Astonomy withdrawl

Going through some serious withdrawls at the moment. Its been weeks since I was out with the scope.

I was actually starting to get worried because the last time I was out for instance and got my best view yet of M57, I was like, 'yeah nice, smoke ring in the sky....NEXT'. Looking at M81/82 again, 'yeah, still a fuzzy patch...NEXT.'

I thought, Damn, this isn't grabbing me like I thought it would.

I wouldn't be getting withdrawls if I was getting bored of the sky would I??

Of course I also realised that the M57 night I had run into a problem with a mod on the scope and was probably a bit frustrated with that which affected my appreciation of M57.

I also remembered that the one Dark site observing session I attended up in cloon wood (its dark in terms of neighbourhood lights rather than a dark site in terms of middle of nowhere), well I saw M42 so much better than at home, The nebula was much larger in extent with the slightly darker sky and time to fully dark adapt with no neighbours bathroom lights etc.

I guess I am just never going to be truely wowed by DSO's from my back garden.

Whens the next trip to the Burren!!

Also worried that even with a 12in dob I am feeling apeture fever. Maybe its a good thing I only looked at saturn through Philip Lardners 20in Trusser and not any DSO's or else apeture fever might have kicked in 6 months earlier!

Cant afford anything bigger for a long while though but at least most of what I spent on this scope excluding the scope itself is transferable to a larger scope, ie. EQ platform (thank god I got one bigger than I needed for just this situation), Telrad, Hyperion EP's, Howie Glatter Laser, Moonlite focusser, GLP etc. I could probably even whip the DSC intelliscope system off the Orion and adapt and fit it to a large trusser.

We'll see when I get my first chance to go to a truely dark site with my 12in but I don't think the possiblity of seeing a faint disc or some arms on one or two galaxies will cut it. What size scope is needed to start seeing discs and arms on a much bigger percentage of galaxies?

oh dear Keith,!
a definite case of dark sky aperture fervour
you are very welcome to the Burren next time we go there, although its certainly a long trek for you.
I used to think that a 12" was a big scope, not these days though.

Keith --

Two suggestions:

1) Take up sketching. You'd be amazed at how much more you see of any given target if you spend the time to sketch it. Definitley rejuvenated my interest.

2) Take up solar to get you through the summer. The PST's a pretty reasonable way to get into h-alpha, which is awfully addictive. I haven't had my solar rig long enough to know if it will compete with dark skies this fall/winter, but it's a damn good fix when there's nothing else.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

Going through some serious withdrawls at the moment. Its been weeks since I was out with the scope.

It has been January as the last time for me Keith! I'm about to give up, as I work 5 nights as well as days at the moment, so, I'll be keeping to the more simple pleasures in astronomy, like a camping chair and a cup of tea!

I'd agree wholey with the sketching suggestion. It has been a while since I sketched (over a year I think), but I have done it regularly since my teens when all I had all during that time was an 8" Newt. Same objects, different objective. And it works.

Seanie.

I was actually starting to get worried because the last time I was out for instance and got my best view yet of M57, I was like, 'yeah nice, smoke ring in the sky....NEXT'. Looking at M81/82 again, 'yeah, still a fuzzy patch...NEXT.'

...

Also worried that even with a 12in dob I am feeling apeture fever. Maybe its a good thing I only looked at saturn through Philip Lardners 20in Trusser and not any DSO's or else apeture fever might have kicked in 6 months earlier!

I used to count stars in an eyepiece field of view to judge sky quality and seeing... now with the 20" I just count galaxies!

Swing the scope to a random part of the sky and start counting. If the count goes above 20-25 galaxies in the field of view, the scope must be pointing roughly towards Virgo or Leo!!! Counting galaxies is fun... for a while. Then it gets tedious! For a *real* chalange, I try to identify just *one* galaxy in the field of view. Now *that's* hard!!!!

Phil.

PS - I'm heading for Achill next weekend with the scope. Daaaaark skies... now where did I put that Galaxy filter!

This is one of the reasons I took up imaging. The more I looked at faint fuzzies the more detail I wanted to see.
However visual observing is a lot less frustrating at times than imaging. I still go out at nights even when I know I have no chance of getting any good results just to see the objects on screen.