Re: OR: Fremont Peak 5/23/09

I¹ve observed with Dob¹s from 14.5² to 24² aperture on galaxies. My current
24 in. Dob does show more galaxy spiral structure than my past 18² and 20²
Dob¹s did. I can¹t wait to see how 24 inches performs at GSSP!

Peter Natscher
Monterey, CA

From: Julien Lecomte <julien.lecomte@No-Spam>
Reply-To: <julien.lecomte@No-Spam>, TAC mailing list
<tac@No-Spam>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 09:02:10 -0700
To: TAC mailing list <tac@No-Spam>
Subject: Re: [TAC] OR: Fremont Peak 5/23/09

> NGC 4535: We had hoped to see the very dramatic spiral structure.
> We didn't, but we did notice the halo was somewhat unsmooth.
> We'll try again at GSSP.

Few galaxies show their spiral arms visually with 9" of aperture and
under less than pristine skies (which unfortunately is the case of
most sites around the bay area) You did notice that the halo was not
perfectly uniform, and that's already something! In general, when
trying to detect features in galaxy halos, you need:

1) Perfect skies (or at least as perfect as you can get) The smaller
your scope is, the most perfect the sky must be. The ultimate would be
O'Meara, with his 4" refractor under absolutely pristine skies.

2) Experience (that takes time, but eventually it will come - I'm
still working on mine ;-)

3) A huge light bucket (there is no replacement for aperture)

4) Mag it up! I like to work with magnifications between 0.5 and 1
time the diameter of my scope in millimeters (I have a 12" scope, so
that gives between 150x and 300x, depending on the brightness of the
halo and the seeing)

Virgo will be pretty low in the sky at GSSP, so better focus on the
summer sky ;-)

Hope this helps!
Julien

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