Stars and rainbows: Mersing trip report (9-11 Aug 2013)

[antares2063]

Hi all, just came back from a short but very fruitful and fulfilling trip, the skies were much better with some passing clouds now and then. Group size this time was about 24. About 14 telescopes were deployed, some for imaging, some for visual.

Day 1:
Once it was time for dinner, dark clouds started brewing and a heavy rain fell upon us. The skies opened up and it rained till around 9pm. Fortunately after the rain it started to clear. I was overawed by the views of M51 (Whirlpool galaxy), Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) (so 3D-like!) , M17 (now I can see why its called a swan), and 47 Tucanae globular cluster through Gavin’s Obsession ™ 12.5” dob. The GC was so finely resolved that the stars from the outer rim of the globular formed a gradient that increases as you look towards the core. Whenever anyone who was in the queue looked into in this scope at faint objects for the first time, a ‘Wow” was uttered. No averted vision needed, just direct vision!

Skies remained clear up till around 4am , personal meteor count : 6

Day 2:
When heading for lunch, spotted a sun halo amongst the high clouds. A brief drizzle took place and we were treated to a sight of 2 rainbows at separate times. One of the rainbow was so low that it actually seem to have sprung out of the sea. Around 3pm, the Solarscope 70mm Etalon was deployed to give us an awesome view of the sun via a Takahashi refractor + Flea3 webcam. There was a loop-shaped prominence on the Sun’s rim at the 12 o’clock position and a long scar-like faculae running on the disk of the sun near the 8oclock area.
The night started off strong and it remained clear till about 2am. Had a look at the moon through a binoviewer on Koko’s scope, awesome! Spent the rest of the night hunting down DSOs, kept looking at M4 and Antares in my scope in the same FOV with a 28mm eyepiece, getting lost in the star fields of Scorpius and Cygnus, the Perseus double cluster (NGC 869 + NGC 884) were some of the memorable sights. Also looked at M5 for the first time, a GC with uneven brightness and M30 another first for me. Talked about prata as the Milky Way and HDB flats analogy to 2 of Gavin’s friends who dropped by for awhile. Both of them witnessed a meteor streak as she requested for me to point my scope towards Antares, if I hadn’t looked up I would have missed that one! At around 4-5am , Orion and Taurus were up in the sky.

Personal meteor count : 2
Didn’t have any luck capturing any meteor streaks in my DSLR despite draining 2 full batteries, perhaps others may have been luckier. Had an interesting kite flying session on Sunday morning but will leave others to elaborate on that interesting time involving an iphone
Thanks for looking.

regards,
Junwei

[Gary]

Thanks for the report! Brings back lots of wonderful memories seeing objects through dobs for the very first time.

[Mariner]

Dates for Sept confirmed?

[starfinder]

Thanks Junwei for the kind descriptions!

Now that the news of my 12.5" f/5 Obsession is out on this forum, I hereby post a debut photo of it, taken during this trip to Telok Sari, Mersing district. I got it new direct from Obsession in mid-May this year. It's a full-spec set-up with Argo Navis DSC and Servo Cat goto motors, and an OMI f/5 primary. Everything works well overall, except that I still need to get used to some aspects of the Servo Cat operations. The mechanics of the dob are very smooth, and Argo Navis is quite a powerful tool.

If I may say so, the optics of the Obsession are superb. The views through this scope of deep sky objects (DSOs) such as globular clusters and nebulae are a quantum leap over my 8" SCT, in terms of brightness, contrast, sharpness and amount of detail. The view of Saturn (which I viewed from Singapore in May-July) is amazingly sharp and detailed too.

The highlights for me on those two nights at Mersing through this scope included the Swan Nebula (M17), 47 Tucanae (globular cluster), M22 globular, the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (M24), the M13 globular, the Dumbbell nebula (M27), the Helix Nebula (ngc7293), the Whirlpool galaxy (M51), and the Orion Nebula (M42) which I viewed as dawn was breaking. The surprise DSO for everyone was undoubtedly 47 Tucanae, which we seldom even bother to attempt to view from our latitude (even at our Mersing dark sky site); we viewed it on Sat night when it was only 15 degrees above the southern horizon whilst the sky conditions in that area were excellent then. 47 Tucanae was so complex and varied in its structure that it was like watching some movie. (I may add a list of the many more the DSOs seen that night through this scope in an added post.)

The sky transparency was, unfortunately, on the whole rather poor for many areas of the sky on the two nights that I was there (Fri 9 Aug and Sat 10 Aug 2013), which was why galaxies were mostly not seen well. The main exception, transparency-wise, was the bright and clear arc of the Milky Way, with its patches of bright clouds and dark lanes, stretching all the way from Cygnus through Sagittarius/Scorpius high-up and on to Norma/Lupus at around 8pm to nearly midnight on Sat night. That complemented well the generally clear conditions (but not excellent transparency) that we had from around 11pm to 4am on the previous night (Fri), and the somewhat clear skies in the East at around 5am on Sun morning.

I would add that, even considering the thrilling views through the dob, perhaps the unsurpassed view was that of the Milky Way as described above as a naked eye object stretched right across the sky and surrounded by so many bright patterns of constellation stars; that view alone would have made the trip worthwhile, and I encourage all budding astronomers to see this wonderous sight of nature. And why not chance upon a meteor or two as an added zest to the sight?!

Lastly, many thanks to Remus and co for organising this trip, esp considering the complex transport arrangements for the many scopes and people!

[Gary]

Nice report Gavin! The dob looks amazing!

[starfinder]

Thanks Gary. Yup, it's my first wooden scope and it looks great!

[Canopus Lim]

Cool. Great to see Obby's bro working fine!

[antares2063]

Twin Obsession dob bino ..lol

Gavin: years back i viewed 47 tuc in mersing before

[lqx]

Here's the sunrise!