Finally! Dempsey Observation Brief Report ( 7 Nov 2004)

Post by **Airconvent** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 4:47 am

Its been months since we had a session in Dempsey and with a very rare cloudless sky today, I activated CSN at Dempsey tonight. Quite a few turned up, including David Lian (8" Celestar) , Charlie (new policeman with 102 FLT), Mooey, Chris Yeo (6" ATM Newtonian) , Elton (10" Zambuto Teleport), Clement (C5), Chung Hooi. Maybe it just me but I felt the sky glow was worse now than it was when we last went there.

YL Low (without his Nexstar 8GPS) and his friends as well as our friendly neigbour the patrolling police dropped by to take a look at Saturn.

Was also the very first time in months I took my ETX out for a spin.
Was surprised that inspite that I did not do any calibration or training since the last mersing trip in June, goto was still good.

Had opportunity to run through quite a few M objects with Mooey including M35,M36,M37,M38,M41, M42, M44, a few globular clusters and of course,the usual odd meteors. M32 was a disappointment. Even on a bino it was extremely dim. Also tried my had with saturn using Clemen's 3-6mm Zoom Nagler. A very fine piece of work. I was able to push it to x375 where the image softened slightly but overall still a very good image. Nice! Really nice!

The star of the night has to be the 10" Teleport.
It was interesting looking at Elton use it. First scope I saw employing a Bluetooth enabled DSC system. Movements on his scope was translated into a cross hair on a star chart on his Ipaq 2210 via bluetooth.....cool, man!

Images through it were, as usual, wonderful. We tried looking for M1 using both broad band and UHC filters but no go. However, for the first time , I was able to see the E and F star in the trapezium..I did not manage to see it on Wira's 10" LX200 or CC's 8" Portaball previously but it was there tonight...clear and resolved...wow!
M45's stars were so bright that they appeared to be 3 dimensional. The nebulosity was also very clearly seen...

Saturn was simply a pleasure to see. My goodness. Using my Meade 6.4mm eyepiece, its image as bright and contrasty. Could easily make out 4 moons including Titan. We eventually pushed it to x415 using Elton's 4mm eyepiece.

Overall tonight was like feeding drugs to drug addicts....all that pent up demand finally released today with a night of cloudless sky....I hope the rest did not waste it. I needed to go somewhere early, so had to call it a night (or morning) at almost 4am. Its almost 5 now, so I better turn in!

rich

bodoh · Post by **bodoh** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 8:21 am

Aaaaarrggghhh! Can't believe I missed the Dempsey session! Checked Singastro too late!

Sigh!

Post by **VinSnr** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 9:40 am

Wonderful report rich!

About Elton's laptop, was it on a separate table or on the scope itself?

Glad you enjoyed yourself!

Post by **Airconvent** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 10:25 am

VinSnr wrote:Wonderful report rich!

About Elton's laptop, was it on a separate table or on the scope itself?

Glad you enjoyed yourself!

It was not a lap top. Its an Ipaq 2210 Pocket PC...!
Quite cool really. If I did not have goto, ths is what I would like to have MINIMUM! :-)
What he does is do all the necessary initialisation and alignment, then all he needs to do after that is move his scope and the cross hair will move on his start chart. So if he needed to go to , say, M1, he moves his scope until the cross hair is on M1. The software he used is The Sky.
pity you didn't make it, else we could have seen your new scope.

rich

Post by **weixing** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 10:27 am

Hi,

M32 was a disappointment. Even on a bino it was extremely dim.

Hmm... you can see M32 on a bino?? :?: Ha Ha...

I think you really was too sleepy and type wrongly... It's M31, right??

Did you try seeing it using Elton 10" Teleport using a Pentax 40mm??

About Elton's laptop, was it on a separate table or on the scope itself?

Elton not using a laptop, he use a PDA with bluetooth. I think what he does is he connect his 10" Teleport's encoder output to a bluetooth transmiter (with a serial input). The Planetarium software on his PDA will receive the data via his PDA's bluetooth. The bluetooth is transparent in the whole process... it is basically use as a wireless serial transceiver.

Have a nice day.

Post by **Airconvent** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 10:31 am

weixing wrote:Hi,
Hmm... you can see M32 on a bino?? :?: Ha Ha... I think you really was too sleepy and type wrongly... It's M31, right?? Did you try seeing it using Elton 10" Teleport using a Pentax 40mm??

yes...scanned it on my bino. would have been a totally wshed out object on my scope considering it is so dim on the bino.
no, didn't manage to see it on the Teleport as when I got there, it was already behind the building from where Elton set up his scope....
David did confirm it was a non-performer that night when they tried it earlier...

btw, David was the first to arrive, so maybe we should make him acting Dempsey CSN IC until CC returns! :-) and Mr Hardcore himself , Weixing was sorely missed there...your name was mentioned a few times...:-)

rich

MooEy · Post by **MooEy** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 12:10 pm

haha, we managed to catch m31 earlier in the night thru both the flt110 and david's c8. very bright core seen, me and charlie thought we could see a hint of it's companion galaxy thru the flt110. it's just a slighty brighter smudge 7 o'clock of the core.

~MooEy~

elton · Post by **elton** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 2:51 pm

Our trip to Dempsey was pretty coincidental. We were at Sembawang earlier and were "strongly advised" by the local QX to relocate to somewhere less desolated for safety reasons. Sembawang was very good, especially for the northern sky as it faces the undeveloped eastern part of Malaysian mainland. M31 was quite nice then, M32 was also bright, but nowhere close to Mersing, where M31, M32 and M110 all filled the 40mm. The rest of the night was spent on numerous open clusters, a few small planetaries and a few globulars, nothing notable except the clown face planetary and the christmas tree open cluster. M42 was as usual magnificant, especially last night when transparancy was good. The two arms were visible without filters. I was impressed with the views through Chris' 6" dob. Very clean and bright on clusters and M42.
Rich, the planetary eyepiece which we used to hit 415x was a borrowed 3-6 Nagler zoom. Eye-relief a little short, don't you think?
Can check out yahoo groups Palmastro for info on using PDAs with scopes. I posted a couple on using bluetooth with PDA DSCs. Just search archives for bluetooth. Have been using this set up for about 6 mths already. Only problem with the Ipaq 2210 is that if you allow the battery to run out, the memory gets wiped out, and along with it the calibration and bluetooth settings.

Post by **VinSnr** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 3:30 pm

elton wrote:Our trip to Dempsey was pretty coincidental. We were at Sembawang earlier and were "strongly advised" by the local QX to relocate to somewhere less desolated for safety reasons. Sembawang was very good, especially for the northern sky as it faces the undeveloped eastern part of Malaysian mainland. M31 was quite nice then, M32 was also bright, but nowhere close to Mersing, where M31, M32 and M110 all filled the 40mm. The rest of the night was spent on numerous open clusters, a few small planetaries and a few globulars, nothing notable except the clown face planetary and the christmas tree open cluster. M42 was as usual magnificant, especially last night when transparancy was good. The two arms were visible without filters. I was impressed with the views through Chris' 6" dob. Very clean and bright on clusters and M42.
Rich, the planetary eyepiece which we used to hit 415x was a borrowed 3-6 Nagler zoom. Eye-relief a little short, don't you think?
Can check out yahoo groups Palmastro for info on using PDAs with scopes. I posted a couple on using bluetooth with PDA DSCs. Just search archives for bluetooth. Have been using this set up for about 6 mths already. Only problem with the Ipaq 2210 is that if you allow the battery to run out, the memory gets wiped out, and along with it the calibration and bluetooth settings.

elton,

The encoders output is a serial cable? Is your bluetooth transmitter input a USB or serial port?

I am trying to build a Mel Bartels system....and checking to see if I can replace the laptop with a PDA.

elton · Post by **elton** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 3:49 pm

Vinsr,
The standard US digital encoders output is not serial. The David Ek bbox converts those encoder tic signals into a serial output. I'm not familier with the Mel Bartels system but i think the principle is still the same. It works on a polling method. If you connect a PC and serial cable directly to the bbox, you can open a serial terminal connection with the bbox. Poll using the character "Q" and you will get a reply consisting of 2 readings for the 2 axes. The serial bluetooth transmitter simply acts as a wireless serial cable replacement. At the PC end, you can use either a USB or serial bluetooth transmitter. The bbox is easier to construct to give a serial output so you will need a serial bluetooth transmitter on the bbox end. If your notebook or PDA already has bluetooth built, all the better.
The serial bluetooth at the bbox end is not the usual bluetooth dongle you find at Sim Lim. Because the bbox is a dumb system, the BT transmitter must be able to stand alone. Check out aircable, socket and free2move for cable replacement solutions. Pay very close attention to the pinout connections, most likely you will have to reverse pins 2 & 3 and short-ciruit the flow control pins. Have fun.