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A decent haul, all things considered ...


John

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Some clear skies at last !

Well, quite clear at times then quite large clouds to doodge :rolleyes2:. Add a 3/4 phase Moon and rather mediocre transparency to the mix and I decided that being fleet of foot would be sensible so I set up my smallest aperture scope - the 102mm ED Vixen refractor.

I grabbed some views of Saturn for starters, before it dipped behind a large chestnut tree. Nice but not the best I've seen it. Still I'm actually "doing astronomy" for the 1st time for nearly a fortnight so its all good :smiley:

While the Moon was behind a neighbours roof I picked up some of my favourite double / multiple stars and they did seem to be showing very nicely down to 1.5 arc second splits:

- Albeireo (oh, the colours, man ! :grin: )

- Epsilon Lyrae

- Delta Cygni

- Mu Cygni (tight in this scope)

- Pi Aquilae (also tight)

- Gamma Delphini

- Iota Cassiopeiae

Then the Moon was showing her face so I took a look. Not the steadiest conditions and she was quite low but the snaking Rimae Aristarchus was nicely placed.

Popped in for a coffee and to decide on some other targets. It was not a great deep sky night and I had my smallest scope out but, what the heck, I'd see what I could find with a 4 inch aperture.

Star clusters were going to be the easiest so I chased down a few of those:

The always worthwhile double cluster of NGC 884 and 869 in Perseus and then to open cluster M103 and the slightly more challenging (given the circumstances) M52 both in Cassiopeia. In Sagitta I managed to just pick out the faint haze of the globular cluster M71.

While in Vulpecula (nearly !) it seemed rude not to visit the great planetary nebula of M27, AKA The Dumbbell. A misty applecore shaped patch taking on more form when I used my DGM NPB filter. As the filter was in place I thought I might as well try and spot some other planetary nebulae so M57 was a logical next step - the good old Ring Nebula not far away in Lyra. Then my star chart reminded me that a nebula that I'd yet to spot was quite well placed - that was M76, "The Little Dumbbell", "Cork" or "Butterfly" nebula in Perseus. This was a tough challenge with my limited aperture and the viewing conditions. I needed the filter again to pull this small object from the background sky. With some magnification (83x) the filter and some averted vision I could just about make out it's twin lobed structure. It's going to look a lot better with my larger scopes under darker skies but at least I've seen this small object now so I should be able to find it much easier next time :smiley:

I must have been a glutton for punishment by this time because I decided to see if I could find some galactic targets :rolleyes2:. They were going to have to be the brighter ones so I went for the old favourites of M81 and M82 in Ursa Major then M32 and it's close neighbours M32 and M110. That last one was a bit of a strain tonight and was only faintly seen being still affected by the "Bristol glow" in that part of my sky.

Quite a satisfying observing session despite everything. You have to work at the deep sky objects with just 4" of aperture but it can be done and even faint glimpses of these objects can be strangely rewarding with a small scope even if they are just giving you an appetizer for larger aperture under darker skies :smiley:

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Great report John - an impressive haul given how milky the skies looked here at 1am. It's got me excited for Thursday evening here (our next clear-ish evening) when I hope to get my "new" 6" frac out for the first time. I'd ruled out faint fuzzies because of the moonlight, but I think you've just raised the bar!

Paul

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.....Don't forget the other bright galaxies up, NGC 7331 in Pegasus and

NGC 185 and NGC 147 in Cassiopeis, satellites of M31,

Nick.

Thanks Nick. Thats the beauty of this hobby - always new challenges just around the corner ! :smiley:

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Great report John - an impressive haul given how milky the skies looked here at 1am. It's got me excited for Thursday evening here (our next clear-ish evening) when I hope to get my "new" 6" frac out for the first time. I'd ruled out faint fuzzies because of the moonlight, but I think you've just raised the bar!

Paul

You can still do deep sky when the skies are not that good but I avoid low powers and stick to medium power, wide field eyepieces, accept that the views are not going to be optimium and the challenge is to find the darn things !

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Lovely report John, and you've given me some ideas of what to try in my 98mm scope.  

I was out for a short while last night too, had to cover up and retreat rapidly at one point when it suddenly started raining! but the cloud passed and I got another half an hour.  For me, I spent a lot of time on the moon, before the rain, just wandering and admiring the lovely relief on the terminator.  Then the Ring, Andromeda, and Albeireo followed by just a wander through the Milky Way starfield.  I failed to find the dumbell (but then I haven't got a properly set up finder on the scope yet  :rolleyes: ).  As you say though, it was just nice to be out, and it was surprisingly still and so with a manual alt az nothing to interrupt the stillness  :grin:

Hopefully we'll get another chance soon

Helen

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All things considered, that's brilliant going, John. I've been in the UK this week and appreciate that it hasn't been the easiest of times to do a serious bit of observing. Top marks and I look forward to another report soon  :smiley:

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Very nice report and writing, John!

You gave a nice list of targets to all of us!

I am glad you had clear evening to spend with your refractor. I hoped to go out last night, but it was saw miserable that I gave up.

M71 is indeed very faint. It took me 15min of dark adaptation at the eyepiece for spotting it and it was so dim. I would be really curious how a similar object appear with a larger aperture.

Anyway, thanks for sharing and look forward to the next report!

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