MU,

Access to Electronic Resources at the National Academies
PDF files are available free to developing countries!

http://www.nap.edu

Search and download FREE Pdf books on Astronomy and Astrophysics!


regards
GL

In case someone is interested..
*******************

Hi,

We maintain a website with an aim to improve  the space science education among
Indian student community. Please visit the site to know more.

We are looking for some people who are interested in contributing to the site
regularly by writing some interesting articles on diverse topics related to
space program.
The author will be paid depending upon the quality of the article. The content
should be original and should not violate any copy-rights.
Please forward the mail to your friends as well.  Please drop us a mail to know
more about this opportunity.


Thanks and Regards

writer.for.india@...

Hello

I bought the above scope for our college.  I personally have access to a 
collection of scopes and hence have some understanding of telescopes available
in India and abroad.
The scope looks well built but in my opinion lots of things are lacking in the
scope.  Maybe there is a cost constraint and thrust towards ruggedness. I am yet
to check the image quality.  I also purchased the international Galileoscope
(IYA, 50mm refractor).  The international Galileoscope does what the
manufacturer says it will do.  Our IIA folks do not say what it will do. No
proper literature is available.

1. First of all I found that in the telescope I received the edge of the
diagonal has been chipped off.
2. Further the scope is not collimation friendly.  The collimation of the
diagonal is definitely not easy with the provided arrangement. I have not yet
tried to access the main mirror to see how i can collimate that it it is
necessary. Maybe again the objective is to make a scope with no need for
collimation( like a Mak).

3. The eyepiece used is of the .95" format.  1.25" format could have been better
but would have increased the cost of the scope.  What IIA has used is the
readily available format which is used for the telescopes, microscopes and
spectrometers in the physics lab.  With the 10x eyepiece (25mm focal length)
provided with the scope one should get a magnification of   24  (600/25).  This
magnification should give a good view of moon and some of the bright clusters.
Further the disc of Jupiter can be  seen  with along with its moons.  I am not
sure if the  cloud belts of Jupiter can be seen.  Saturn's ring should be
difficult to see.
4. In the .95" format 15x  eypiece (18mm focal length ) is available costing
about 100rupees.  This should give a magnification of about 33 which I think is
a decent magnification to see Saturn's rings. But I am not sure whether the
mirror quality is good enough to show the rings clearly as I had a very bad
experience of  buying a 100mm f/7 reflector from an Indian manufacturer where
the primary mirror was horrible.  The maximum difraction limited magnification
possible for a 4" reflector is about 200(2per mm). If this scope give a
magnification of 100x it will be good.  I have seen 20x eyepieces in the .95
inch format with a focal length of 12mm which should give a magnification about
50 with this telescope which is a fairly good magnification for a small
telescope. But I am not sure if it is available now.

On the whole this telescope project is a good attempt but when I first saw the
picture of the scope in the IIA site I thought it will be like the entry the
level scope from Celestron (Celestron FirstScope)
(http://www.telescope.com/control/product/~category_id=reflectors/~pcategory=tel\
escopes/~product_id=09137) or other similar products from skywatcher and other
telescope manufacturers. These scopes cost less that $50 which use mount made of
wood,  eyepieces in the standard 1.25" format and the main mirror is only
spherical (f/4) whereas IIA scope uses metal stand and parabolic mirror (f/6
lambda/4). I was also thinking that this scope will be like the best selling and
highly acclaimed Starblast from Orion.

Anyway I appreciate the work made by the IIA team to bring  out a cheap and
rugged telescope.  I am waiting for the clouds to clear to have a good view of
the sky through this telescope.

Sakthivel
Coimbatore Astronomy Club

http://tinyurl.com/yjy7qnv



thanks for looking

Suresh Mohan

&Renganathan





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi All,

We have wonderful Leonid Night here from Mumbai.

I traveled some 150Km away from in order to get nice dark sky to Lonavala. here
is the Short Report with Photo of Leonid.


http://www.sameerthakur.net/2009/11/leonid-2009-from-lonavala-nov-17-18.html

Do share your experiences and photos.

Have a Nice Day
Sameer

Hi Friends,

Here is Image of Horse Head Nebula, taken By Nilesh Desai, on 18th Nov 2009
( Leonid shower ).

http://indussky.com/viewphoto.php?pcid=3&cid=40&pid=32

Have a Clear Sky always
Sameer


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Friends,

             Here is andromeda finally after 300 minutes or thereabout hope
all of u like it  and thanks for viewing! http://tinyurl.com/y8k5mt7





Suresh Mohan

And Renganathan

ISO 800x300 sec x 60 subs





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi,

     The other night when we shot Andromeda, Renganathan suggested I shoot a
dark nebula, I could see orion  at the zenith , I was sure I could get the
object but the ambient temperature was around 75 degrees F which meant I
would have a lot of noise when shooting at ISO 1600x 8 minute subs , anyway
after setting the scope around 2 am we went to sleep in the car but here is
the result http://tinyurl.com/yccplot





Suresh Mohan

ISO 1600X8 minutesx 18 subs

Ps Akarsh was the first person to point out this object to me



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

wow! this is a gorgeous image... have you tried sending this over to the
APOD?

cheers,
sridhar.

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Suresh Mohan <swashya@...> wrote:

> Friends,
>
>            Here is andromeda finally after 300 minutes or thereabout hope
> all of u like it  and thanks for viewing! http://tinyurl.com/y8k5mt7
>
>
>
>
>
> Suresh Mohan
>
> And Renganathan
>
> ISO 800x300 sec x 60 subs
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Sridhar,

  Thanks so much

Suresh



   _____

From: majestic_universe@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:majestic_universe@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Alt Blank
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 9:23 PM
To: majestic_universe@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [majestic_universe] Andromeds





wow! this is a gorgeous image... have you tried sending this over to the
APOD?

cheers,
sridhar.

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Suresh Mohan <swashya@eth.
<mailto:swashya%40eth.net> net> wrote:

> Friends,
>
> Here is andromeda finally after 300 minutes or thereabout hope
> all of u like it and thanks for viewing! http://tinyurl.
<http://tinyurl.com/y8k5mt7> com/y8k5mt7
>
>
>
>
>
> Suresh Mohan
>
> And Renganathan
>
> ISO 800x300 sec x 60 subs
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

WOW!!! What a beauty!!
 
Dont have words to define it!!
 
Enjoyed a lot :)
 
Thanks for posting
 
Charitarth

--- On Mon, 30/11/09, Suresh Mohan <swashya@...> wrote:


From: Suresh Mohan <swashya@...>
Subject: RE: [majestic_universe] Andromeds
To: majestic_universe@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, 30 November, 2009, 9:30 PM


 



Hi Sridhar,

Thanks so much

Suresh

_____

From: majestic_universe@ yahoogroups. com
[mailto:majestic_universe@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Alt Blank
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 9:23 PM
To: majestic_universe@ yahoogroups. com
Subject: Re: [majestic_universe] Andromeds

wow! this is a gorgeous image... have you tried sending this over to the
APOD?

cheers,
sridhar.

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Suresh Mohan <swashya@eth.
<mailto:swashya% 40eth.net> net> wrote:

> Friends,
>
> Here is andromeda finally after 300 minutes or thereabout hope
> all of u like it and thanks for viewing! http://tinyurl.
<http://tinyurl. com/y8k5mt7> com/y8k5mt7
>
>
>
>
>
> Suresh Mohan
>
> And Renganathan
>
> ISO 800x300 sec x 60 subs
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------ --------- --------- ------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]









       The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage.
http://in.yahoo.com/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Dear friends,

Here is California Nebula taken by Nilesh on 30th Nov.

http://indussky.com/viewphoto.php?pcid=3&cid=40&pid=33

Its 172 mins of Halpha filters image :O

Cheers
Sameer


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Excellent !

Suresh



   _____

From: majestic_universe@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:majestic_universe@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Sameer Thakur
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 10:33 AM
To: Sam Thakur
Cc: Nilesh Desai; Nilesh Desai
Subject: [majestic_universe] California Nebula By Nilesh Desai





Dear friends,

Here is California Nebula taken by Nilesh on 30th Nov.

http://indussky. <http://indussky.com/viewphoto.php?pcid=3&cid=40&pid=33>
com/viewphoto.php?pcid=3&cid=40&pid=33

Its 172 mins of Halpha filters image :O

Cheers
Sameer

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://tinyurl.com/ykytdke

with false colour !

hope u did not mind

Suresh



   _____

From: majestic_universe@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:majestic_universe@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Suresh Mohan
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 10:51 AM
To: majestic_universe@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [majestic_universe] California Nebula By Nilesh Desai





Excellent !

Suresh

_____

From: majestic_universe@ <mailto:majestic_universe%40yahoogroups.com>
yahoogroups.com
[mailto:majestic_universe@ <mailto:majestic_universe%40yahoogroups.com>
yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Sameer Thakur
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 10:33 AM
To: Sam Thakur
Cc: Nilesh Desai; Nilesh Desai
Subject: [majestic_universe] California Nebula By Nilesh Desai

Dear friends,

Here is California Nebula taken by Nilesh on 30th Nov.

http://indussky. <http://indussky.
<http://indussky.com/viewphoto.php?pcid=3&cid=40&pid=33>
com/viewphoto.php?pcid=3&cid=40&pid=33>
com/viewphoto.php?pcid=3&cid=40&pid=33

Its 172 mins of Halpha filters image :O

Cheers
Sameer

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.stellarium.org/

pls take a look  !   very nice



Suresh Mohan





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

MU,

http://www.iiap.res.in/intranet/telescope/

GL

Hello Astro-lovers, For all those admirers of the night-sky and our reports,
here is yet another painstakingly compiled one after a long time, VERY lengthy
(taking me couple hours at stretch). Please click on the BAS link below to
kindly read the details in our blog (text formatting shows to be a little bad)



http://www.bas.org.in/Home/blog/amaruniverse/2009/16/12/observing-session-175-f5\
-14th-december-2009



Summary: Galaxies just shy of a score, a new comet, many faint objects revealing
themselves in the large 17.5" aperture, and wonders of details that could be
seen. Thanks for reading.


**************




Amar A. Sharma



Signature : A Comet-Sanyasi; to whom those dreaded tailed-portents of evil of
past times, are lot more Divine and sublime buddies. :)




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Wow, I didn't know so many things. I suddenly feel like a complete
newbie to visual observing. Please read this article, and be
enlightened! :-)

http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/visib.html

Regards
Akarsh

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 11:03:46PM -0800, Ulhas Deshpande wrote:
>    Whew. Must admit I am totally lost.May be you IIT guys can understand it.
>    Let us morons know the results of your experimentation

Well, I didn't understand it after a point too -- but those were
mostly details I didn't want anyways.

But that article had some information that was extremely practically
relevant here and there.

Regards
Akarsh

Hi,

  Last weekend we went to the farm house to shoot Rosette nebula, all went
well till I lost the guide star after only 30 minutes, I could hear a
distant thunder ,we just packed and left and on the return journey it was
blinding rain !  but what came from 30 minutes surprised me
http://tinyurl.com/ykvo23y



Can someone tell me why im getting those spikes? Akarsh, Ajay?

It is there on my m 31 pic also,looks good though !



Suresh Mohan

Orion 80ED

Canon 350d

EQ6

ISO 800x5minutesx 6 subs





Suresh Mohan





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi

Oops, sorry, forgot to copy to these groups earlier.

The forwarded message has the report from the starparty we had this
weekend at Keemale Estates, Coorg Dist, Karnataka.

One more report in the making... :)

Regards
Akarsh

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi

After the Coorg starparty, four of us (Keerthi, Amar, Pavan and me)
decided to stay back for another night at Keemale estates and observe
the night sky.

Amar, who joined us only for this session travelling all the way from
Bangalore, had a huge spell of good luck (office leave etc) that
carried on to clear skies (almost) all through the night, starting
from 6 PM till 4:30 AM!

Okay, the highlights:

1. Andromeda Galaxy -- two dust lanes, the knot at the edge clearly
    visible. Amar saw 4 extragalactic globular clusters in Andromeda
    Galaxy and showed the rest of us 2 of them -- G 76 and G 1, if my
    memory is good.

2. Triangulum Galaxy -- the galaxy was blown apart at 140x and we
    could see 3 spiral arms and a lot of knots. NGC 604, the diffuse
    nebula in Triangulum Galaxy, was very distinct. The sight was
    really beautiful.

3. Whirlpool Galaxy (M 51) -- Oh my God! This was one of the most
    divine sights in the eyepiece! The galaxy appeared like a grayscale
    version of its photograph by Dr. Suresh Mohan stuck in the
    eyepiece:
    http://picasaweb.google.com/drsureshmohan/DeepSky#5063928190961023554
    The two spiral arms were clear and the connection between the two
    galaxies could be easily seen. The view at 140x (which is what I've
    described) was simply breathtaking!

4. M 74 (The Phantom) -- This galaxy in Pisces showed us three spiral
    arms at 140x. It was really beautiful. (Users of Debian GNU/Linux
    would have probably come across a blog post about the Debian logo
    resembling M 74's arms -- and we saw just that!)

5. NGC 1365 -- One of the bright galaxies in Fornax, it showed us
    _distinct_ barred spiral structure with two spiral arms as seen in
    the photograph (again at 140x)

6. Horsehead Nebula -- Pavan finally managed to see the Horsehead
    nebula in Keerthi's 8" telescope. I didn't bother staring at it
    again, so I don't know -- maybe Pavan can update the group.

7. NGC 1300 -- This barred spiral in Eridanus showed the bar very
    clearly, and some structure at the ends of the bar. One spiral arm
    was visible, but the other was a bit too faint.

8. NGC 1187 -- Showed hints of spiral structure and bar, although
    spiral arms were not distinct.

9. NGC 1049 -- This faint, tiny globular belonging to the Fornax Dwarf
    system was seen as a tiny fuzzy spot.

10. NGC 27 -- This very faint galaxy was a tiny smudge that was very
     hard to detect. Thanks to the internet connectivity, we were able
     to confirm the exact position against DSS images and find this
     object.

11. NGC 22, NGC 16 -- Two fuzzy patches of light. Nothing more to
     say. :)

12. NGC 1232 -- This showed hints of lots of spiral arms, although I
     could not see anything concrete.

13. NGC 891 -- Showed central bulge and a long dust lane, almost like
     a black-and-white photograph. (Just like the view on the 19th that
     I tweeted about.)

14. Rosette Nebula -- We were able to visually detect the brightest
     portion of Rosette Nebula in the eyepiece. It spanned a
     semi-circle. We could not see the other parts.

15. Amar showed me two comets. He will share the details.

16. M 97 -- The owl nebula showed the two "eyes" of the owl without
     OIII filter at 140x magnification. They were hardly
     distinguishable from the rest of the nebula. I confirmed the
     orientation of the eyes using images and it matched.

17. M 100 -- I think I was able to see the beginning parts of the
     brighter spiral arm of this galaxy. Confirmed the orientation with
     field stars.

18. M 81 -- We were able to see hints of spiral structure the previous
     night itself, which Pavan confirmed with a photograph. I'm just
     mentioning this here because I forgot to mention it earlier. We
     revisited this object, but didn't spend much time on it.

19. NGC 2683 -- Edge on spiral, showing hints of a dark lane. Pavan,
     Amar and Keerthi saw the dark lane clearly, but I wasn't able
     to. The central bulge was clearly there.

20. NGC 4565 -- This edge on spiral was really, really beautiful. It
     was extremely long, sported a dark lane, and had a nice central
     bulge. A marvellous sight indeed.

21. Jupiter -- With perfect, fresh collimation, we got a crisp view of
     Jupiter with structures in the cloud bands etc.

The last three days of observing with the 17.5" scope has been really
exciting. We enjoyed these wonderful views, thanks to people on the
Cloudy Nights forum, who educated us that 2mm exit pupils are
"usually" the best for DSOs. We noticed that a lot of features became
evident with the raise in magnification, particularly the spiral arms
of M 74 (which were hardly visible otherwise).

Maybe I should blog about these wonderful nights I spent under those
Bortle class 3 skies of Coorg -- they were wonderful and the 17.5"
really lived up to our expectations (while the 8" exceeded them, like
Amar points out!).

Regards
Akarsh

Hi

I thought I should share a thread of discussion on Cloudy Nights
forums, where I wanted an aswer to a question on why my 17.5" seems to
be underperforming. The plethora of replies I got have been a sort of
"eye-opener" to my observing habits -- particularly the "2mm Exit
Pupil" thing. One might find it useful to read on. A lot of detail,
that was otherwise invisible to my eye, popped into view while using
140x of magnification.

BTW, for all 8" users -- I must tell you that M 33 (Triangulum Galaxy)
does show spiral arms in a 8" as well, contrary to a notion that I
earlier had that small telescopes don't show detail. It's just a
higher magnification and more averted vision. The thread on CN
discusses it all.

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=3504889

Regards
Akarsh

Skies look like they surpassed our last trip horsehead with an 8 inch
is certainly an achievement amazing

On 12/22/09, Pavan Keshavamurthy <pavan.k.murthy@...> wrote:
>> 6. Horsehead Nebula -- Pavan finally managed to see the Horsehead
>>    nebula in Keerthi's 8" telescope. I didn't bother staring at it
>>    again, so I don't know -- maybe Pavan can update the group.
>
> I couldn't see Horsehead on the 8" for the life in me the previous night
> (despite ~30 mins + of staring). Yesterday, Keerthi and I casually decided
> to
> give it a shot when Orion was still low down in the horizon. At that time,
> we
> were actually unable to feel even the flame nebula, let alone Horsehead.
>
> Much later (When Orion was at culmination), we gave Flame another shot and
> this time it popped into view straightaway (As soon as we hid Alnitak from
> the
> field).
>
> We knew the field well, thanks to all the observing in the 17.5" and images
> of
> the region. Horsehead popped into view (erect) with some staring after we
> put
> NGC 2023 and the two "base stars" in the field, with Alnitak's glare still
> hidden.
>
> Comparisons with the view from the 17.5":
>
> a) Much less obvious in the 8" while it popped into view in the 17.5" with
> relative ease.
> b) Both flame and Horsehead were near impossible to sight with Alnitak's
> glare
> (in the 8"), contrary to the 17.5" where it was almost(?) possible to feel
> Horsehead even without having to hide Alnitak.
> c) The 8"  managed to show a shapeless tiny block of darkness in the IC434
> nebulosity, while the 17.5" managed to show us some shape that resembled an
> "L" (or more like a boot, as Akarsh described).
> d) Under higher power (in the 17.5"), tinier indentations seemed to be
> visible
> across IC434.
>
> All observations matched with each other's descriptions. Keerthi was
> suddenly
> skeptical about having seen Horsehead on the previous day, but that was laid
> to rest by both of us getting to confirm what we saw.
>
> Amar also saw Horsehead on the 17.5" on the second day.
>
>> 18. M 81 -- We were able to see hints of spiral structure the previous
>>     night itself, which Pavan confirmed with a photograph. I'm just
>>     mentioning this here because I forgot to mention it earlier. We
>>     revisited this object, but didn't spend much time on it.
>
> Confirmed the presence of spiral halos with reference to the neighborhood
> stars
> from recollections of the first day's observing. Was too sleepy to make out
> anything on day 2.
>
>> 4. M 74 (The Phantom) -- This galaxy in Pisces showed us three spiral
>>    arms at 140x. It was really beautiful. (Users of Debian GNU/Linux
>>    would have probably come across a blog post about the Debian logo
>>    resembling M 74's arms -- and we saw just that!)
>
> Personally, my highlight of the night. Very picturesque!
>
>> 14. Rosette Nebula -- We were able to visually detect the brightest
>>     portion of Rosette Nebula in the eyepiece. It spanned a
>>     semi-circle. We could not see the other parts.
>
> Meaningless patch of light, but it was still obvious in the eyepiece. We had
> believed for a long time that this was solely photographic. In context, we
> also got to look at North America Nebula (NGC 7000) in Cygnus earlier in the
> evening. It was too low to down in the west to point the telescope at, but
> Akarsh and I managed to match our binocular observations. Hints of the shape
> (resembling North America) were also evident.
>
>> Maybe I should blog about these wonderful nights I spent under those
>> Bortle class 3 skies of Coorg -- they were wonderful and the 17.5"
>> really lived up to our expectations (while the 8" exceeded them, like
>> Amar points out!).
>
> Excellent skies indeed and Bortle Class III easily. M33 seemed to be
> elusively
> direct vision for sometime the previous night. Milky way density was
> extremely
> thick and structured. Contrasting dark rifts were evident in all regions.
>
> Intermittent fog is an issue (although it din't affect us post 12 on both
> the
> days), and maDikEri lights are evident low in the east.
>
> Akarsh, Amar and Keerthi were exceptionally good company. Akarsh's
> magnanimity
> with sharing the scope for collective-fun needs a special word of thanks, as
> does Keerthi's 8" (Will always remember it for Horsehead!). Overall, an
> excellent couple of nights well-spent doing some serious observing.
>
> On Tuesday 22 December 2009 00:49:34 Akarsh Simha wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> After the Coorg starparty, four of us (Keerthi, Amar, Pavan and me)
>> decided to stay back for another night at Keemale estates and observe
>> the night sky.
>>
>> Amar, who joined us only for this session travelling all the way from
>> Bangalore, had a huge spell of good luck (office leave etc) that
>> carried on to clear skies (almost) all through the night, starting
>> from 6 PM till 4:30 AM!
>>
>> Okay, the highlights:
>>
>> 1. Andromeda Galaxy -- two dust lanes, the knot at the edge clearly
>>    visible. Amar saw 4 extragalactic globular clusters in Andromeda
>>    Galaxy and showed the rest of us 2 of them -- G 76 and G 1, if my
>>    memory is good.
>>
>> 2. Triangulum Galaxy -- the galaxy was blown apart at 140x and we
>>    could see 3 spiral arms and a lot of knots. NGC 604, the diffuse
>>    nebula in Triangulum Galaxy, was very distinct. The sight was
>>    really beautiful.
>>
>> 3. Whirlpool Galaxy (M 51) -- Oh my God! This was one of the most
>>    divine sights in the eyepiece! The galaxy appeared like a grayscale
>>    version of its photograph by Dr. Suresh Mohan stuck in the
>>    eyepiece:
>>    http://picasaweb.google.com/drsureshmohan/DeepSky#5063928190961023554
>>    The two spiral arms were clear and the connection between the two
>>    galaxies could be easily seen. The view at 140x (which is what I've
>>    described) was simply breathtaking!
>>
>> 4. M 74 (The Phantom) -- This galaxy in Pisces showed us three spiral
>>    arms at 140x. It was really beautiful. (Users of Debian GNU/Linux
>>    would have probably come across a blog post about the Debian logo
>>    resembling M 74's arms -- and we saw just that!)
>>
>> 5. NGC 1365 -- One of the bright galaxies in Fornax, it showed us
>>    _distinct_ barred spiral structure with two spiral arms as seen in
>>    the photograph (again at 140x)
>>
>> 6. Horsehead Nebula -- Pavan finally managed to see the Horsehead
>>    nebula in Keerthi's 8" telescope. I didn't bother staring at it
>>    again, so I don't know -- maybe Pavan can update the group.
>>
>> 7. NGC 1300 -- This barred spiral in Eridanus showed the bar very
>>    clearly, and some structure at the ends of the bar. One spiral arm
>>    was visible, but the other was a bit too faint.
>>
>> 8. NGC 1187 -- Showed hints of spiral structure and bar, although
>>    spiral arms were not distinct.
>>
>> 9. NGC 1049 -- This faint, tiny globular belonging to the Fornax Dwarf
>>    system was seen as a tiny fuzzy spot.
>>
>> 10. NGC 27 -- This very faint galaxy was a tiny smudge that was very
>>     hard to detect. Thanks to the internet connectivity, we were able
>>     to confirm the exact position against DSS images and find this
>>     object.
>>
>> 11. NGC 22, NGC 16 -- Two fuzzy patches of light. Nothing more to
>>     say. :)
>>
>> 12. NGC 1232 -- This showed hints of lots of spiral arms, although I
>>     could not see anything concrete.
>>
>> 13. NGC 891 -- Showed central bulge and a long dust lane, almost like
>>     a black-and-white photograph. (Just like the view on the 19th that
>>     I tweeted about.)
>>
>> 14. Rosette Nebula -- We were able to visually detect the brightest
>>     portion of Rosette Nebula in the eyepiece. It spanned a
>>     semi-circle. We could not see the other parts.
>>
>> 15. Amar showed me two comets. He will share the details.
>>
>> 16. M 97 -- The owl nebula showed the two "eyes" of the owl without
>>     OIII filter at 140x magnification. They were hardly
>>     distinguishable from the rest of the nebula. I confirmed the
>>     orientation of the eyes using images and it matched.
>>
>> 17. M 100 -- I think I was able to see the beginning parts of the
>>     brighter spiral arm of this galaxy. Confirmed the orientation with
>>     field stars.
>>
>> 18. M 81 -- We were able to see hints of spiral structure the previous
>>     night itself, which Pavan confirmed with a photograph. I'm just
>>     mentioning this here because I forgot to mention it earlier. We
>>     revisited this object, but didn't spend much time on it.
>>
>> 19. NGC 2683 -- Edge on spiral, showing hints of a dark lane. Pavan,
>>     Amar and Keerthi saw the dark lane clearly, but I wasn't able
>>     to. The central bulge was clearly there.
>>
>> 20. NGC 4565 -- This edge on spiral was really, really beautiful. It
>>     was extremely long, sported a dark lane, and had a nice central
>>     bulge. A marvellous sight indeed.
>>
>> 21. Jupiter -- With perfect, fresh collimation, we got a crisp view of
>>     Jupiter with structures in the cloud bands etc.
>>
>> The last three days of observing with the 17.5" scope has been really
>> exciting. We enjoyed these wonderful views, thanks to people on the
>> Cloudy Nights forum, who educated us that 2mm exit pupils are
>> "usually" the best for DSOs. We noticed that a lot of features became
>> evident with the raise in magnification, particularly the spiral arms
>> of M 74 (which were hardly visible otherwise).
>>
>> Maybe I should blog about these wonderful nights I spent under those
>> Bortle class 3 skies of Coorg -- they were wonderful and the 17.5"
>> really lived up to our expectations (while the 8" exceeded them, like
>> Amar points out!).
>>
>> Regards
>> Akarsh
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Bangalore
>>
> Astronomical Society" mailing list.
>> To post to this group, send email to b-a-s@googlegroups.com
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to b-a-s-
> unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups-beta.google.com/group/b-
> a-s?hl=en
>>
>> News - http://www.bas.org.in/
>> Events - http://www.bas.org.in/Home/events_calendar
>> 24X7 Chat on IRC - http://www.bas.org.in/Home/irc (#b-a-s on freenode)
>>
>
> --
> -Pavan K Murthy
> http://grahana.net/
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Bangalore
> Astronomical Society" mailing list.
> To post to this group, send email to b-a-s@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> b-a-s-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups-beta.google.com/group/b-a-s?hl=en
>
> News - http://www.bas.org.in/
> Events - http://www.bas.org.in/Home/events_calendar
> 24X7 Chat on IRC - http://www.bas.org.in/Home/irc (#b-a-s on freenode)


--
Regards
         Rakesh Nath
        www.digirak.wordpress.com

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 03:29:43PM +0530, Rakesh Nath wrote:
> Skies look like they surpassed our last trip horsehead with an 8 inch
> is certainly an achievement amazing

Oh well, the skies were good, but from what I hear, these were not the
best skies that BAS has seen.

What made horsehead in a 8" possible, was that we saw it before hand
with the 17.5" and then looked into the 8". It looked neater (to me at
least) in the 8" because the low magnification made the
low-surface-brightness background nebula brighter.

Regards
Akarsh

What you are saying is its a function of the contrast if i have
understood you right and normally contrast will be better with a dark
background so wont it be because of real good skies and the classical
absorption nebula properties?

On 12/22/09, Akarsh Simha <akarshsimha@...> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 03:29:43PM +0530, Rakesh Nath wrote:
>> Skies look like they surpassed our last trip horsehead with an 8 inch
>> is certainly an achievement amazing
>
> Oh well, the skies were good, but from what I hear, these were not the
> best skies that BAS has seen.
>
> What made horsehead in a 8" possible, was that we saw it before hand
> with the 17.5" and then looked into the 8". It looked neater (to me at
> least) in the 8" because the low magnification made the
> low-surface-brightness background nebula brighter.
>
> Regards
> Akarsh
>


--
Regards
         Rakesh Nath
        www.digirak.wordpress.com

Hi

I went observing totally for 6 nights during that last one and a half
weeks, out of which 5 nights were successful.

Here are the sketches:
http://members.bas.org.in/kstar/Astrosketches/Dec_2009/

I will probably blog about the observing sprint some time soon.

Regards
Akarsh

you lucky. out here it's been snowing non-stop and i haven't even so much as
seen good old sol. except tuesday last week when there was a nice pair of
sundogs and a very nice arc.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 11:25 AM, Akarsh Simha <akarshsimha@...>wrote:

> Hi
>
> I went observing totally for 6 nights during that last one and a half
> weeks, out of which 5 nights were successful.
>
> Here are the sketches:
> http://members.bas.org.in/kstar/Astrosketches/Dec_2009/
>
> I will probably blog about the observing sprint some time soon.
>
> Regards
> Akarsh
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thank you very much Akarsh for sharing your observation! Can you tell me which
two comets you observed during the session?




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Doctor,

Rosset is really nice for such a short data. The Spikes looks like
diffraction spikes to me similar to caused by Spider Vains in Newtonians.
This may be due to something on Lens of 80mm or on Filter of DSLR. may be
something inside tube !!!!

Have a nice day
Sameer

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Suresh Mohan <swashya@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi,
>
> Last weekend we went to the farm house to shoot Rosette nebula, all went
> well till I lost the guide star after only 30 minutes, I could hear a
> distant thunder ,we just packed and left and on the return journey it was
> blinding rain ! but what came from 30 minutes surprised me
> http://tinyurl.com/ykvo23y
>
> Can someone tell me why im getting those spikes? Akarsh, Ajay?
>
> It is there on my m 31 pic also,looks good though !
>
> Suresh Mohan
>
> Orion 80ED
>
> Canon 350d
>
> EQ6
>
> ISO 800x5minutesx 6 subs
>
> Suresh Mohan
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>



--
Sameer


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]