Mersing Expedition (7-9 September 2007)

Post by **rcj** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 3:39 pm

Hi astro-friends,

Here is the chalet version!

During the course of the chalet stay in Teluk Sari, we had mainly astronomy students from Ngee Ann and Nanyang Polytechnics and NUS, together with some SINGASTRO guys.

We departed on the 7th (Friday). The day started out semi-cloudy from Singapore early in the morning. As usual, we stopped over at Mersing Town for lunch, and during then, we could see Australian-type deep blue skies just outside KFC. It was about 3PM then. Everyone was quite excited about the positive weather conditions then, and we decided to head quickly to the chalets and at the same time hoping that the conditions would only maintain or further improve!

By about 4-5PM, most of us setup our telescope gear at the field next to the chalet, and still blue skies! There were an array of equipment mainly C8s, one C5, and one WO 3-inch refractor...

6PM....still blue!

I have decided to activate all imaging gear by then (6PM), including the CCD camera, laptops, etc... and still blue skies! At the same time, I thought to myself, that no more time should be wasted and every bit of clear sky time was to be spent on capturing photons. Drift alignment was done quickly and finished by 815PM, CCD camera already ready for capturing, and very quickly, it was onto the first object - M16 Eagle Nebula, a project that was put on hold since the last trip to Desaru. Now was the time to finish capturing all the colour channels (luminance was done in Desaru), and before the object set in the western horizon before midnight. Calibration was surprisingly smooth, and by the time the system was actually capturing data, it was 830PM, and from then on nobody had expected that the camera would be kept busy until 5AM! Wow! NON-stop!

As the autoguiding mechanism accompanied, it was time to rest and look around what the others were doing... it was quite interesting to see Mr Au teaching teh students the various constellations with his super-bright laser pointer, and the numerous oohs-aahs exclaimed upon seeing sporadics now and then. Infact, it would probably be more than 50 or even 100 by the time everyone retired in the wee hours of the morning!

As I was busy tending to the imaging system to make sure things were fine, the happenings around was predominantly highlighted by the experiences was watching the Great Spiral (M31) and M45 rising, and of course of the milky way DSO jewels. We could hear all the GOTO scopes activated on the field and moving to various objects one after another continuously. At one point in time, when M45 rose, everyone actually lined up their chairs in a few straight rows (very much like watching a movie in the cinema) and taking turns to use binoculars on M45. The only difference was it was completely natural and no tickets were issued.

After a few hours, it was time to take a colour core version of M31. It was close to midnight then, and still, NO CLOUDS! It was already 6 hours of clear sky time...

Very quickly, knowing it was time consuming on a colour data project again, M31 was composed, framed, and then autoguided, non stop until 4AM plus. By then, it was getting colder, and more people were feeling lethargic. The milky way span was already gone by now, only replaced by its subtlities in Cassiopeia, until Orion. As M31 was huge
(spanning 189arc-minutes across!), only the very core region of the
galaxy was captured, which illustrates the details of the dust lanes
of the Great Spiral, and some fainter H-alpha regions. It took quite a lot of time to generate all the channels for this image and by the time this
was done, most people then were asleep
already (alone up on the Seventh Month! ooooooooo)

Already feeling quite tired then, but something was calling out inside
me to continue to pursue perhaps just one more object....Orion has
rose by then, but I was the only one in the field...decided, just one
more! The Great Orion Nebula! There was definitely not enough time to
bag all the colour data for this object, so I decided to just take two
exposures of 20 minutes each in luminance, just to see how much
nebulosity one could expect then... By the time this was done, it was almost 5AM plus, and the sky was still amazingly clear....nevertheless, it was only less than an hour to the first hint of dawn light, and it was not possible to do much with so little time...

Amazingly, the first night did not see much dew built-up as well, although there were lots of mosquitoes and sandflies. Imaging conditions were close to perfect as such, and there were no wind at all!

The second night had more people present, it started out overcast, and then cleared intermittently before midnight, before it clouded out totally by 2AM. Went to sleep thereafter! Shag out.

looking forward to another expedition in October (Desaru)! stay tuned!

Meng Lee · Post by **Meng Lee** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 3:57 pm

Wow great to hear that the skies are that day! Oh man, maybe I should start packing my gear for Oct now!

universe24 · Post by **universe24** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:23 pm

Enjoyed to read this.

cataclysm · Post by **cataclysm** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:31 pm

Nic report Remus! Glad that you guys had such a great time!

nobody had expected that the camera would be kept busy until 5AM! Wow! NON-stop!

I never had such luck with Mersing so far.....

Post by **rcj** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:51 pm

Hi Kelvin, William,

Yes i guess it was partly pure luck for us on Friday that it was exceptional, at least not in a long time for me...and the newbies from the schools must be really lucky...first time go, first time so clear!

Clifford60 · Post by **Clifford60** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 5:50 pm

Nice update report and all the great pictures too.