I’m keen on using my smart telescopes for star parties. This coming Friday there will be a picnic at the “darkest” site in Cook County. I volunteered to help the adventurous souls who got it designated as the largest Urban Night Sky Place in the world. Here’s the link to the event: Palos Nigh Sky Picnic. My plan is to use one of my scopes and share the images on my iPad.
As a rehearsal, I decided last night to go out into a nearby park in my Bortle 9 neighborhood next to Chicago. This blog entry shows what I observed with my eVscope in just 90 minutes. It’s one of the original models and I had a dual band nebular filter installed for this run. My logic is that for a star party like the one this week I need to show dramatic summer nebula pictures relatively quickly. I don’t like to be fiddling with scopes at the star parties but rather spending time talking about astronomy -- stellar evolution and interstellar matter are two of my favorite topics.
I’ll warn you that I haven’t processed any of the images I've pasted in here beyond what is done while observing with the Unistellar app. I sometimes tweak the brightness up a bit and push the background down. The longest stacking time on any image was 9 minutes or so. I may not go this fast at the picnic star party, but I want to make sure I’ll be good, that’s all.
The skies were clear, but the transparency and seeing were not that great. I started around 50 minutes after sunset and after a few minutes to make a dark frame and focus. Even like a scene from Star Wars, I had to "duck" stray kids on their bikes racing across the park in the gloaming. At least they didn't have any lights on and they could see my iPad in the dark! ;-)
Hold on to your pixels.... Here we go....
1. M16, the Eagle Nebula — 9 minutes.
2. M8, the Lagoon Nebula — 9 minutes.
3. M27, the Dumbbell Nebula — 4 minutes.
4. M17, the Omega Nebula — 3 minutes.
5. NGC7293, The Helix Nebula for 8 minutes is shown next. It was only about 15 degrees elevation over street lights a block away. I love this nebula, but the southern declination makes it almost impossible here and I couldn’t stay out much later because the park would close. Nevertheless, it is apparent at least.
I also decided to try M13, the Great Hercules globular cluster, to see how I would do without removing the filter, which would be tough in the dark with the eVscope. This looked fine well before 1 minute.
6. M13, Great Hercules Globular Cluster.
My point in showing these images is to demonstrate how fast these smart scopes can deliver really intriguing images for star parties. Although the eVscope is a bit faster because of its aperture than my Vespera, the difference is minor for this type of event. Setup and take down were no more than 10 minutes each time and I was back in my car and home quickly. Sometimes I call this type of observing my plein air planetarium.
Even Han Solo couldn’t have gone quicker! I now feel all ready and fueled up for the star party.
May the force be with us all!
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P. S. Although I love the Millennium Falcon, my fantasy space ship is more like that in this painting by Remedios Varo. It's now hanging in an amazing temporary show at the Art Institute of Chicago.
P.S.P.S. -- Encore of Bonus Images
I almost forgot that I took a few minutes between the imaging shown above to see if I could find some dark clouds with the nebular filter in. Here are two attempts at B68 and B142. At least I know how to find them. I’ll do longer integrations with my Vespera on a later session and without a filter in.
Which “sunset” did you wait till 50 minutes after? Civil, Nautical, or Astronomical? I am always trying to guess how dark it really has to be to do this kind of outreach with Vespera. For my own viewing, I wait till after Astronomical dusk.