Toa Payoh Observation Group Skywatching

Post by **zong** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:13 pm

Just came back home. By the time I set up the scope, Vega is already blocked by clouds, and the moon was blocked by lower fast moving clouds. When the moon finally came into view i looked at it for a very nice crisp view! Everything was very very clear!

In the meantime, Ian came...

But the clouds MUST ruin everything.. As the clouds moved over, I still looked through the scope, and saw 2 distinct "layers", one of the moon and the other of the clouds, until the clouds covered the moon completely.

By which time, Clifford came!

He came with a few new stuff bought from Grandeye, which reminds me to write here to ask him to update in our equipment list ok?

And clifford and ian and I set up the 15x70 bino together. The moon was very nice to come out for a while for us to look through with the big bino. Then we played with the green laser he bought for awhile, and the small bino he bought too. Then around 9pm Ian had to go so clifford and I packed up and left too.

Though i only saw the moon today, it's still an improvement over the "nothing" i've seen for the past month!

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Another thing I am thinking of proposing is: Instead of making this a regular weekly session I'll make it flexible and activate on Fridays or Saturdays or Sundays night, IF the sky is clear. But that means i'll have to make a list of who will join, and send them sms to activate them, quite like CSN but a smaller scale. I don't have a lot of free sms.. But who wants to join? Can pm me with your name and number so i can keep it on my handphone

If I change it to the "activation method", however, the new people might be too shy to join or PM me to activate them. Suggestions from anyone else on how better to make this session more easily accessible to new people who want to join are welcome! Other suggestions too are welcome of course..

Post by **zong** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 11:50 pm

Update. At eric (eboo)'s request by sms, i activated Toa Payoh ob group on sunday night. actually the sky quite nice, but by the time we met, clouds covered the sky again -__- This time, the people attended were Clifford and Eric and me.

Anyway, we managed to find at least 1) Pleaides, and 2) Orion Nebula, which was still quite low in the sky so couldn't show its beauty nicely. The rest.. all covered in clouds. haha..

Hope this spurs on more newbies to join my ob group to at least see some stuff.

By the way, I'll be going down to ECP again this friday to try see Leonids, another meteor shower. Clifford and Eric also said they would join, but i haven't confirmed with them. According to the net, some pages said the peak is on the 17th, and some said it's on the 19th. I'm not sure which one it is, but i picked 17th anyway so i'll be at ECP area between C4 and D1 again this friday. Anybody who wanna join can pm or call me

Post by **zong** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:47 pm

Went out to ECP for Leonids!

My count of meteors sighted: TWO! (Ok so maybe it isn't very worth talking about since leonids is so big supposed to see more.. haha)

Yang Beng (Canopus) contacted me 1 day before the event, and together we agreed that since nobody else called me, we would go to his usual ob site at the jetty near Carpark G of ECP instead of the usual Carpark C4 and D1 that i usually go to. The people present were Yang Beng, Clifford, and me.

The obsession rules! lol. 12.5" really saw a lot of things.. We reached the jetty around midnight, and went to m42 and saw the trapezium and the nebula very easily and clearly. Then we went over to M37. Oh my god. In that good sky, with the obsession, even M37 shows so many stars it beats M41 in my 5" hands down!! I was just blown away by the whole view.. so many stars!!!!

After that, we split Castor, and went on to M36, M35, and a few more NGC open clusters that i didn't know what numbers cos too many to remember..

Then.. I saw my first meteor!!! Of the leonids, that is.

One achievement I made was to find M35 through the 15x70 binos Clifford used, after Yang Beng pointed out to me roughly where it was.

Then I continued just staring at the sky while Clifford went out to drive his car nearer to the jetty, and Yang Beng went on to down his scope cos we saw big rain clouds coming.. The clouds covered the whole NE and SW all the way until only a small area from Orion to Gemini could be seen. Then i saw my second meteor. Then.. it started to rain!! Heavily!! ARGHHH...

Very quickly we used Clifford's poncho-made-groundsheet to cover our way back to the cars, and we drove home, around 2:30am.. So sad cos actually it was really just that jetty area raining, even my usual C4/D1 ob site not raining.. but I was afraid that the clouds would continue the way to the rest of ECP so we drove home.

I think all 3 of us learnt quite a lot of new things that day. YangBeng's obsession+DSC push-to rocks!

Post by **weixing** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 9:10 pm

Hi,
Ya... yesterday night was very clear, but I came back late and was very very tired, so didn't go out to observe... I was half asleep when jermny call me... ha ha ha

Have a nice day.

jermng · Post by **jermng** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:13 pm

Oopps ... Sorry, no wonder you sounded so sian when I called.

Was supposed to ob with Elton and Clement, but last minute something came up so that was called off.

Didn't know Yang Beng and the rest were obbing in East Coast, else I might have driven down. HAHA ... but anyway, I found a new patch of open field where I can safely ob.

Like everyone else, the clouds and drizzle started to come in at about 1am ...

Canopus Lim · Post by **Canopus Lim** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:21 pm

Actually this is the first time I saw so many open clusters in Singapore and they looked nice also. Especially for the Messiar ones which had one or two orange stars in the clusters! nice. With the ultra widefield eyepiece and 0.5 degree field and 144x magnification, these Messiar clusters were framed very nicely and had good contrast. Some of the NGC clusters looked nice too.

I have tried my other eyepieces, but I feel that in Singapore, it is better to go high magnification to 'see through' the light pollution. 2mm exit pupil and below would give a nice black sky background and higher contrast images of stars. Above that the sky background is too grey and harder to make out the stars.

I am also happy that my Argo Navis DSC has performed well enough and all the objects were within 0.5 degree field. The tour mode is real good and it makes life so easy as I do not need to think of what object to find and consider if it is visible. It categories the objects by choosing criterias like magnitude, type, location and sequence them as on a tour to visit these 'astro attractions'.

All in all it was a fun trip and worth the effort.

MooEy · Post by **MooEy** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 11:03 pm

bleh, i was at tekong rifle range for the past 2 nights. skies were superb, only problem is that i did not have any toys with me. so anyone went mersing today?

~MooEy~

Post by **Airconvent** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 11:39 pm

wow...was the sky that great.
at my place, the sky was good for about half an hour and then the clouds came in....great to see you had a good outing, zong!
Wished I could have seen through the 12.5" in Singapore....

ykchia · Post by **ykchia** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:11 pm

Hi folks:

11/18 sky was wonderful but 11/19. Woke up a couple of times but decided let the video take care of the sky.
Nothing exciting - in the following link were two images of meteors / flashing sat that triggered the video system.. Too few stars for me to do a proper star map overlay..

http://nightevents.blogspot.com/

rgds
ykchia

fl · Post by fl » Sun Nov 26, 2006 2:50 am

A newbie here, joined the Toa Payoh Observation group for the first time tonight! They said it is a tradition for newbie to write a report, so here’s mine.

I reached the site around 9.30pm, the people that were there were Zong, Clifford and Ian.

The first object I observed through Zong’s scope was the moon, he then showed me several other objects like Aldebaran, M42, Pleaides

In the meantime, Lily arrived with her family! Her kids were very active and asked many questions. I also learnt something when Zong answered them!

Other stuff observed were Pegasus, Andromenda galaxy, a double open cluster at Cassiopea, Canis Major, M41, Lepus. Hope I didn’t miss out anything.

It was definitely a fruitful trip for me

The session ended around 12am. Thanks to Zong for organizing the session and Clifford and Ian too!