowed attached to the aperture cover. As Jack had instructed, I used the onscreen live-view controls to make Altair pretty dim, and focused till the star spikes were properly spaced. Focus wasn’t far off to begin with, testament to the scope’s mechanical quality, but I could have done better. I should have zoomed in on the star a bit, but, yeah, I was excited. I got OK focus.

Now came proof in the pudding time. First light object? I figgered M57 would be it. Nice an’ bright, but also small. I wanted to see what a smartscope with more focal length would do for me. So, having found that magic Ring in the apps list, I sent the Equinox that-a-way, and held my breath…

When the Equinox stopped, there was that glorious ring. Was it huge on the phone? No. But it was considerably more than the wee spot it is with the SeeStar. While Suzie’s ring is identifiable, good luck being able to make out the central star no matter how much you zoom. With the Unistellar, even unzoomed on the phone screen, I could see the center of the Ring wasn’t dark and make out there was something else there. Just a bit of zooming/cropping, as you can see here, delivers that central star detail on the Ring itself. Was I happy? You betcha.

Alas, wouldn’t you know it? By now the clouds was rolling in. I did do two other objects in quick succession, M2 and M56. One thing I noted on both objects? The exposures went quickly with no frames dropped. It’s normal for the SeeStar to reject a sizable number of due to star trailing. The Equinox’s tracking was better. In part, that’s attributable to the shorter 4-second exposures, but I suspect the gears are a lot more refined than those in li’l Suze.

Shorter exposures were not a problem, by the way, thanks to the Equinox’s sensitive camera. Almost too sensitive if’n you ask me. My single problem at first light was blowing out the cores of globs (as you can see, M57 is also somewhat overexposed. I didn’t have a clue about settings for exposures on this first night. Ah, well, NEXT TIME. And rest assured, you will learn a lot more about this amazing telescope in the future. And with that, Evie’s first light night with me had come and gone.

Evie? As you well know, all my scopes tell me their names. For some reason, I thought that would take a while with this one. Nope. As we were headed back to Chaos Manor South’s den for cold 807s and TV with the felines, the girl said,

“Hey, y’all! I’m Evie! Unk, are we gonna be friends?”

“We sure are Evie, we sure are!”

Note that the Equinox saves photos both in this format and standard presentation.

But I said changes, and I meant more than one. The arrival of Evie was just the first change at smartscope-crazy Chaos Manor South! I soon learned I’d got the assignment for the Sky & Telescope Test Report on ZWO’s new smartscope, the S30. You’ll learn all about it in a coming issue of S&T. Stay tuned…

Next Time:  As has long been the tradition ‘round Chaos Manor South and the Little Old AstroBlog, next month’s entry will appear on Christmas Eve and will maybe be a mite more sentimental and briefer (well, maybe) than usual. See y’all then.

Nota Bene Department:  I had a request for the observing list from The Urban Astronomer’s Guide in computer form the other day. I rummaged around and found that despite the shutdown of the Yahoogroup that supported UAG with observing planner files, I’ve still got one. Specifically, it’s in SkyTools 3 format (which some other planning programs will be able to import). If you’d like a copy, shoot me an email at rodmollise@southalabama.edu and I’ll get the file on its way to ya.

 

Well, well, well, muchachos… November is almost here, and it looks as if we in Possum Swamp may have dodged a bullet hurricane-wise this season. The skies had been improving since the thunderstorms of summer diminished, and that had got me to thinking it might be time to do some visual deep sky observing in the ol’ backyard. Maybe even with my “big” telescope in these latter days, Zelda, a Zhumell (GSO) 10-inch Dobsonian.

Maybe. While clearer and drier as September came in, the sky could still be hazy, and there is considerable light pollution here at the suburban Chaos Manor South. Not horrible like downtown, no, but enough to make locating objects with a finder scope, much less a zero-power red-dot finder, a right good pain in the rear. I got to thinking I might want to put digital setting circles on Zelda.

If you’re a long-time fan of the Little Ol’ AstroBlog from Possum Swamp, you know I had DSCs on my long-gone truss tube Dob, Old Betsy. Sky Commanders they was, and they worked a treat. I think I saw more with Bets in the first year or two I had the ‘Commanders than I’d seen with her the previous decade. So, I started shopping. But it turned out ordering circles for the Dob wouldn't be so easy this time.

The problem, it appeared, would be mounting the encoders, the widgets that tell the DSC computer where the scope is pointed, to Zelda’s somewhat different altitude and azimuth axes. She is nicely equipped with smooth bearings and large tension knobs for altitude and a lazy-Susan-style azimuth bearing system, but those things make encoder mounting more complicated than with a simpler “Teflon on Ebony Star” Dobbie.

I did find a set of DSCs available with an encoder hardware kit for my GSO, but it was expensive, would have to be ordered from overseas, and it appeared I’d have to ship them one of the mount’s altitude trunnions for modification. All the way to Australia. That seemed like a deal-breaker to moi. I kept looking and found a digital circle vendor stateside who could provide encoders and encoder mountings for Z, but still…more than I was comfortable paying given—to be honest—the limited number of nights I observe with the Z-girl. If only there were another way…

Then, I ran across a YouTube video about that “another way.” It seemed there was a (free) program for smartphones, both iOS and Android smartphones, AstroHopper, that used a phone to replace digital setting circles. Unk was mighty skeptical, however.

Folks tried that years ago when smartphone astronomy apps that could find sky objects with the aid of a phone’s compass became popular. Oh, they worked well enough to point the way to naked eye objects but weren’t nearly accurate enough for use with a telescope. I didn’t imagine anything had changed, but I watched some more YouTube videos on AstroHopper anyhow.

Surprisingly, the consensus seemed to be AstroHopper does work with a telescope and delivers accuracy similar to DSCs.  I did note video posters seemed to have a range of results from “works great” to “well, sorta works.” Sounded to me like I should at least have a look-see at AstroHopper’s website, which I did:  AstroHopper - Web Application for Sky Navigation Manual.

What I found there sounded encouraging and convincing. Obviously, Artyom Beilis, the author, has been working on his app for a while and it seems rather mature. Yeah, it sounded good enough to make me want to at least give it a try:

AstroHopper (formerly known as SkyHopper) is a free and open-source web application developed by Artyom Beilis that helps to find objects across the night sky. It does this by allowing an accurate hop from a well-known and easily identifiable star to other fainter stars or DSO by measuring changes in pointing angles of the cell phone using built in gyroscope and gravity sensors. It is similar to Digital Setting Circles implemented in a smart phone.

Then came the hard part, figuring out how to mount the phone on the telescope’s tube. It needs to be secure and needs to be pointing along the scope’s optical axis. I had a couple of ideas how I might do that if ‘Hopper worked, but I certainly wasn’t going to go drillin’ holes in poor Zelda’s OTA without being convinced this was for real. The solution, then?

What came to mind was a smartphone camera mount for telescopes I’d bought some time back to take afocal Moon pictures for an S&T Test Report. Maybe I could use the phone-holder part of it to affix Siri to Zelda’s tube temporarily?  I taped the holder to Z with blue painters’ tape (to avoid damaging Zelda’s finish) using enough tape to ensure the iPhone would be held as securely as possible. I inserted my iPhone 14 Pro Max into the taped-down camera mount and called that “good enough.”

It looked wacky and Rube Goldberg-ish, and as a mild September evening came in, I didn’t have much hope. Hell, I felt a little silly, y’all. Nevertheless, I got Miss Z into the backyard, inserted a reasonably low power (50x), reasonably wide-field (70⁰) Bresser 25mm ocular into Zelda’s focuser, and got started.

I hadn’t installed the app on the phone yet. You don’t have to; you can just run it as a web page. Obviously, you have to have an internet connection, though, so if you plan to go to a dark site somewheres without a cell tower signal, you need to install AstroHopper on the phone (full instructions are on the ‘Hopper website). Anyhoo, with the web page up (it was in red-screen mode from the get-go), I set out to put it to the acid test.

When you have the app onscreen, you’ll get step by step instructions as to how to align AstroHopper, but in truth there ain’t much to it. Find a bright star near the object of your desire, center it in the eyepiece, tap “align” on the app, and touch the alignment star (or planet) on the displayed star chart.  Once ‘Hopper says it is aligned, enter your target's designation in a search box and you will be given onscreen directions—a line pointing the way and azimuth and altitude distance figures—to your object. Then, yep, just move the scope to the indicated spot and there you are. That’s what the app said, but, yeah, your skeptical old Uncle was skeptical.

Hokay, alignment star… I was after M13 as a first object, and while Herc was purty high on the September evening when I first gave AstroHopper a go, we were still experiencing some of the humidity and haze of summer, and I thought a brighter star than one of Hercules’ suns would be easier. Alkaid in Ursa Major, the end star of the dipper’s handle, was still well above the horizon. A bit far from the Great Globular, but, well, I was after an acid test. If (more like “when,” I thought) it didn’t work, I’d find a star closer to M13.

Alkaid in the center of the 25mm Bresser’s field (could have rounded up a crosshair eyepiece, but didn’t), I clicked “align,” and chose Alkaid on the map. StarHopper claimed it was aligned, so I typed M13 in the little box and followed the app’s directions to the Great Glob. When it indicated we was there, I put my eye to the eyepiece, expecting absolutely nothing…

Damn! There was M13! Not centered, no, but not on the field edge, either. Howsabout M92? Boom! M57? There was the little smoke ring. M56? Looked better than I thought it would. I was frankly amazed. I can only suppose cell phone compasses and accelerometers have improved a lot over the years. And obviously Mr. Beilis is a talented programmer.

Takeaways? Having an alignment star reasonably close to the target object helps, but it doesn’t have to be right next door. As with many alt-az DSC and goto systems, avoid alignment stars that are near zenith. Also, if you let your phone go to sleep, you will have to realign. It will claim to still be aligned, but it won’t be. Finally, yes, AstroHopper worked. It worked as well as many DSCs and better than some I’ve used. Only aligning on one star and using a compass and accelerometers rather than inherently more accurate encoders means it doesn’t yield the horizon-to-horizon alignment of the Sky Commanders, but for my purposes it is good enough.

Convinced AstroHopper at least worked, the next step for your old Uncle was ginning up some kind o’ more elegant mounting for the iPhone than fricking masking tape.  That was easy enough to do. The camera mount came with a knob-headed bolt that screws into the back of the phone-holder portion. I hated to take an electric drill to Zelda’s beautiful black steel tube, but if AstroHopper worked consistently, I judged doing surgery on the girl would be worth it as it might impel me to get Z under the stars more frequently.

I drilled an appropriate hole in Zeldas’s tube, and after I was done spent a little time cleaning up that hole with a file. Done, I inserted that knob-head bolt through the hole and fastened the phone-holder down. The result looked purty darned good, I must say. Now to see if my original success had been a fluke. Why not undertake “A Trio of Fall Globulars” from The Urban Astronomer’s Guide? The sky was clear, and all were riding high…

To cut to the chase? AstroHopper’s performance the first time out was not a fluke; it did every bit as well on this evening. Casually aligning on a star (no high-power crosshair eyepiece) again yielded good accuracy. I didn’t try to quantify it, but it appeared I could hit targets at least 20⁰ from alignment stars. Most objects were near the center of the field, some were centered, and none was “out.” I was happy with my phone mount, and had remembered to set “lock screen” to “never” so the iPhone didn’t go to sleep and ruin my alignment, so this run went considerably more smoothly than the first one.

So, me and Zelda hopped from globular to globular under (once again) humid and hazy October skies. How did those globs look in the 10-inch? That, muchachos, is a story for next time. While it seemed I’d only been out under the stars a few minutes, the falling dew and the wheeling vault of heaven that had sent old Hercules into the horizon told me Z and I had been voyaging the sky for hours, not minutes. I reluctantly covered the girl and headed inside for TV and Yell with the felines (well, catnip for them). Need I say it? It was a good night, y’all.

The Comet…

Of course, your lazy old Unk saw the comet, but being lazy, waited till Tsuchinshan-ATLAS had rounded the Sun and got into the evening sky before hunting her up. A good buddy of mine and a longtime friend of this here blog, astrophotographer Max Harrell, got some lovely pictures from our local dark site. Alas, the evening he and some other fellers headed out there was my teaching day (and night) at the University. So, I had to be content with the front yard of Chaos Manor South, which offers a view low enough in the west to allow me to spot the visitor.

And spot her visually was about all I did. I scanned around in the correct area with my much-loved Burgess 15x70 binoculars, and finally saw…well…a slightly fuzzy star. My SeeStar, Suzie, laughed at me and told me to go back in the house and have some Rebel Yell while she fetched the comet. Which she did in rather impressive fashion (above) given the sky quality and the comet’s low altitude.

Next Time:  A Trio of Fall Globulars with Zelda and Suzie…

What’s up this month, muchachos? What’s goin’ down at Chaos Manor South? Well, I thought I’d get out and “do” one of the late-summer chapters from The Urban Astronomer’s Guide, maybe one of my favorites, “The Friendly Stars.” Yeah…no.  I’ve revisited that one more than once in the years since the book was published. What then? Howsabout a chapter from somebody else’s observing book? One far more famous than my scribblings?

Set the WABAC machine for a decade ago. In 2014, your just-retired Uncle had finally wrapped up the vaunted Herschel Project and was looking for something to replace it. I thought that might be what I initially called “The Burnham Project,” and later “The BCH Project.” What I planned to do was observe all the objects in Robert Burnham Junior’s justly famous Burnham’s Celestial Handbook.

Well, not quite all of them. There are thousands of bright stars, variable stars, and double and multiple stars in the Handbook if you include the object lists that accompany each constellation’s chapter. A huge number of mostly pedestrian-looking stars would be a bit much, I reckoned, and pared things down, but even the resulting 800 objects began to seem to be that daunting “too much.” So, I thought I’d confine myself to the DSOs Burnham details in the body of each chapter in his “Descriptive Notes.”

That’s what I thought I was gonna do, anyway. Unfortunately, The BCH Project died on the vine. Why? The reasons I gave myself, including that I didn’t feel a “connection” with Burnham, weren’t really the problem. The problem was after three years of observing the Herschel objects like a madman, everything else seemed like small potatoes. Or, maybe even moreso, that I wasn’t quite ready to let the Herschel Project go.

What I really wanted was to relive the years of the Herschel Project. In 2014, my life was changing, and I sure did miss the go-go days of The Project—jumping in the 4Runner and heading for the Chiefland Astronomy Village (and Cedar Key) at the drop of a hat.

So, the BCH Project never did get off the ground. I did some preliminary observing for it and dropped it. I tried again, but no-go. I started looking for something else, some other big project. That failed miserably, as well. The truth, Unk eventually admitted? The Herschel Project was the big observing project of a lifetime, and there was no replacing it.

Today, my perspective is decidedly different. I don’t like to drive the Interstates anymore, and even if I did, there’s no bringing back the Chiefland of a decade or two ago. Latter-day Unk likes relaxed observing, both with telescopes and cameras, in the comforting surroundings of the backyard of the (new) Chaos Manor South. So, as I was wondering what to write about, I got to thinking about the BCH Project again…

The more I thunk, the more fun it sounded, and the more I came to believe I was awful misguided saying I felt no connection to Burnham and his Handbook. Just looking at the covers of the three volumes took me back to the early 1980s when I got my first copies from the old Astronomy Book Club. Between their covers were countless marvels and mysteries I had yet to visit. The deep sky was still relatively new to me, and I turned to its depths with a will. Now, the Handbook is delicious nostalgia, but not just that. Every time I read one of Bob’s DSO descriptions, he teaches me something.

So, the plan was… the plan was…  The BCH Project will be back—in the informal style that suits your now-aged Uncle. No time limits, no object quotas, no rules. It will be simple: When I want to, I will visit one of Burnham’s constellations. I’ll observe his objects visually with one of my instruments and image the wonders in my simple fashion.

Other than “informal,” what’s different from my initial go at Burnham? My decision the first time out to limit myself to just the Descriptive Notes objects won’t do. Some constellations, like Hercules, only describe one or two objects. So, in addition to the Descriptive Notes fuzzies, I’d also observe the choicer deep sky objects in each constellation’s accompanying list. 

Simple. Neat. No trouble at all (I hope). If there are objects in the list I don’t think will look worth a flip (like teeny-tiny planetary nebulae), I’ll skip ‘em:  NO RULES. I am now calling this series “Project BCH,” to distinguish it from the earlier attempts. I swear I will actually DO IT this time, y’all!

Up first? Everybody’s favorite hero and demigod, great Hercules. The night I took the images (with my SeeStar, Suzie) was relatively good. Hazy, sure, but mostly clear. Then came an intermission due to clouds while we waited for Hurricane Helene to pass by well to our East. That brought a spell of clear weather. Even one night (barely) good enough to impel your lazy old Unk to get his 10-inch Dobsonian, Zelda, into the backyard.

What was notable about that night? Other than the heavy dew? For one thing, I found I can still wrassle the Zhumell Dob into the back forty without much trouble. Oh, it’s not something I’d want to do every day, but I can still do it. What’s really notable is how I sent Miss Z to her targets:  with a cell phone app called “AstroHopper.” More about that next month (maybe); for now, all I'll say is it worked amazingly well, placing anything I asked for in the field of a 70-degree 25mm eyepiece.

Anyhoo, here we go (as above, I skipped the teeny tiny objects in Burnham's’ list) ...

M13

What could I possibly say about this globular star cluster that Bob Burnham didn’t say eloquently in the 15 pages he devoted to the Great Glob?  Not much, muchachos, not much. While much of the science (though not all) Bob gives us is now badly dated, that is OK. The historical background makes reading Burnham’s Descriptive Notes more than worthwhile; it is a joy.

Unk? I did not take a separate image of Messier 13 on this night. After all, I devoted a blog entry to “My Yearly M13” not long back. Old Globbie did photobomb my shot of NGC 6207 and I figgered that was enough. He was looking good, though, showing colors in his stars and considerable resolution in a mere 15 minutes of exposure.

In the eyepiece? Well, it was what it was. Obviously, the 10-inch showed considerable resolution even at 50x. The sky background with the humidity spiking ever higher was gray, however, even at higher magnifications and didn’t make for an overly satisfying view. Yeah, it was what it was, but I have seen far worse.

NGC 6207

In the 10-inch, even on what was turning into what Unk calls "a pretty punk night," the Great Globular wasn't a problem. But NGC 6207 was—a little bit, anyhow.  Ain’t run this one down, yet? It’s a little magnitude 11.65 SA galaxy less than half a degree from M13. Ain’t much to it:  bright core and a little elongated fuzz around that core. The main/only attraction is that it’s close to M13 and in the field with it in a wide field eyepiece under good conditions in a medium-sized scope. The saving grace here is the galaxy is small enough—2’30”—that its light is not badly spread out and it’s fairly “bright” visually.

Well, these weren’t good conditions by any stretch of the imagination. It took about 190x with an 8mm TeleVue Ethos to convince me I was even seeing 6207 on a worsening night (I was now having the fogged eyepiece blues). I saw it, though, if not quite in the field with the Great One.  Suze had no trouble with it whatsoever, even lending the little sprite some form and substance.

What did Burnham say about it? Nuttin’ Honey. NGC 6207 only appears in Hercules' “List of Star Clusters, Nebulae, and Galaxies.” As above, only two deep sky objects, M13 and M92, get Descriptive Notes. And yet, he goes on for 18 pages about what most of us modern observers would deem nondescript stars.  That is not so much a failing as it is just witness to the fact that Burnham’s book is from the amateur astronomy of another age.

M92

As I have often said, M92 ain’t, as some claim, a rival for M13. Even if it were in a constellation where the spotlight wasn’t stolen by an M13, it wouldn’t be top of the pops glob-wise. Let’s face it. It is more like an M30 than an M2, much less an M5. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t good. As Burnham notes, it shows resolution in fairly small telescopes—I’ve seen stars in it with fair ease with my 3-inch APO refractor at high power. It’s considerably looser in structure than brighter M13, making it easier to break into teeny-weeny stars.

Which Miss Zelda did this evening without complaint (I'd imaged M92 with Suzie not long ago, so we skipped this one). Not that it looked that great visually. As did M13, it appeared badly washed out in the eyepiece. But you take what you can get, campers. I was shocked—shocked, I tell you—to see how low ol’ Herc has gotten by mid-evening. By 9:30 local, M13 was barely 30 degrees above the horizon. If you want a last look at the Hero’s wonders, best get on it.

NGC 6229

Did you know there’s another fairly easy globular star cluster in Hercules? There is, little (2.0’) NGC 6229, one of the objects discovered by the sainted Sir William Herschel. This magnitude 9.86 star-clump lies about 11 degrees north of M13. I said “fairly easy,” and the emphasis is definitely on the “fairly.”

The small size of the cluster is both a blessing and a curse. As with NGC 6207, it does keep it reasonably bright, but it’s small enough and still dim enough to be passed over if you don’t really pay attention to what’s in your field. 150x is probably the magnification to begin with. As many observers have noted, what this glob looks like visually is a small, round planetary nebula.

Visually for me on this night? I was purty happy just to see it as that “planetary nebula.” I have achieved resolution of 6229 from good sites under steady seeing, but there wasn’t a prayer of that on this evening. The Suze? As usual, she impressed, not only resolving some of the little guy’s stars, but even showin’ some color in them.

Hercules Galaxy Cluster Abell 2151 and NGC 6045A

I reluctantly passed NGC 6210 by. This wasn’t the night for the tiny Turtle Nebula. Suze doesn’t have enough focal length to show much there other than a fuzz-spot. Oh, I could have applied high magnification to the reptile with Zelda, but, strangely, on this very humid evening the seeing was poor; usually it’s the opposite. Onward to one last object, then. One I considered impossible all the way up until the 1990s, the distant Hercules Galaxy Cluster, which lies some 500 million light years from the Third Stone from the Sun.

The word on this object for amateur astronomers in the 60s – 70s? Burnham does a good job of summing it up with his caption for a 200-inch Hale Reflector picture of the (unnamed) cluster in the book: “DISTANT FIELD OF GALAXIES in HERCULES. A very remote group of galaxies, showing a variety of types in a single photograph.”

Certainly, by the 1990s, I’d seen members of Abell 2151 visually with modern telescopes and eyepieces, and I’d imaged many, many of its members with my old C11, Big Bertha, and my Mallincam Xtreme. But bring home the Hercules Cluster with a 2-inch f/5 telescope? Nah. “That’s just too much for you, ain’t it, Suzie?” She laughed.

You’ll find The Hercules Cluster to the west of the main part of the constellation and the stick figure. It’s near the border with Serpens Caput. I wasn’t sure the SeeStar Atlas includes the Abell clusters, so I searched on the most prominent member, NGC 6045A. Suze slewed that-a-way and began taking her 10-second integrations. Amazingly, 6045 was visible almost immediately, and more members began to pop in as the exposure progressed. Alas, by the time I’d got 21 minutes, the cluster was low and in the limbs of a neighbor’s tree.

That final result? It won’t put your eyes out, but if you zoom in a bit, Suzie’s frame shows a crazy number of wee galaxies. 6045A's wide open barred-spiral shape is even evident. Staring at the unprocessed jpg that Suze sent to my phone, it’s fair to say this old hillbilly’s jaw dropped, nearly to the floor. The freaking Hercules Cluster? With this tiny scope? Man the times they are a-changin’.

 

I had just finished last month’s AstroBlog, muchachos, when I was moved to begin the next one. The way the weather’s been this summer, and the knowledge it will likely get worse as September and October approach, impelled me to get back to work rather than take a break. One late July evening it ‘peared the sky might be good enough for the SeeStar, Suzie, to take a few of her little celestial snapshots. The Gulf beginning to churn with storms, I figgered I’d better get after it. I’d do some visual observing of the objects next break in the clouds. Whenever that was.

“Wut objects, Unk? Wut objects, huh?”  Well, Skeeter, I’ve kinda been on a roll revisiting the chapters of my urban deep sky observing book, The Urban Astrnomer's Guide, so I figgered I’d keep on keepin’ on with that for now. Specifically, with the Cygnus chapter, “Star Nests in Cygnus.” The ol’ Northern Cross would be near-perfectly placed in the east mid evening, and maybe the weather gods would indeed show your ever-hopeful Uncle some mercy.

By “star nests,” natcherly I meant “open (galactic) star clusters.” They were a favorite of mine when Miss Dorothy and I lived downtown in the original Chaos Manor South. They were the one deep sky object I could see easily and well. “Opens” became something of an obsession with moi—one time I set out to view all the clusters in Cassiopeia visible with a 12-inch telescope from an urban backyard (recounted in Urban Astronomer’s “The Cassiopeia Clusters”). That’s a lotta star clusters, campers, but, amazingly, I wasn’t tired of ‘em after that binge and soon went on to survey the Swan’s clutch.

Anyhoo, after checking-in to the Mobile Amateur Radio Club’s Wednesday Night Net, I stuck my head out of the radio shack and had a look. As astronomical twilight came in, it was just as Astrospheric had said: “Mostly clear.” But that blessed clear sky was accompanied by haze and poor, very poor, transparency. Oh, well, as Unk often says, “Ain’t nuthin’ to it but to do it.” I’d see what Suzie could pull out of a milk-washed Cygnus.

I had set the SeeStar up on my old Manfrotto tripod just before dark. She was leveled (a good idea if you want decent tracking) and ready to go. All I had to do was remove the scope cover I’d put over her to ward off the errant shower—they can show up any time of the day or night in the Swamp. Mashed the power button, and The Suze intoned, “Power on! Ready to connect!”

Zelda.

Once I’d connected to the girl with the iPhone app, next step was turning on her built-in dew heater. Sure felt like she’d need it on this night. I also installed the plastic dewshield I purchased some weeks ago. The heater would probably have been enough to keep the wet stuff at bay, but the dewshield also keeps ambient light off the girl’s objective. That was it. I headed inside, plunked myself down on the couch, and enjoyed the glorious air conditioning. Outside it was just under 90F at 2100 local.

The first target would be Messier 39, an old favorite located to the Northeast of shimmering Deneb. To get to it, I brought up the SeeStar’s star atlas on the iPhone, searched for and located M39, and chose “gazing.” Suze performed her usual initial calibrations, and, in a minute or three, headed for the cluster. Our target was obvious even in the short “gazing” exposures. As usual, she had placed it dead center in the frame. I started the exposures, ten second exposures, rolling in, and headed to the kitchen to retrieve some cold 807s (for me) and catnip (for the felines).

All Unk and the cats did for the balance of the evening was choose the next target when the stacked results Suzie delivered to my phone looked good enough. Given the conditions, I didn’t want to go too long. Also, I hoped to cover all the targets in one night, and, so, limited each open cluster to 10 minutes or less. With just a few minutes exposure, they looked purty derned good. I did go a little longer on globular cluster M71 and M27, The Dumbbell Nebula, my pièce de resistance for the evening. Suzie did a nice job given the conditions.

Anyhoo, that was part one of the observing for this one. The next morning, Miss Dorothy asked me if I didn’t miss being outside with the telescope, “Not on a night like that one,” was my quick reply, but, truthfully, I did miss being under the stars. That came some days later when we got another clear—if no more transparent—evening.

Into the backyard went the 6-inch SkyWatcher (who whispered to me her name is “Brandy,” which seems to fit). It was pretty much a semi-scrub. Out there in the humid heat, I refamiliarized myself with the SynScan Pro app on my iPhone that serves as Brandy’s hand control. Once I got the hang of it, gotos were fine, even with just a two-star alignment. But you know what? The punk sky conditions were just too much for the girl.

An extra inch of aperture compared to Charity, the ETX 125, helped some, but not enough. To be honest, it was hardly noticeable. And Charity certainly has a contrast advantage. In the haze, M13 was a slightly grainy blob and M3, which is getting low by 2100 local, was almost invisible. The gap between what I could see with my aged eyes and what young Suzie could see with her electronic sensor was vast. Ground truth? Neither Charity nor Brandy would be good enough this time of year when I wanted to get semi-serious about visual backyard deep sky observing.

I was disappointed, but not much surprised. Thinking back to my initial visual testing in the backyard of New Chaos Manor South a decade ago, that was exactly what I’d experienced. Yes, of course the skies are better than they were downtown. On a good, dry night, magnitude 5 stars are visible in this suburban/country transition zone. On a dry night, which is something we don’t often get in spring and summer (and increasingly, fall) in Possum Swamp. On a humid summer’s eve, the heavens look much like they did from the original Chaos Manor South in the Garden District.

How much telescope is needed for rewarding deep sky observing under these conditions? The aforementioned testing showed that often even 8-inches wasn’t enough. At 10-inches, however, the improvement was marked. The deep sky went from “kinda icky” to at least “interesting.” It looked to me as if the visual scope for work from my backyard would have to be my 10-inch Zhumell (GSO) Dobsonian, Zelda, at least until summer wanes and some semblance of autumn comes in.

Miss Zelda is a great telescope with a surprisingly excellent primary mirror. No, she’s not grab ‘n go in any shape form or fashion, but it’s no problem to leave her outside under a scope cover in our secure backyard as long as violent thunderstorms are not forecast. The only question was whether I could still get her safely into the backyard without damaging her, myself, or both of us.

One mostly clear if hazy afternoon, I found the answer is still “yes.”  To begin, I cautiously removed Zelda from her rocker box—first time I’d done that in several years, I was embarrassed to realize. Heavy, but not too heavy; at least not when just lifting her out and standing her up on her (sorry, girl) rear end. Well, there would be a problem if somebody decided to push the tube over with a paw, which is why I locked the felines out of the sunroom to their outrage.

Moving the rockerbox/groundboard to the backyard was simplicity itself. There’s a nice big handle on the front. Then, I returned to the tube, lifted it with one hand on the rear cell and one arm around the middle of the OTA. It’s harder to describe than do but suffice to say that while I wouldn’t want to waltz Miss Zelda across the dance floor, carrying her ten meters into the yard was no problem, even considering I had to go down three steps.

The verdict? The tube is heavy. Heavier than I remembered. Eventually I’ll likely have to use a hand truck to get the scope into the back 40. But if I must do that, I will do that. The last 30 years, a 10-inch has come to be thought of as a “small” telescope. It’s not. One is a powerful performer on the deep sky.

In the 1960s, and even into the 70s, for the amateur astronomer a 10-inch was a big, even huge, telescope. It is, in fact, the largest instrument used regularly by that sainted dean of deep sky observers, Scotty Houston. As many of us age out of owning or even dreaming about owning 20 or 25 or 30-inch telescopes, I think the humble 10-inch might regain some of its lost glory. Anyhoo, I have no intention of giving up one’s horsepower as long as I can safely manage a "10."

Zelda mostly ready to go, I plugged in the battery pack that powers her cooling fan; she’d been in the air-conditioned house, and, while not as bad as it had been, the weather wasn’t exactly cool as the afternoon waned. Next? A little TV with the cats until the long, slow DST hours between now and astronomical twilight passed…

Nota Bene:  The order of the objects I looked at with Z was the same as in the book, Urban Astronomer.

M39

It took me a long time to learn to appreciate this galactic cluster, which lies well away from the Northern Cross asterism, about nine-and-a-half degrees to the northeast. On a summer’s eve’ as a kid astronomer, I’d maybe take a quick look at it and move on. All it was was a patch of medium-bright stars, with the more brilliant ones forming a triangle. It was soon in the rearview mirror as me and my fellow members of the Backyard Astronomy Society continued our fruitless search for the veil nebula with our long focal length three and four-inch scopes.

As the years rolled on, and I turned more appropriate instruments on M39, my opinion of this magnitude 4.6 cluster began to change. What’s “appropriate”? A scope/eyepiece combo that puts some space around this half-degree size group. Oh, and aperture doesn’t hurt either. Enough dark space to frame it, and enough aperture to begin to show off the magnitude 12 and dimmer stars that lurk inside the triangle of magnitude 6-range suns, and you begin to have something.

While M39 will never be a showpiece, yeah, it is something. How do you look at it? On this evening, it showed off plenty of stars in Zelda with a wide field 13mm ocular, but it just wasn’t pretty.  I knew the solution:  more field, less magnification. Inserting my 35mm Panoptic into Zelda’s focuser rewarded me with the, yes, awful pretty. All those dim stars higher magnification revealed had disappeared, but just as in Urban Astronomer, where I switched from a "big" scope to my old Short Tube 80 (mm) refractor, I thought it was worth it. With plenty of space around it, M39 it looks more distinctive and just better.

How about the SeeStar, Suzie? As you can see, she’s a mite field-challenged for this one given the geometry of her chip. Oh, she shows scads of stars. Everywhere. Yes, the bright triangle stands out. But the cluster doesn’t have much snap. It doesn’t pop out of the background as it does with a wide-field visual scope.

M29

Something puzzled me and my BAS buddies back in the day. There’s only one other Messier object in Cygnus, a rather lackluster galactic cluster that pales compared to some of the other sights in the Swan. Why? Who knows, and be that as it may, with M29, it is what it is.

Once you’re on M29, which lies just under two degrees south-southeast of bright Sadr at the Swan’s heart, don’t expect much. What I had in Zelda with a 13mm Ethos eyepiece was a little dipper-like asterism of stars maybe ten minutes across. I do sound fairly enthusiastic in the book, “Four bright stars stand out extremely well at 48x in the 4.25 inch…I can see seven other cluster members despite scattered clouds and fairly heavy haze.”  And that is about what I saw in similarly heavy haze with Zelda. Oh, a few more dimmer suns were visible, but not many. As I also say in the book, after 6-inches of aperture, M29 doesn’t improve much.

Suze? I devoted a mere 6-minutes exposure to Messier 29, and that was all it took. Even in that snapshot, many dim background stars are visible across the frame that weren’t seen in Zelda. The cluster itself looks much the same; it sure stands out from the background. What helps this magnitude 6.6 group? That small 10’ size. Dare I say it? It’s almost photogenic.

M71

Despite titling this chapter “Star Nests in Cygnus,” I did take some detours, including to nearby Sagitta’s M71, which is 5 degrees south-southwest of its famous neighbor, M27, the Dumbbell Nebula. The only claim to fame M71 has is that while it is a globular cluster, it doesn’t look much like one, appearing to be a rich and compressed open cluster like M11. There was supposedly some debate over its status for a while, but I’m skeptical about that. One look at M71’s color-magnitude diagram says “globular.” And that is what it is, a (very) loose Shapley-Sawyer Class XI glob.

So, what’s it like visually? You’d think this magnitude 8.6 object would be as challenging as Lyra’s M56 or Coma’s NGC 5053. Nope, it’s easier with smaller aperture scopes due to its small, 7.0’ size. It was certainly visible with a 6-inch telescope on good nights. As I observe in Urban Astronomer, though, more aperture helps. In the 12mm Ethos in the 10-inch, it’s an obviously resolved little clump o’ stars.

In pictures, this wee globular is pretty and interesting if not spectacular. Missy Suzy easily resolved hordes of cluster stars set against a very rich background. You know what M71 looks like in Suze’s shot? It looks amazingly like the Wild Duck Cluster. But, no, M71, which I’ve heard called “The Angelfish Cluster” (?) in recent years, is a globular star cluster, y’all.

NGC 6910

And that exhausts the Messiers. What’s left galactic clusters-wise is, yes, NGC clusters. Now, now, don’t take on like that. Some of ‘em ain’t that bad, like 6910 which those long years ago I thought was, “A real surprise with the 8-inch f/5! Very nice indeed for a non-Messier…about 10 – 15 stars visible.” In Zelda with the 150x delivered with an 8mm Ethos, what was in the field was a scattering of dimmish stars around an acute triangle of 9 – 10 magnitude ones. As on that long ago night, there appeared to be around a dozen dimmer stars visible.

In the SeeStar? When looking at an image of a galactic cluster, it’s hard to say what’s a cluster member and what isn’t. Maybe 25 – 30 likely member suns? At any rate, unlike some NGC opens, it is “well detached” from the background. One look at the picture and you see the cluster.

NGC 6866

What did I see when I took a gander at 6866 with my old Meade 12.5-inch way back in the 1990s (it seems odd to say that; lately it seems like yesterday)? “Beautiful field with the cluster looking like a miniature M39.” And that’s still accurate; that was also my impression with Zelda: a vaguely triangular shape of suns (I’ve heard this group called the “Kite Cluster”).  This magnitude 7.6, 6.0’ size cluster is another NGC open that’s easy to see.

Suzie did a nice job on this one in only 5 minutes. Yes, there are hordes of background stars, but the cluster is again easy to pick out. Maybe it even looks a little more like a kite than it does visually, with two curving arcs of stars that aren’t as noticeable visually forming the sides of the kite.

NGC 6819

This is yet another example that makes a lie of the old saw, “All NGC open clusters are the same—boring.”  The somewhat well-known Fox Head Cluster has a combined magnitude of 7.6 and covers a mere 6.0’ of sky. In the book, I pronounced it, “A very attractive NGC open cluster in the 11-inch Schmidt Cassegrain…looked more oval than square.” In Miss Z, the impression was, conversely, a diamond shaped pattern of many tiny stars.

Inexplicably, I didn’t get NGC 6819 on my observing list and, so, didn’t get a SeeStar image.

NGC 6834

For this one, we leave the “cross” area of Cygnus and head towards Albireo. Our quarry is a small magnitude 7.8, 4.0’ across group. My impression in the 10-inch Dobsonian was “small and dim,” and that was also what my old 11-inch SCT showed in the glorious Day: “Small and dim. In the 11-inch scope, I see a 5.0’ oval of faint stars…crossed by a prominent line of brighter stars.

Which is exactly what Suze pulled in in 6 minutes. She did pick up many, many even fainter stars I couldn’t see visually, and in her shot, the cluster begins to assume a more triangular than oval shape.

NGC 6830

And yet another good NGC open star cluster glowing softly at magnitude 7.9 and extending 8.0’.  For this one, I again ventured out of Cygnus to another small nearby constellation, Vulpecula, The Little Fox, home of the abovementioned Dumbbell. In Urban Astronomer, I found 6830 to be, “Very distinct from the rich beautiful field it is set in. Rectangular in shape.” Today? Much the same. A vaguely rectangular or diamond-shaped pattern of a fair number of magnitude 9-10 stars and many dimmer ones. Oh, for some inexplicable reason, some call this “The Poodle Cluster.”

In the Suzie-shot, the cluster is identifiable around a diamond of brighter suns, but, admittedly, it is beginning to recede into the background. In the image it’s still easy to pick out but proceeding toward “not well detached.”

NGC 6823

This magnitude 7.0’, 10.0’ size group is involved with a large complex of nebulosity which was totally invisible in my urban skies. What was visible was a nice enough galactic cluster: “A nice medium-sized open cluster in the 8-inch f/5.” I also observed that the cluster looked like a miniature Scorpius. I didn’t see that on this latter-day night with a 10-inch. What I saw was a rather shapeless sprinkling of magnitude 10 and dimmer stars.

That is what I saw with the SeeStar as well. I didn’t expose for long, and didn’t use a filter, so any nebulosity that might be there wasn’t visible. I do note some star chains that give 6823 a vaguely flower-like shape.

Albireo              

I ended each chapter of Urban Astronomer with a double star. For this chapter, Albireo was obviously it. Now, the lustrous blue and gold “Cub Scout Double” is not an object for a 50mm f/5 scope, but Suze still did a fair job, showing a pair of strongly colored stars.

And that was that.  Oh, on my imaging night, I did send Suzie to M27 to see what she could do, and she did a very fine job for a wee telescope. All that remained was to throw a cover over Zelda (I didn’t feel like—ahem—wrestling with the girl at the tail end of a long and hot evening). She’d be fine in our secure backyard, and getting her back to the Sunroom would be a far less daunting task in the morn’.

So…I saw some cool sights and found I could still (fairly) easily set up the 10-inch.  This night was a win, then, especially since I’d had a good time, and it had brought back some nice memories of my Urban Astronomer runs.

Next up? Another observing article, but we’ll give Urban Astronomer a rest in favor of something (sort of) new.