Windy, cold, but clear! I’ll take that any day over the muck we’ve had recently, though I must say seeing was poor and the older I get the less fond I become of cold. But what was keeping me warm last night was the fun of opening up the 30mm Universe – the night sky as seem through 10X30 IS Canon binoculars. It’s awesome.
Now I know a 30mm objective seems small, but here’s a summary of what I saw in a series of brief observing sessions in both the evening and early morning hours. (Yeah, I did a lot of going out for half an hour,then coming in and studying charts while I warmed up.)
In Draco I started with Nu, got a clean split (60″ gap) and so went to the fainter, 16/17 Draconus. Another cleansplit. Here the gaps is about 90 seconds. So I went to the more challenging Psi Draconis which I have not split before and has just a 30 second gap and despite passing clouds and unsteady skies I got “kissing” stars which occasionally steadied enough to give me a hairline split
Went to 56 Andromedae, which I had split several nights ago, and found it easily – and it splt very easily – but my real goal here was something more subtle – the open cluster NGC 756. And I found it – a faint sprinkling of star dust with two or three stars that easily stand out. But this is a real rich area of sky as the following chart shows, for it also contains two of the largest galaxies we see – M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy, and M33, a much more subtle patch of white . So with relative litte movement of the binoculars – afterall, look at thai six degree field – you can go from an easy double stars to a subtle cluster to a great galaxy and to to a more ghostly one.
Click image for larger version - from Starry Nights Pro screens hot.
What I saw, though, does’t capture what I regard as a remarkable – and repeated – experience: One moment you have a star dancing around and then, almost like watching a photo print develop in a tray of chemicals, you realize you’re seeing two perfect stars. This happened more than once and I don’t know if it’s the image stabilization reaching a new level, or just my brain adjusting to the new scene and kicking into gear,
I experimented with the 11X56 Garrett Optical and the 15X70 Celestrons and I have to say, they just couldn’t deliver. The images were brighter, of course, but when push came to shove the resolution wasn’t there -especially where bright stars were involved. They simply won’t quiet down in any binocular I have, but they’re better in the 10X30IS. What’s more, even though the larger ones were gathering more light – and I was using them on a parallelogram mount – they rarely allowed me to see any more details than the 30mm binoculars. Generally, whatever I could see, I could see with either, though extended objects, such as galaxies, were easier to see in the larger binoculars.
This raises real questions in my mind as to what is the best binocular for scouting and area while star hopping with a telescope. The 15X70s make extended objects pop more easily – but they give a significantly smaller field of view thanthe 10X30s. I need to experiment with this aspect of binocular use more.
What’s fun with Draco and the binos is you can go on a neat progression from 16/17 at 90 seconds, to Nu at 60 seconds, to Psi at 30 seconds – and all with stars that are pretty close to one another in magnitude.
On to galaxy land! Morning with Ls and Js.
After a few hours sleep I returned to observing in the morning and this time my first target was M3 rising above Arcturus in the east. A quick scan and there it was, an obvious fat star with with crumbling edges among much “cleaner” ones.
This one's too easy - just draw line between Cor Caroli and Arcturus and you'll find M3 a bit closer to Arcturus and with a magnitude 6 star right next to it. (Click image for larger version - prepared from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)
But I was interested in bigger – and much more distant – game. First up was M81/82, the famous pair up behind the bigBear’s ears. I say that. I don’t know howmany times I’ve seen them – certainly more than a hundred. But I always get lost looking for them despite some obvious clues. I think it was Sue French who said something like the “Big Bear has ear mites.” That helps. It also helps to draw a line between two of the bow stars in the Big Dipper. But in the typical finder and these small binoculars they can be too faint to readily jump out at you. You need something more and I think I have it – three radily distinguishable asterims in a row 0 a bold triangle, a ragged “L’ and a 7. The pair of galaxes we want is right off the end of the L as indicated inthe chart. To get in the right area, scratch around behind the Bear’s ears – or use the two bowl stars to make an arrow pointing the way.
I use the two indicated stars to cut across the Dipper's Bowl and get me in the right general vicinity. Then I look for the asterism in the next chart. (Click image for larger version - prepared from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)
Sigma is actually a wide (19') optical double of fifth magnitude stars and forms a bold triangle with another star of similar brightness. The ragged "L" leads you to the two galaxies and if you see the "7" you know you've gone too far. The galaxies are fainter than the bright stars int hese asterisms, but keep in mind you are looking at objects about 10 million light years away shinning with the combined light of billions of stars.(Click image for larger version - prepared from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)
OK – traveling 10 million light years or so with objects I can easilyhold inmy hand is a real trip – but I wanted to go deeper and M51 provided thenext step. Seeing the famous “Whirlpool” galaxy takes you out about 23 million light years and it’s a much easier trip – from a star hopping perspective – though the galaxies are a bit fianter and, of course, mushed together – quite different from the M81-82 pair.
Start with Alkaid, the last star in the handle of the Dipper, and head in the general direction of Cor Caroli. We really have two triangles here, as shown, the second consisting of magnitude 7 stars. Since all this fits in the same binocular field as Alkaid it's apiece of cake - that is, assuming your binoculars have a field of 4 degrees or more. The 10X30s I'm using have a 6 degree fov as indicated y the circle.
That encouraged me to take a look at the lion’s hip – Leo was rising in the east and he carries with him a slew of galaxiws, the brightest being M65 and M66 – and they’re also just plain simple to find. These are my “J” galaxies – that is, I find them because of a pair of “Js” in the sky near them. In fact, the brighter J sort of hooks them. Here’s what I mean.
Finding the Leo Triplet of galaxies starts with identifying th ebright triangle of stars that represents the Lions rear haunches. One of those is Thea and if oyu get it in your binoculars the two "J" asterisms should jump out at you. The fainter, larger one is there just to fool you - and I've been fooled by it sometimes, especially in a finder that reverses the image. But the smaller, brighter one is actually easier to spot and from there it's clear where the galaxies are. (Click image for larger version - prepared from Starry Nights Pro screen shot.)
Now don’t get me wrong. I didn’t “see” these galaxies. I “detected ” them. Tome there’s a difference. “Seeing” means you can discern shape, texture, and form. “Detecting” means you know the object is there – that this tiny patch of sky is different in brightness from its surroundings, but where you to draw a picture of what you detected it would be an indistinct smudge. So what you see is a ghostly presence at best in such small binoculars, but I felt confident with M66, a little less so with M65 – and I might have seen the third member of this famous triplet, NGC 3628.
This all defies somewhat the common warnings you here about viewing extended objects. M66, which I certainly found easier to detect, is listed as magnitude 9.7 and M65 a bit dimmer at magnitude 10.1. But in terms of surface brightness – taking into account how spread out their light is – they are both listed close to magnitude 12.5. Now given that I have a darned hard time seeing magnitude 9.5 stars with these binoculars, you would be justified in assuming that I am either crazy, or a liar, if I say I can see a galaxy with a surface brightness of 12.5.
But all that really illustrates is how puzzling this phenomena of sight and faint objects is. Stephen James O’Meara, observer and writer par excellence, syas in his book “The Messier Objects,” that all three of these galaxies can be seen with 7X35 binoculars! (He wrote that before the time of image stabilization and I am sure he is not using amount for those.) If that’s the case, then it certainly isn’t ridiculous for me to claim I’m seeing them with 10X30 image stabilized binoculars. So I have confidence that I am seeing what I think I am seeing. It is also interesting that O’Meara finds M65 brighter and I find M66 brighter – and again, I have some confidence in what I saw because O”Meara also notes that other observers disagree with him and find M66 brighter.
This whole business of what you can see with what is variable at best and the role of magnification and field size and steadiness all complicate the question, not to mention light pollution and the atmospheres transparency at the moment. So you really have to try these things for yourself. For me, I count it as great fun that with these tiny glasses I easily hold in my hands I have travelled 38 million light years out into the universe to pluck ancient photons from billions of stars. That’s awesome.
