Stars and Zodiacal Light: Mersing Trip report(22-24 Aug2014)

[antares2063]

Well, what can I say ....my 4th trip in 2 years, if the previous 3 trips were good, boy were we in for a surprise !

27 people in total made the trip up to Sri Kandi resorts, Mersing. If I remember correctly , here is a rough breakdown of the equipment that went up (pardon me if i made any mistakes)

The Deep Sky Imagers:

-Astrophysics 5" Starfire Gran Turismo on Paramount MX
-OPT 8" imaging newtonian on iOptron ZEQ 25
-Takahashi 76mm Fluorite APO and AT6RC on Losmandy G8
-TMB 4" refractor on Losmandy G11
-Astrotech 65mm on iOptron ZEQ 25
-Stellarvue/LOMO objective 80mm triplet on AP Mach 1 GTO
-Stellarvue 90mm Raptor on Vixen SXW

The Visuals and eye-powered :

-Meade Lightbridge 12" Truss Dobsonian
-Reise 10" Dobsonian
-Celestron 6" SCT with Zeiss binoviewer
-Astrotech 80mm triplet refractor
-Zingaro 6" newtonian
-The Oreo (aka finder-binos) made of twin Stellarvue RACI 50mm finderscopes with option to change eyepieces.

A guest from Japan came to join us this trip, Mr Kasai from Kasai Trading Co. Japan =)

Highlights :

The first night started off abit cloudy but the sky slowly cleared up close to midnight . Mr Kasai showed some very interesting objects thru his 10” dob , including Veil nebula , North American nebula (gulf of mexico portion) and the very dim Cresent nebula. I have no idea Ngc6888 can be a visual object!

Starfinder also tracked down Comet Jacques (C/2014 E2) in the Cassopeia region at the 5th star of the “M” asterism. It was a joy to see a comet thru a scope after so many years for me! Later on he also showed 47 Tucanae in Thomas's dob….beautiful!
The night was also peppered with many meteors, some sporadic but quite a few from the closing phase of the Perseids meteor shower. There was a few that even left a burning/smoking/glowing trail after the meteor has disintegrated.

Second night was awe-inspiring. From the moment the sun went down, the sky was clear and it remained clear all the way till pre-dawn, stars were non-hazy and the sky was at a level of transparency seldom seen. I was happily starhopping from objects to starfields, testing the visual limits of my humble newtonian. Collectively through the 12" dob , we savoured the views of:

-Omega Cent. (early evening , it sets quite soon after)
-M104 Sombrero galaxy
-M8 Lagoon
-M22 globular
-M55 globular
-M13 globular in Hercules (the lonely north globular)
-M17 Swan (someone commenting looking through the dob that he can finally understand why it is called the Swan, forgot who)
-Ngc 6522+6528 (two faint globulars in same FOV with 20mm ep – a first visual target for me!)
-Ngc 6397 , nice Ara globular
-M57 Ring nebula and the nearby M56
-Ngc 253 galaxy in Sculptor
-M31 plus its 2 satellite galaxies M32 and M110
-Ngc 7789 open cluster , “Rose” cluster. It is curious that this cluster has dark bands and swirls cutting into the cluster, hence the name.
-M78 reflection nebula in Orion (finally this hard target for me can be crossed off my personal list). It is still pretty faint in a 12”. Looks like a faint nebula with 2 stars superimposed on it.
-NGC 2169 “37 cluster”,
-M42 (stunning , simply stunning with UHC filter)
-M41 open cluster
- Winter Albireo, a binary star in Canis Major with 2 nice contrasty colours
- M79 globular in Lepus (another lonely globular) the last object seen as sky was slowing brightening

Also the Oreo offered a depth of sweeping views of the Sagi arm and Cygnus arm of the Milky way. Someone (again I forgot who) commented that looking at star fields with the finder-bino are like looking at real, 3D textbook-like views of the skies!

I was super tired at around 445am (Sunday predawn) and was succumbing to the call of the mattress when starfinder pointed out this interesting whitish glow of light in the eastern horizon that goes up vertically and cuts into Taurus. Towards the top the glow leans abit to the right and if looking at Orion constellation, the glow is not present. Greatredspot remarked that the stark black white contrast between the background of Orion and the glow was very definitive. Turns out that this is the very rare phenomenon known as Zodiacal light/Gegenschein/False dawn. Thomas, Gavin and Yingtian all took very nice wide field pics of the zodiacal light.
And oh yes..we saw such a thin sliver of the waning moon that i think its the thinnest cresent i have ever seen. Also we tried many times using Mystiq's H-beta filter combined with the 12-inch to look for Horsehead nebula but in vain....

Here are some pics from my camera to share :







A last shoutout to the organiser and the fun times we had , this trip is one worth cherishing !



Regards,
Junwei

[Airconvent]

wow..Another Mersing trip last week ? Nice report, Junwei. Zodiacal light...I have not seen that one before. Definitely would have made the trip worth it for you with this one. Thanks for sharing

[starfinder]

Yes, the 2nd night (Sat 23 Aug 2014) at Telok Sari was one to remember. I've been to Telok Sari / Mersing for astronomy perhaps 30/40+ times over the last 15 years, and that night was definitely in the top 10%. I would rate it at 9/10 or 9.5/10 by Mersing standards . At about 7.50pm, when it was still twilight, I took a 10s exposure of the central Milky Way and immediately saw that it was a high contrast clean object.

Milky Way
That night, the Milky Way arched like a white rainbow overhead for several continuous hours, stretching from about 25 deg above the NE horizon uninterrupted to about 25 deg above the SW horizon, for a sweep of about 130 degrees. It was a sharp, high contrast, clean object, with the various dark rifts clearly defined against the grey/white 'milk'. The Dark Horse in Sagittarius could be seen, like a Ferrari emblem perched over the Teapot, and ready to kick Antares in Scorpius.

I spent much time sweeping across the whole Milky Way with my Canon 15x50 IS binos, right from Cygnus to Scorpius. One of my favourite areas of the sky is central Cygnus, from Deneb to Albireo. That region was awash with countless thousands of stars packed closely together, and interspersed with various small intricate ribbons and knots of dark nebula. It was the first time that I noticed these dark nebulosity in Cygnus, a clear testament to the sky quality that night.

In sweeping across the arc of the Milky Way with the binos, I went into and out of the light and dark areas of the central rift region, back and forth. The Milky Way was brighest in the region 'above' or NW of the Teapot's sprout, which I believe is also called Baade's window, and the contrast with the nearby dark areas was also the greatest. In the eyepiece through Thomas' 12" Lightbridge dob, M24 (Sagittarius Star Cloud) was marvellous, and Remus and I saw a very abrupt black round blob (dark nebulae) in the midst of surrounding stars.


Zodiacal Light :
At 5.10am, I discerned that the sky seemed to be brightening in the ENE. At first I thought that it was the beginning of dawn / morning twilight, but then I realised that it was of course too early as sunrise would be at 7.01am (the start of astronomical twilight would be at 5.52am) and the Sun was then still 28 deg below the horizon.

I took a 15s exposure to see if it was sky glow, but since it was pure white rather than greenish, I immediately realised that it was the zodiacal light! No wonder its also called the False Dawn. I then called out to all the rest still awake to see the zodiacal light, and woke up Ivan and Gerrarddyn from their rooms to see it. I recall seeing the zodiacal light at Kahang Eco Farm a few years ago with RLow before dawn, and saw again it at Tammin in Western Australia a couple of years ago. I may have seen it at Telok Sari several years ago, but can't quite remember.

This time, it was a large white band that ran from about 5-10 degrees above the eastern horizon (above cloud tops in the distance) up to about 50 degrees above. At the bottom, it was perhaps 30-40 deg wide, and tapered slightly leftwards to the top. It was about 2-3 times as bright as the brightest area of the Milky Way (Teapot region).

I took several photos of it and will post one later. The photos show that the zodiacal light we saw matched the ecliptic, including the leftwards tilt. Imagine, seeing sunlight reflected off millions of grains of dust and rocks in space!


Comet C/2014 E2 (Jacques) :
This was my 2nd time seeing this comet, the first was in late July at Air Papan with a 120mm ED. This time however, I rate it as quite an impressive object. It was a roundish large white translucent object of perhaps 5 arcmin diameter at mag 6.5, with a brighter central condensation, in Cassiopeia. On the first night, many of us, seeing it thru the 12" dob, described it as resembling a badminton shuttlecock. On the 2nd night, it appeared more roundish. A comparison of the object's location versus the background stars showed that it clearly moved over about half an hour. A Lumicon Comet filter enhanced the comet's contrast, but still no tail could be seen. I also saw the comet in my 15x50 binos.


Meteors :
I saw a few, esp on the 1st night. A memorable one was seen at about 5am, that went horizontally from below left of The Pleiades, and extended for about 15 deg. It was bright, about mag 0, and started as a dot, traced a continuous line, and ended as another dot. It traced back to Perseus, so perhaps it was a late Perseid. I recall it was white, with a tinge of green.


I also saw many DSOs through Thomas' 12" dob, including some mentioned by Junwei above.

All in all, it was a very memorable and fruitful trip. Many thanks to Remus for organising it!

[starfinder]

Here is an image of the zodiacal light, taken at 5:09am local time. This was the confirmation image that confirmed it was the (white) zodiacal light rather than (greenish) airglow.

Canon EOS 60D, 10s tripod mounted, ISO 3200. Samyang 16mm f/2.0 manual lens (probably at f/2.0)

We saw the zodiacal light till about 6:05am, for a total of about an hour.

In the view out to sea from the NE to ESE, there are no sources of light pollution (no town/city light dome there, unlike over at the south due to Mersing town).

This image represents quite closely how bright the zodiacal light appeared.

Right-click and view this image on a new page (tab) if it does not show fully on this page.

[mrthomasyip]

WOW.....WOW...WOWWWWWW...................................................it is all i can hear once we dismount from the vehicles. Stepping out merely like stepping into a gigantic planetarium where stars and milkyway stratches from end till the end. Unload all the stuff from the car and as fast as possible I am able to get my 12" dobs to set up and collimate within 30mins. Seriously, fixing up a semi-truss dob in a real dark location is no joke actually but lucky rather smooth to get everything sorted out. Prior to obbing, Astro expert Gavin introduced the night sky with all its constellations to me, my neck really pain after the session looking around the starry sky.

The 2nd night was a powerpack sky which i never encounter in any other part of malaysia before. milkyway simply like a burger with brighter top and bottom areas sandwiching the center dark zone....WOW, what can we describe?

2nd night reaches its peak period where alot of souls not able to pull through due to the attack of ZZZZZZ monsters, me too, tired, but still trying hard to stay awake. Occasionally will just lying on my diy chairs bed for a power nap. eyes open and close shall see different people around the dobs and till one point of time left Clovis playing around the big gun while the surrounding very silent. Next moment when my eyes open people starts to gather back including Junwei, Great Red Spot Alvin, Clovis all appear and moving around the visual ground. Cool, next we have Gavin back in action.

WOW again......orion with soooooo many stars forming up whichever losses we seeing in singapore. What next.....HORSEHEAD.......got hold of the H-Beta filter and insert the eyepiece aiming on the location....black black....nothing, SAD....cannot see the horsehead nebula. Suspect it might due to my dirty mirror as during the packing up i does notice the mirror sort of need some cleaning. but this seems not very convince because we have viewed on so many DSOs for the past two nights so clearly and crisp, well weird, will bring my mirror for a light bath before deploying for horsehead again....

Next moment Astro Expert Gavin notice a glow on the horizon and highlighted to us that was Zodiacal light so without further all of us deploy our camera for a shot of it as quickly as we can before the real sun glow approaches.

Anyway, all of us really enjoy the trip very much, without each and everyone participation the trip will not be as fruitful as it is......thanks guys!!!

Some images which i took for the trip, equipment on Pentax K3-Astrotracer, Samyang 8mmf3.5 Fisheye and Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 @ at least 30sec single exposure








Zodiacal lights.......

[antares2063]

The amount of "wows" and calls when a meteor or bright fireball streaked by ....

Gavin and Thomas : Awesome pics of the zodiacial light! Thanks for sharing...

Thomas : by the way is your Pentax K3 sensor modded by removing the IR blocking glass? Or its totally untouched? also i doubt the mirror has anything to do with us being unable to see Horsehead Neb...i think need even darker skies like deserts of Mongolia or Australia....

regards,
Junwei

[Mariner]

I'm jealous.

I'm also keen to find out which H-beta filter was used.

[mrthomasyip]

Hi junwei, the camera is untouch. Nothing is being mod or adjusted

[looyaa]

Junwei, think you caught a meteor with the milky way.....did a quick pp on your shot

[antares2063]

George: yup and thanks for the post processing zhai !