An evening with the 'new' Society C8

This is the 'new' Cotswold AS C8 - kindly donated to the Society.

I had it out on 25th June - it was a clear night, but so near the solstice the sky was quite bright. I mainly wanted to try to collimate the scope so went out as dusk commenced. Venus was bright, setting in the west.

Collimation of a Schmidt Cassegrain is done by three adjusting screws at the front of the scope that tilt the secondary which is mounted in the middle of the corrector. With a medium power eyepiece the airy disk was easy to see, but adjusting the screws needs a bit of patience and persistence. I was getting close, but probably need to spend a while longer, but it was acceptable.

So quite respectable views of Venus and Saturn with Titan nearby. I then went onto Lyra to collimate on Vega a bit more, and then viewed Epsilon Lyrae - the double double.

I was not sure if I would be able to locate it with the still bright sky (full Moon tonight too), but I thought I would try for the Ring Nebula, M57 - actually it was quite easy to locate and see, but there are better views to be had.

To round things off, a stop over at Albireo, one of my favourite doubles, with a tremendous colour contrast between the bright blue and yellow stars.

So a big asset for the Society... gratefully received.

C/2009R1 - at last !

Well last night managed to get my first real view of this comet. The northern sky was pretty grotty really, but managed to spot it in Perseus with 10x50 binoculars without too much trouble.

Tried to image it widefield with the Canon 300D and 50mm lens. First few images were good, but must have knocked the lens as the focus was way off on the 7th onwards. Grrrrrr...

Here is a combined stack of 6x8s at f/2 and iso 1600. Processed in IRIS, with synthetic background gradient removal. Not too harse, as you can see. Hopefully the pic looks fairly natural.

Notice the tail is about 1.25 degrees long, and there is a hint of a second tail too.

Just for the record - taken on 2010 June 16 at 00:50UT.

C/2009 R1 (McNaught)

Created the Stellarium elements for C/2009 R1 - hoping to see it soon..

Here they are - just add to your Stellarium ssystem.ini file.


[C2009R1]
name = C/2009R1 (McNaught)
parent = Sun
coord_func = comet_orbit
radius = 1000
oblateness = 0
albedo = 0.8
lighting = TRUE
halo = TRUE
color = 1.0,1.0,1.0
tex_halo = star16x16.png
tex_map = deimos.png
orbit_TimeAtPericenter = 2455380.177
orbit_PericenterDistance = 0.405028736
orbit_Eccentricity = 1.000360164
orbit_ArgOfPericenter = 130.6996389
orbit_AscendingNode = 322.6221957
orbit_Inclination = 77.0330084
orbit_visualization_period = 600