E and F through the quince tree.

[alan potts]

Yesterday was a very windy day and that always means clear and very transparent skies in the evening, well it seems to . It did not disappoint and as I was rolling back the roof to open the 12 inch up to the evening air, as if by magic the wind dropped.

I was looking at a good number of faint and fuzzies to see what people get out of this and I am sorry to say, I don't get it. I managed to see NGC 1087,79,and 55 all in the same area and around magnitude 11 without too much trouble and I had a look in at the Crab Nebula but was much more taken by the cute little double star near by. The NGC's were fairly easy with the LX but much more difficult with the 190mm Mak/Newt though I could see them. In truth they were not that high in the sky but well enough placed so that failure was not an option with either scope.

Back on the LX and M42 was starting to get to 'let's have look area', I was fairly supprised at just how well I could see it as it was, a, not very high and b, I was looking at it through a quince tree I have, albeit without leaves on. Using the 24mm Panoptic and X127 I was amazed to see the E and F stars of the trapizuim, not wonderfully clear nore all the time but they were there nonetheless. I was also able to split Rigel which is not a great achievement with a 12 inch scope, but at only 11 degrees above the horizon (handset info) I was well pleased with myself. This is the only part of my sky that has any LP and the added issue of heat rising from the town a few miles away, it sounds silly but there really is a difference in the seeing either side of area.

I then spent a couple of hours working on the head to head between the Meade SWA 24mm and the Panoptic which I will write about when I have enough double checked data.

All in all a very nice night.

Alan. 

[estwing]

Nice one Alan glad to hear your getting back to ep...

[John]

Nice report Alan

Quince filtering - you may be on to something !