Ultimate Challenge

General astronomy-related discussion (publicly viewable)
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Paul D
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Ultimate Challenge

Unread post by Paul D »

A few years ago Dan S offered me a challenge that I just could not pass up. This challenge is not for the faint of heart and should only be taken on with a 8" scope or larger in a light polluted sky or a smaller scope in a dark sky. The target is a globular cluster. Ok right now you all probably saying "A glob? thats a piece of cake" Well this glob is not in our galaxy, its in Andromeda and can be a bit difficult to find. I have dubbed this glob the "Mickey Mouse Glob because when you see it in your scope you will see the glob and two stars very close by that look like Mickey's ears as seen in this image here from the net http://www.geoandpat.com/files/M31-G1_with_insert.jpg

Here is the finder chart for G1. Good luck all and get those scopes out and observe.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26061004@N ... otostream/
Paul...

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Apollo XX
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Re: Ultimate Challenge

Unread post by Apollo XX »

Andy G. and I saw G76 through his 20" dob at the Connecticut Star Party. It was fun hunting it down. I can't say that it really looked any different than a single star in our own galaxy, which makes me wonder how it was discovered that a whole bunch of distant specs are actually globs in another galaxy.

Mike M.
"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens." - Anaxagoras
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Paul D
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Re: Ultimate Challenge

Unread post by Paul D »

Mike,

This image from Hubble might help to clear it all up. You can see the two stars are clearly in our galaxy while G1 is much futher away since the stars in the glob are much smaller. Also remember when looking at Andromeda we are looking outward from our arm position into space so its clearly not a glob in our galaxy. http://blackholes.stardate.org/director ... =G1-hubble
Paul...

16" f/5 Night Sky Truss (Midnight Mistress)
10" f/5 Home built Dob with Parks mirror.
Pre-Meade PST
Celestron Skymaster Binos 25-125x80
Meade Travelview Binos 10x50

See that 16" in the sleek black dress? She is all mine. :)
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Apollo XX
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Re: Ultimate Challenge

Unread post by Apollo XX »

That's a pretty incredible example of the Hubble's capabilities. It still boggles the mind to know that long before Hubble, astronomers had identified hundreds of globs in Andromeda, and at first I'm sure they never looked like anything more than dim stars in our own galaxy.

A good example of what they appear like to us as amatuers can be found here, thanks to Steve L, aka AstroGeek: viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2608

Mike M.
"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens." - Anaxagoras
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AndyG
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Re: Ultimate Challenge

Unread post by AndyG »

Steve's photo in that post shows up as a broken link for me. Steve, any chance you could re-post the image? I'd love to see it.
Andy
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Apollo XX
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Re: Ultimate Challenge

Unread post by Apollo XX »

Andy, there's a lot of links in that post. This is the one to Steve's annotated image: http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/1782 ... fullre.jpg

Mike
"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens." - Anaxagoras
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AndyG
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Re: Ultimate Challenge

Unread post by AndyG »

Mike, Thanks, that was the one I could not see. Wow, that blew me away, impressive how Steve was able to capture all those globs and identify them.
Andy
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Paul D
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Re: Ultimate Challenge

Unread post by Paul D »

I use a program called Guide 9 to identify things like what is in Steve's images. I have labeled many images in the past of items that I dont think even Steve knew he captured in his images. This is a sample of what Guide 9 can do. This is roughly the same field that Steve took his image of http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8066/8210 ... 7edb_h.jpg
Paul...

16" f/5 Night Sky Truss (Midnight Mistress)
10" f/5 Home built Dob with Parks mirror.
Pre-Meade PST
Celestron Skymaster Binos 25-125x80
Meade Travelview Binos 10x50

See that 16" in the sleek black dress? She is all mine. :)
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