Finally, the new DSO season has begun

[YKSE]

Last night (26/8) was the first clear night after long raining or cloudy weeks.

C8 was setup in backyard for new NGC hunting, targets were the bright clusters 6791 in Lyra, 6755, 6760(GL), 6756 in Aquila, and 6819, 6910, 6866, 6834, for a warm-up.

After alignment, a quick check on M57 and M56 showed almost dead-centered in 31mm aspheric and very nice view.  18.5 in SQM looked promising, a look at the double-double confirmed the excellent seeing, the double-double could be clearly splitted in 31mm, that's 68x, better than my C8's previous record in 80x.

All the 8 new NGCs were easily bagged, where 6791 and 6819 with very rich faint stars and 6910 with very pleasing star pattern.

Tonight was another clear night before midnight, after work, I took the chance to dark site for the low Messiers, M6, M7, M69, M70, M54, M55 and M75.

Setting up the scope and alignment went just as good as the night before, at 10pm, the sky was just a little darker than my backyard, SQM19.2 (it got up to 20,9 later) and M54 had already passed meridian, while M6, M7, M69 and M70 were under horizon(or never surfaced themselves up here). even though M54 was just about 2 degrees above the horizon, it was actually seen in direct vision after some 5 minutes 40mm Aero.

In waiting for M55 to go a little higher, I took another view at the double-double, once again, splitted cleanly in 68x as last night, a well-collimated SCT can be quite good in splitting doubles

M55 was kind of easier, even if it's about half a degree lower than M54. So was M75 too, 10 degrees higher made the difference.

3 new Messiers made my day.

Before heading back, I just had to take a look at the great M13, right in the center of finder EP, Leica zoom was put in the focuser for closer look, zooming it forwards and backwards, the three dark lanes in the propeller just evident themselfs, a very useful tips I read on other site for hunting faint fuzzies.

[Paul73]

It must have been a long old wait that far north. Sounds like a couple of good nights to kick things off again.

That is some seriously low observing to bag M6,7 etc. Conditions must have been perfect.

Paul

[cotterless45]

Season never starts or ends in Middle Earth. It's been a lovely summer of observing. Just looking forward to those 4.30 kick offs.

Good to split the double double, think we got it down to x48. Some lovely targets there, hopefully forthcoming

Clear skies !

Nick.

[jetstream]

Nice report Yong,glad your getting some great skies-tonight I had a nice view of M27,nothing exotic,but for the first time it looked a brightish nebula green,my prize for the evening.You have your C8 set up very well and it shows