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Finally, a clear night on the IOS!


Unicronicus

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After weeks of poor weather, high humidity and strong winds, we finally got some time out with our old faithful Skywatcher 130P on the Isles of Scilly.  It is so rewarding to have the constellations of Orion, Gemini, Taurus and Cancer up this time of year, although we do have to say good bye to some summer constellations that have provided us with a huge insight and wealth of knowledge of the night sky since starting out back in April.  We will soon be upgrading to a Revelation 12" dob come next month (hopefully) to find the more elusive nebulae and galaxies, but our moderate 5" scope has done a fantastic job of revealing the hidden mysteries that lurk in deep space, and I would urge anyone whom is starting off in astronomy to buy a scope like ours to get you hooked!  Saying that, our scope has undergone some transformations in the past such as flocking of the tube, replacement of inferior parts that shift collimation, shimming the focuser and fitting a bigger wheel to aid focussing (but is still tricky without a dual speed focuser), and we have built up quite an arsenal of eyepieces, filters, barlows etc to get the best views of everything.  Anyway, enough of my sentimental ramblings and on to the observing report...

Weather was as fine as it could ever be last night, 0% cloud cover, 68% relative humidity, a light breeze and a very low dew point.  Coupled with the fact that there was hardly any light pollution last night and the crescent waxing moon was setting below the horizon and around 19:45 I think we were good to go!

Tripod out, scope cooled, donning copious layers of thermal clothing we set off to our first target, NGC 6992, 6995 & 6960, collectively known as the Veil Nebula.  We kitted out the Vixen NPL 30mm with a UHC filter and centered the finder bang on 52-Cygni in Cygnus (basically in the summer triangle for easy reference), it took a bit of averted vision but the western half of the Veil (the witches broom) eventually came into view and you could make out its distinct pattern as it passes through 52-Cygni.  Panning a whole field width down and a tad more we soon came across the more prominent and striking eastern part of the Veil that reveals a kind of hook shape in the sky.  The Veil Nebula is a fantastic supernova remnant to observe and works really well with a UHC filter but I understand that it is a lot prettier with an O-III filter, which we are yet to buy but will do with our 12" dob.

Since we were in the region of Cygnus it seemed rude not to try and catch a glimpse of NGC7000, better known as the North American Nebula.  My stargazing companion set the scope onto the bright star Deneb at the corner of the summer triangle (or the head of Cygnus) and swept East to reveal the huge emission nebula in the 30mm eyepiece (with UHC still attached).  I struggled to see this at first glance because I was trying to make out the shape of the USA / C.America in the dark patch of sky!  Durrrr!  Once I spotted the nebula it was obvious what we had found, starting from the 8 o'clock positon in the EP for North America and running to the 1 o'clock position to Mexico and C.America, stunning.  Again, this nebula works best in an O-III filter but a UHC is better than no filter at all.

Our last stop in Cygnus turned out to be a complete waste of time, although it was still fun to at least attempt to view NGC 6888, a.k.a the Crescent Nebula.  Despite reading about this being a pain to view with even a 17.5" scope that still didn't deter us from trying to sneek a peek at it.  Sometimes it is hard to tell whether your mind is playing tricks on you and making it seem that your eyes have seen something, but in this case all we could really see was the band of the Milky Way and nothing else, ooooohhhhh unlucky!  Nevermind...

By this time, about 21:30, the constellation of Orion had risen over towards the SE and boy oh boy was it looking clear over that portion of the sky tonight!  So you guessed it, first step was M42, M43, NGC 1975, The Great Orion Nebula (ok, maybe not NGC 1975 but it was in our FOV).  Still armed with the 30mm and our UHC this nebula is nothing short of spectacular and is in every sense beautiful to observe.  On a night like last night you can even make out the bright patch of nebulosity by centering on the middle star of Orion's sword which doesn't seem to blink.  One of the traits of the Orion Nebula is that it can take higher mag really well, so we attached the UHC to our 15mm Vixen NPL and this thing really popped then.  We like to play around with the Orion Nebula by judging whether it looks better through a UHC or without, it's a tough one to call but both yield excellent results!

Because we were in the constellation of Orion we thought we would try the Horsehead Nebula again, Barnard 33.  Even though we could see some nebulosity and some dark patchs on the edge of it, seeing the actual horse's head proved difficult and we cannot say for certain whether we saw it or not, but we were in the general area...we think...

A quick hop 2.5 degrees NE from the star near the Horsehead Nebula, Alnitak, we come to NGC 2068 or M78 whatever you prefer.  This is quite an interesting and easy to spot reflection nebula at mag 8.3 but on good clear nights you can also make out the other three smaller, dimmer nebulae that surrounds it.  M78 is not particularly full of features but it is very bright (in a nebula sense) and is well worth a look.

From Orion we decided to angle our scope over towards the constellation of Gemini and target onto NGC 2392, better known as the Eskimo Nebula or the Clown Face Nebula.  Because this was a planetary nebula we thought it would be somewhat easy to find if likened to The Helix or The Ring etc but no, it is one of those objects where you question what you have found and need a couple pair of eyes to confirm your suspicions.  Finding the general area it resides in was not a huge problem, find a star called Wasat (55-Delta) and pan WSW from there until you find a bright star 63-Gem which forms an obvious curve in the sky made up of 5 stars diminishing in magnitude along it.  The Eskimo Nebula lies on the outside of this curve of stars and actually looks like a double star at low magnification.  We actually moved on from this target and later returned after reading that it works exceptionally well with high magnification, so on goes the 8mm  NED8 eyepiece into a TS Optics 2x Barlow and boom!  A very bright and distinguishable planetary nebula is unfolded in all of its glory!  This is one of those nebulas wherby you can use the blink method on its central star to make it more visible.

The night had drawn out a bit and by now Taurus was nice and high in the sky which meant we could star hop from the eye of the bull (Alderbaren) down to 123-Zeta Tauri (using the 'V' to star point), then pan slightly up to reveal Charles Messier's first noted Messier object, M1, the Crab Nebula.  Once seen in the Summer/Autumn months as a very faint supernova remnant low in the sky, now stands as a bold hazy patch which is very easy to see.  Upon typing this report though I realize that we were using the 30mm with a UHC filter to view this object, wheras this is one of the few supernova remnants that work better without any filters...  Duly noted for next time!

Now it was getting late, and setting my alarm for 06:15 is always in the back of my mind so we ended the night with a couple of sight seeing objects, although one turned out not to be easy to find.  Third to last stop at the end of our tour was Uranus, currently residing in the body of Pisces.  Not much to say about this really other than is it a star, is it a planet...?  That's how hard it is to make out with a 5" scope and low power EP so really not a whole lot to say about it really.  Our penultimate stop took us to Jupiter as it was rising above the East with the coastline of mainland britain clearly visible.  At this time of night and its current elevation at 23:30 it really was difficult to get a clear view of Jupiter itself, although the Galilean moons were easy to see.  A lot of atmospheric haze made observing Jupiter tricky indeed...  And our final stop took us to M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy and its companion NGC 5195 dancing together beneath the tip of the handle of The Plough (Alkaid).  This was very faint and always has been, but the two cores of each galaxy are very bright, its just the disc shape is hard to decipher.

And there we have it, one successful night out underneath the stars completed and two very cold chaps ready to call it a night!  I would also like to take this opportunity to highly recommend the book 'Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders', it really is an awesome book and star gazing companion to find objects that you never thought even existed.  It also brings with it some history of the objects you are seeing and provides a good reference of where to look in the sky compared to 'Turn Left at Orion'.

Fin

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Great report, I'll be looking into a UHC or OIII filter soon I think.

Last year when I started, I wasn't sure if they're worth the money and bought colour filters for gaining contrast in planets.

I'm now wanting to look more towards nebulas, with Orion up this time of year I can't wait!

Chris

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Hi Fin,

great report there.  Looks like you got a great haul of features there under some really good quality skies.  I bet you can't wait to get your hands on that Dob.  It would be interesting to hear the comparison between the scopes if you ever get the opportunity.  I had a session with my 150p and my friends 14.5" dob, and the differences were noticeable as you would expect.  I look forward to going back and looking through it again.

I think when you get your Dob, the difference when using filters might turn out to be greater again.

Congrats on a great session!

Tony

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