No dew!!

[Stu]

For once the opportunity to observe coincided with a lovely clear sky with good transparency and no dew. I was at my parents with darker skies than at home, and had my Televue 85 with me on the Giro-WR/EQ6 plus full range of eyepieces. I mainly stuck to the Leica Zoom either on its own or with the x2.5 PowerMate for high power range.

As a comparison with skies back home, I normally struggle with 23 UMa at mag 3.7 because of light pollution in that direction. Last night, 8, 11 & 13 UMa were clearly visible naked eye ( ie down to mag 5.1) plus 24 UMa, making the hop to M81/82 much easier.

I had a tour round some well known doubles plus my usual suspects. Nothing earth shattering but great to be out there.

Castor- unequal pair, white

Iota Cass - not tried for this before but it is a lovely uneven double, both components looked white to my eyes.

Meissa or Lamda Orionis 4.2" 3.39 5.45 - another I've not seen before. Reminded me a lot of Iota Cass, slightly wider separation but again a lovely uneven pair.

Beta Mon - this one I've not seen for a while but was reminded of it by Nick in another thread. Lovely little triple, one pair closer than the other at 3.0" and broadly similar mag and colour although roughly in descending order A, B then C

Rigel - very nice clear split as usual. Lovely tiny secondary clear of the glare of Rigel. Tried for Sirius (!), obviously no chance in this scope.

Sigma Orionis - this looked gorgeous, with the very faint fourth component clearly resolved. Anyone know the magnitude of this, it does show on SkySafari?

Mintaka - nothing amazing but nice to see.

Algieba - unequal pair, 4.6", again looked similar colour to my eyes.

M1 - this is not something I would normally try for with this scope from home, but the transparency seemed very good and sure enough, there it was. Just visible as a irregular faint glowing patch, but pleasing to see. It was actually best unfiltered, the UHC and OIII seemed to dim it too much.

M42 looked wonderful last night. Such lovely contrast and detail available at a range of magnifications. Only four stars in the trapezium, but very cleanly resolved.

The 37 Cluster in Orion - another I've not seen for a while. It was obviously back to front on the frac, and the top of the 7 was a bit dodgy, need more aperture, but great fun and good to see again.

Jupiter - This cleared the trees later on and although there was nothing too exciting going on, there still some nice detail resolved. Io and Europa were great, close together near the limb although I had missed the end of their transit. Some swirling detail and darker patches visible on the main belts, plus a couple of smaller belts and the polar regions.

Plenty of other favourites visited, M81/82, M45, Double Cluster, Mizar/Alcor and a general widefield pan around Taurus.

Need to get a little more adventurous, but time is always so limited at the moment with little Makstutov keeping us busy so I just make sure I see some good targets rather than spending too much time hunting out new stuff which is harder to find.

So, plenty of fun to be had with a little frac and an alt az mount plus some half decent skies. Not a drop of dew all night, even when I packed up at 2am.

Hope you all made the most of any clear skies you may have had.

Stu

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[alan potts]

Stu,

We must have been looking the same way, there is about 75% of your list that I myself viewed last night. I did get a bit of dew on the front collector plate but fanned it with a sheet of card and it went away.

Nice night here as well, most strange.

[Scooot]

Nice report Stu. It makes a change to have a clear sky for the whole night with no risk of clouds. I thought m1 was better without my oiii as well, but still just a faint grey smudge.

Sigma orionis is 3.79 & 8.43

[Stu]

Thanks Scooot. I find SkySafari confusing on this because it doesn't show the fourth component so I assumed the mag 8.43 star was the one at 0.2" separation which we can't split?

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[Scooot]

Sorry Stu, I didn't read your question properly, funny I was thinking at the time you had sky safari.

I found this which is helpful to identify them.

It looks like C is the faintest so that'd be the 8.3. A&B being 3.8 (or 4.2 depending on which bit you read) and 5.1. D&E being 6.62 & 6.66.

I'm going to ask my brother to look on carte de ciel to see if there's any more info on there.

[Stu]

No apology needed Scooot, thanks very much for that. Yes, it was definitely the C component in that diagram so 8.3 sounds right.

I'm surprised it's not fainter than that though, I can get to mag 9.5 ish with my 15x50 binos at home so the TV85 should go deeper, particularly as the skies were better. The C component however was pretty much at the limit of visibility so I assumed it was dimmer.

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[AndyWB]

I was out on Friday too, and was struck by the lack of dew too. It was very squelchy underfoot, and the temperature low (but not really freezing) so I was sure after 2-3 hours  my secondary would dew up - but it didn't.

Despite being in town, I found myself nebula hunting with my 250px, and an OIII filter - and I got a number of new ones. An unexpected highlight was catching IC434, though it was fairly faint, and I couldn't make out the Horse Head. However, I could definitely see the edge of the nebula.

M1 looked good, too; it felt like it was on the edge of given a bit of detail beyond just 'a fuzzy patch'.

And toward the end of the evening, Jupiter - lovely. Like you say, dark swirls in the belts; it felt like a very stable and sharp image.