Jupiter w/Meade LS 8 ACF & Orion Electronic Eyepiece

Jupiter, taken on 10/6/10 with a very old (circa 2001) Orion Electronic Eyepiece. It doesn’t have nearly the resolution that today’s cameras do, but I”m happy it caught the cloud belts easily and 3 moons.

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Cut the glare and increase contrast on Jupiter with Polarizing filters

I’ve had a Celestron “Polarizer” filter in my case for many years now. I’ve broken it out on occasion to use almost exclusively on the Moon, since it reduces the light throughput but maintains the color, and I prefer that view over those greenish Moon filter views anytime. Last week when viewing Jupiter, I decided to try the “Polarizer” filter to cut down the planets glare, which often times actually gets kind of annoying in a medium aperture telescope like my Meade LS 8 ACF. Well, I’m incredibly impressed with the results. The subtle reduction of light equals a perfect balance on Jupiter. The glare is reduced perfectly, permitting finer contrast on the planet. The sky background is made darker too, contributing even more to the aesthetic appeal this filter renders at the eyepiece.

Now these single filters appear to be discontinued, but you can find a Celestron 1.25″ Polarizing filter set that has 2 of these filters plus an adapter which permits a single filter to be used separately. The other filter can thus be mated to an adapter, and then this tandem setup will permit a higher degree of variability, blocking as much as 95% of the light. I highly recommend adding this to your visual arsenal, for Jupiter, it has made a fantastic difference. In addition to making improvements to planetary views, it’s capabilities may assist double-star observers in reducing glare from bright primaries and of course give comfortable, true color views of the Moon at any phase. Why I’ve never broken this filter out before for Jupiter I’ll never know, but it will be at the eyepiece of this backyard stargazer from now on any time Jupiter is in the eyepiece.

P.S. Let us know the next time your At the Eyepiece of your telescope and you get a chance to try out a Polarizing filter on Jupiter for yourself, I would love to know your thoughts on the use of this visual aid.

BET LYR Digital Sketch

Make no mistake, I’m hooked on double-stars. From suburban skies, they are plentiful and interesting. I’m really trying to keep not only written logs, but also sketching as many interesting objects as I can. This multiple star field is just plain pretty, thus my desire to capture it. The primary was white, but the secondaries had hints of blue to my eyes, I hope I captured the subtle colors here.

IOT CAS Digital Sketch

 

IOT CAS 239x

This triple star is a wonderful sight and doesn’t take incredibly high powers to split. This night (8/28/10) supported 239x easily, so I thought I would grab a sketch of it at this power.

Observing Report – Jupiter, Comet Hartley2, and cruising for NGC’s

Having a computerized telescope like the LS 8 ACF is great. Having the LS 8 and Stellarium working together is simply wonderful. This combo was just a part of the magic from Friday night and Saturday morning, since seeing was a times a solid 4/5 (Very Good).

Jupiter – I almost always start off with Jupiter, even if I don’t give the scope enough time to thermal equalize, I just want to gauge whats going on on the mighty giant. I unfortunately had missed the Io shadow transit, but even after just setting the scope up, I had a feeling tonight’s seeing would be good since the view had fleeting moments of some clarity.

After some hours, Jupiter was much higher. Wow, tonight’s seeing is indeed very good. My 14 mm (145x) gave a wonderfully sharp view, it was time to go to a higher magnification. I placed my 8.8 UWA (239x). The view is nice, but just not as clear as I would hope. I decided to back it down just a tad, breaking out a 9.7 PL I have. The view was indeed a bit sharper. I could clearly see the nice and dark features in the NnTB. In moments of better seeing, I could easily tell that the elongated feature was a series of dark ovals strung closely together, a first for me on this feature.

I decided to back down just a tad more to improve my contrast. I broke out another old staple eyepiece, the 12.4 PL, and placed it in the diagonal. That was the sweet spot of magnification for tonight, 164x. Jupiter was crisp and tight. Numerous white ovals and streaks could be seen in the NEB. Along the edge of the NEB to the EZ, there were dark features, perhaps festoons, that seemed to dip down towards the EZ. There was a long separation in the NEB that ran diagonally, and preceding it appeared to be a dark oval, this was just at the edge of the planets disk. Since this view was so pleasing, I decided to break out the pencils and did a sketch of what I viewed. I
hope to scan and post that to my blog later this week.

No noticeable definition to the SEB as of yet, other then what I discern as a very dim but darker “patch” that spans perhaps a quarter of the region.

Comet Hartley2 – Being very close to the Double-Double, I decided to take my second view of this comet. With my 18 mm SWA at 113x, I could make out the diffuse nature of this little visitor. I’ve viewed a few comets in my day, and this was is difficult. I just barely make out a brightening towards the center.

Double-Double – One of my all time favorites. With the 18mm @113x, I can just barely fit both in a single field of view. What I like about this pair of open clusters is not only their proximity to each other, but the fact that there is a speckle of orange-hued stars that contrast nicely against the cluster stars.

NGC 1502 – With the aid of Stellarium, I decided to cruise around the area of Cassiopeia and Perseus for some NGC objects I don’t often visit. I dipped down into Camelopardalis and I found this cluster very appealing in the 18mm @113x. I viewed 2 prominent stars in the center of the cluster, with another 6 or so bordering nicely around it. I would estimate from my sketch that there were 35 stars in all viewed at the eyepiece of this open cluster.

NGC 1528 – This open cluster was another pleasant find between Perseus and Auriga. There were about 9 prominent stars in a field of about 38 stars. I enjoyed the challenge of using averted vision to tease out the dimmer stars of this OC.

Meade LS 8 ACF and Stellarium – I can’t say enough about how much fun it
is to have Stellarium and the LS 8 together. Having the ability to view
the objects on my screen to view their magnitude and if the object
seems interesting, a quick key combo of Ctrl-1 and the LS 8 slews to the
object every time. The accuracy is dead on as well, placing the object
solid in the 14mm just about every time. This combo is wonderful for
outreach, and I’m really looking forward to this combo on Friday nights
Astronomy Night at the Discovery Center.