In Praise of the Newtonian - First Light with the 6" f/8

Last night for the first time I took the newly finished 6" f/8 out for a spin in the backyard.

This began as a project scope.  Here is a picture of what I started with: a Meade 6" f/8 set of optics, tube, spider, and primary mirror holder.  The tube was pretty beat up and full of holes.  I took these pictures when I was testing an added focuser.

My idea was to fix up the tube and use this for a visual scope.  After I took these pictures, I dissassembled the scope and put the optics and other parts in a box for safekeeping.

Then I began work on the tube.  I first of all sanded it down and filled all the holes with wood putty.  Then I added two coats of shellac.  This took a long time to dry, and it smelled terrible, but shellac sealed the tube and hardened it.  Of course, it also made the tube shiny.  Shellac is pretty high gloss.

That's ok.  On the inside, I installed flocking from Scopestuff.  Here is the inside of the scope half-flocked.  The improvement is pretty obvious compared with the shellac, but the flocking is much better even than the flat black paint that was there before.

After flocking the tube, I sealed the ends and remaining holes and spray-painted several coats of oil-based blue metallic paint, followed by a high gloss sealer.  The tube shines blue now.  I also built some tube rings of pine, painted flat black, and installed them around grey foam rubber.

The tube looks great, now.

And after all that, how are the views?  Superb!  Best views of Saturn I have ever seen.  Admitted, I am not a planet guy, but at 240x everything snapped to.  In moments of clear seeing, I could see the sharp black line of the ring's shadow on the planet's face, the dark cloud band opposite the rings (and the texture and shape of the cloud band), three moons clearly (Titan, Dione, and Rhea), and maybe four (I was not sure what that was, though I did see something where Tethys was, just coming around the pole of the planet).  I missed Enceladus, but our own moon was just a few degrees away, washing out the sky.  The whole thing looked just like the photos, only snappier, three-dimensional, and more real.   Bravo!  I look forward to many nights with this scope, viewing for myself and showing the view to others at public star parties.

M106, a Target for Next Year (4-27-2011)

I tried twice to capture this galaxy this year.  On my first outing in January I had guiding problems.  I had better success in April.  The galaxy's outer arms are very faint, and I'll need a lot more time to get through the light pollution.  This is just 13x10' from The Woodlands.

Telescope: Orion 10" f/4.7 Newtonian
Camera & Exposure: SXVF-H9C, 13x10'
Coma Corrector: Baader RCC I
Filter: IDAS-LPS2
Guiding: Orion Deluxe OAG, Meade DSI Pro, PHD
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

NGC 6910 (5-3-2011)

This lovely cluster illustrates the work I did on the telescope two days ago.  Previously, my stars were out of round, and I wasn't sure why.  I made three changes that day:  (1) I squared the focuser with the tube.  This is something I should have done earlier.  (2) I flocked the tube across from the focuser.  I was worried that light from the back of the secondary mirror was bouncing around inside the tube.  That will stop it.  (3) I blackened the back and sides of the secondary mirror with flat black paint.  I had an epiphany after I flocked the tube.  I looked down the eyepiece tube and saw ... the reflection off the side of the secondary, shining brightly right into the eyepiece.  I immediately knew the source of my out-of-round stars.  Time to get out the paint.  Now the stars are round.  They are beautiful.  The scope is doing what it's supposed to do now.

This picturesque cluster is just north of Sadr, or Gamma Cygni.  I was going to image something else, in the south, but my guiding was off because cables were catching on the mount.  Anyway, it was about 4 am, and I was too tired to diagnose the problem (I figured it out the next morning).  So, I thought, I'll try something near the zenith that I can actually catch in an hour.  An open cluster!  Sure.  Well, I caught the cluster, but this cluster is surrounded by nebulosity (of course, next to Sadr).  The time was too short to catch much of the nebulosity.  I guess an hour was too short.  I don't make my best decisions at 4 am.

Telescope: Orion 10" f/4.7 Newtonian
Camera & Exposure: SXVF-H9C, 13x5'
Coma Corrector: Baader RCC I
Filter: IDAS-LPS2
Guiding: Orion Deluxe OAG, Meade DSI Pro, PHD
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Here is a small gray-scale showing some of the nebulosity.

M101 (5-3-2011)

I've imaged this mammoth galaxy before, here.  But at only, roughly, 23 million light years away and stretching approximately 170,000 light years from side to side, this face-on spiral giant is always a welcome sight.  This is partly why I wanted to use the 10": the scope is big enough to hint at galactic details.  M101 is always a challenging target, though.  The dynamic range is massive.  The galaxy in fact has other spiral arms that I have not pictured here.  Because the image was taken from the suburbs, light pollution washes out the fainter parts.  Just for comparison, I have included below a version with the light pollution left in.  Also, this is just 14x10', not enough time to pick up these fainter portions even if I was at a darker site.  Even my earlier image of M101 is a bit deeper.  It was over 50% longer exposure time from the same site with the same camera at about the same focal ratio.

Telescope: Orion 10" f/4.7 Newtonian
Camera & Exposure: SXVF-H9C, 14x10'
Coma Corrector: Baader RCC I
Filter: IDAS-LPS2
Guiding: Orion Deluxe OAG, Meade DSI Pro, PHD
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Deep in the Lagoon Nebula, M8 (4-27-2011)

This is the most interesting part of the Lagoon Nebula, M8, in Sagittarius.  The Lagoon Nebula is a large cloud of mostly hydrogen located almost between us and the center of the Milky Way.  It probably lies between 2,700 and 6,000 lights years away.  The cloud shines with the light of ionized gas excited by the bright young stars that have formed out of the nebula itself.  I caught the scene above just as it came out of the trees and collected sub-exposures almost until the nebula moved behind the trees.

Telescope: Orion 10" f/4.7 Newtonian
Camera & Exposure: SXVF-H9C, 17x5'
Coma Corrector: Baader RCC I
Filter: IDAS-LPS2
Guiding: Orion Deluxe OAG, Meade DSI Pro, PHD
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

NGC 4565 (April 11, 2011)

This interesting galaxy is a popular target for imagers because we see it nearly edge-on. The roundish central bulge and the prominent dust lanes are interesting features, and the galaxy is relatively bright because we see it from the side---the combined light of stars across the galactic plane. NGC 4565 is between 34 and 72 million light years away. Several distance estimates cluster around 40 million light years. The galaxy is also the most prominent member of a small group of galaxies clustered in its area.  My favorite image of this galaxy is Stan Moore's, here; it was not taken from the city, as mine was.

Telescope: Orion 10" f/4.7 Newtonian
Camera & Exposure: SXVF-H9C, 35x10'
Coma Corrector: Baader RCC I
Filter: IDAS-LPS2
Guiding: Orion Deluxe OAG, Meade DSI Pro, PHD
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

M63 or NGC 5055 (4-5-11)

This lovely galaxy lies between 23 and 34 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici.  At this distance, it is a close neighbor (for a galaxy) of M51.  I've always been fascinated with this galaxy because images show the relatively straight dark lane cutting through what is in this image the lower part of the galaxy.  I've always suspected that a smaller galaxy was combining with this one.  I suspected this even more strongly when I saw in some images a ribbon of light in the same line as the dark lane that was clearly part of this system but was located somewhat away from the galaxy.  I can see this feature in my data, but it was too faint and noisy to leave in the color version.  Here is a version of my data in black and white, inverted, with contrast maximized.  You can see the ribbon of light on the bottom right under the second-brightest star in the image.  There may be a faint line of light stretching from the dark lane to the ribbon.

After seeing this in others' images, I strongly suspected there was more to the story, so I was pleased when Jay GaBany and others produced this very deep image (here) of the galaxy showing loops and streamers all around it from smaller galaxies falling into the larger one.

Telescope: Orion 10" f/4.7 Newtonian

Camera & Exposure: SXVF-H9C, 27x10'

Coma Corrector: Baader RCC I

Filter: IDAS-LPS2

Guiding: Orion Deluxe OAG, Meade DSI Pro, PHD

Mount: Takahashi NJP

Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3

Location: The Woodlands, TX