[AZ-Observing] Re: 13 Objects Shy of a Perfect Herschel 400 Marathon
- From: skylook123@xxxxxxx
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:56:38 -0400
Tom, you might be creating a monster!
I did a Wild Guess check on the night of February 13 this past month. Using
sunset/sunrise times in Earth Centered Universe, there were 12 hours and 59
minutes between sunset and sunrise. That gives one minute and 56.8 seconds
between objects; no nap, no potty break. Now THAT'S an adult size marathon!
I used NGCView to plot an observing order and son of a gun, it is doable
(NGC7009 might take averted imagination), but not sure if by a human!
Thanks for a great challenge.
Jim O'Connor
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Polakis <tpolakis@xxxxxxx>
To: AZ-Observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Mon, Mar 15, 2010 2:04 pm
Subject: [AZ-Observing] 13 Objects Shy of a Perfect Herschel 400 Marathon
I used last Saturday night/Sunday morning at Farnsworth Ranch to try something
ifferent: a Herschel 400 marathon. Using the planetarium software, it was
pparent that 388 of the 400 objects would be available that night. The optimal
ight is in late February, when there's a chance that all 400 are available.
I used a Celestron GO-TO mount on loan from Glenn Nishimoto and my little TV101
efractor, and observed at an average rate of roughly one object every 90
econds. The result: 387 objects. I saw the notoriously difficult galaxy NGC
118 in Serpens, but missed the faint Sagittarius cluster NGC 6540. It was past
idnight when I actually made it past the meridian to the east side of the sky.
his is extremely important when the mount is a German equatorial - particularly
ne whose tripod doesn't care if the telescope's focuser slews into it.
Lessons learned:
- The vast majority of Herschel 400 galaxies don't look like much at 80x in 4
nches of aperture.
- The slew rate of an AS-GT is glacial when it decides to do an unnecessary
meridian flip".
- My GPS automatically adjusts for Daylight Savings Time, throwing off
alibration of a GO-TO mount by exactly one hour. Sometimes the clock in our
ruck is more accurate than a GPS.
- While I am, in fact, enjoying myself, I'm not particularly enjoyable to be
round when I'm doing a Herschel 400 marathon.
-
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