First Light ... A Time Honored Tradition

M42 - Orion Nebula (from picasaweb.google.com)



M44 - Beehive Star Cluster (from http://www.astropix.com/)



M45 - The Pleiades Star Cluster (from http://www.astropix.com/)



M81 & M82 Galaxies (from http://www.astropix.com/)



Saturn (from apod.nasa.gov)



IC434 HorseHead Nebula (In Orion) (from http://www.astropix.com/)

First Light is a "time honored" tradition carried out by Backyard and Amateur Astronomers. It is marked by the first night an astronomer 'gathers light' , or looks through a new telescope. You can read all the reviews you want, but you never really know how a scope is going to perform until you point at a celestial object and look through the eyepiece.

On February 25th at 7:30PM I gathered 'First Light' in my new Orion 80mm ED on a SkyView Pro Goto mount. There was a narrow period of 'somewhat' cloudless skies between frontal systems, so I took advantage of the opportunity before the 'white puffies' moved back in.

I performed my first-ever polar alignment (pointing the telescope at Polaris), then let the Goto mount do the rest. I dialed in Messier Object M44 (Beehive Star Cluster) into the computerized hand controller and pressed 'Enter'. The motors quietly whirred for 30 seconds or so, then the hand controller 'beeped' to tell me I had arrived at my celestial destination.

As I looked into the 25mm Sirius Plossl eyepiece, M44 was glistening at me with a cluster of bright and faint stars.

After observing M44 for a time, I took a tour of the sky to view other familiar space objects. Here are the highlights of what I observed:

- M42 (Orion Nebula) looked light-gray and pale-blue. I was able to resolve the four major and two faint stars of the trapezium, which looked razor-sharp. I stared at it for several minutes.

- M45 (The Pleiades) looked grand as ever, and I was surprised to see some nebulosity surrounding the 'Seven Sisters' with the telescope aided eye.

- M81 and M82 (Galaxies) looked great. Just as I thought they may appear through an eyepiece. I will have to study the galaxies individually some time.

- Saturn looked like someone painted the ringed planet onto the end of my scope. I saw faint hints of the Cassini Divide, but clearly saw lines in the planet's atmosphere and even saw the black of space between the rings and the planet.

- However, when I dialed up IC434 (Horsehead Nebula) clouds moved in and ended my session after 45 minutes. It was a memorable 'First Light' with my Orion 80mm ED.

I look forward to many more viewing and astrophotography sessions with my new scope. I didn't do any astrophotography this night, because I just wanted to enjoy the view of celestial objects from the new scope.

Question: You may wonder why I didn't do a 'First Light' report when I bought my ETX-125 ?
Answer: I didn't know about First Light, and I wasn't running a BLOG.

Personal Observation: I become concerned when I ask myself a question, and then answer it. I will really become concerned if I give myself the 'silent treatment' for taking one position, rather than the other when answering a question. :)

The pictures are stock photos from the Internet. (Most are from http://www.astropix.com/). I posted them to give readers a sample of the views I saw through my telescope eyepiece. Most pictures are representative of what I saw, exept for the starbursts in M45 and the detail in Saturn.

I plan to take high quality pictures of these heavenly objects some day, but I didn't want to complicate the experience of 'First Light' with my new scope and mount.

Thanks for Checking In!

StarPilot

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night ...

... so I had nothing better to do than raid my astrophotography archive to find pictures to post.

[Image 1] is a picture of Comet 17P/Holmes taken 11/23/2007. The comet is washed out because there was a Full Moon and my neighbor's flood lamp was shining directly at my telescope.

The image was produced using:

Camera: Nikon D80 (Piggyback onto ETX-125)
Lens: Quantaray 70-300mm (@300mm Focal Length)

ISO Speed: 200

F-Number: F/5.6

Exposure time: 48 Seconds

If you want to find out more about Comet 17P/Holmes, here are some excellent links:

http://cometography.com/pcomets/017p_images.html

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/10775326.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17P/Holmes

Now lets have some rainy night fun ...

[Image 2] is a wide field picture I took of the constellation Sagittarius in August 2007.
[Image 3] is a 'film negative' view of Image 2.

[Image 4] is star chart of the constellation Sagittarius I found on http://www.wikipedia.com/

Using Images 4 as a guide, see how many Messier objects you can identify in Images 2 &3, and if you can link the visible stars in the constellation. Actually, connecting the dots (stars) will help you find the Messier objects.

The dense starfield in Sagittarius is the Heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. (This constellation and its many celestial treasures are what hooked me on Astronomy and Astrophotography).

Helpful Star Gazing Hint: In the light pollutes skies of Northern Virginia, I often take wide field pictures of portions of the sky and study them on the computer to learn my constellations and other celestial objects.

Enjoy!

Star Pilot

P.S. - Please excuse the formatting problems. Blogger's editor has a mind of its own.