Observing 18th April 2009

[AWR]

18/04/09 W London

SW Mak 127 on EQ3-2 (1500mm)

No moon

Lots of light pollution (both general London glow and local from overlooking houses)

Not sure about how to report seeing and visibility (what the scales are) but I could make out mag 4 stars unaided

The clouds finally lifted last night and I managed to get out for only the third time since I bought my scope.

I started off with Cor Cariolis which split easily with my 15mm EP but couldn't make out any colour differences, both looked off-white (in fact I found it hard with colour differences all night).

I moved about 1/2 degree east and found Struve 1702 which had about twice the separation of Cor Cariolis. Both stars appeared white.

The eastern sky was looking the least dark so I swung north up to Polaris, still using the 15mm EP. The fact that I had only nominally polar-aligned my scope made it easy to centre. I could just make out Polaris B with a separation roughly equal to that of Cor Cariolis.

I wanted to see how the scope would manage with some deep-sky objects (especially given the light pollution). Earlier in the year I'd had some great views of M42 but that was too low now. Gemini looked nice and clear so I went for N2392, the Clown Face nebula. Trying to star-hop with my (cheap) red-dot wasn't too successful. Turn Left has great finderscope views but I don't have a finderscope (yet) and couldn't find the guide stars. However, the main diagram was accurate enough for me to aim the dot into blank-looking sky using Wasat (delta), lambda and zeta as references. Look through the EP (25mm) and there it was! Just south of a small star, a small blue-grey smudge. Obviously there was no clown face to be seen with my aperture but I might be kidding myself that I could just make out a dim star within the smudge on its western edge using my 15mm EP and 2x barlow.

I decided to push harder and had a go at M66 in Leo. I found all the guide stars and the view through the EP matched that in Turn Left except the galaxies themselves were missing. Too much light pollution and not enough aperture! I'll have another go when we visit the in-laws down in darkest Somerset.

I finished off with Saturn, again with the 15mm and 2x barlow, and was rewarded with a nice clear disk with a touch of detail on the northern hemisphere and the moons Rhea, Titan and Iapetus making a nice right-angled triangle to the west.

Hope to get out again soon

Andrew

[Doc]

Nice report Andrew.

Congratulations on finding the clown face nebula, this neb really takes magnification well so give it as much as you can.

The M66 is mag 12.7 so might be out of your reach until darker skies are found.

[Talitha]

Nice report Andrew, and congrats on bagging the clown face. Have you tried M82 in UMa? It's probably easier from London than M66 is.

[AWR]

Thanks,

I plan to have a go at M81 and M82 but maybe wait until I get a proper finder as there's not too much visible to point my red-dot at!

Hopefully next week!

Andrew

[lunator]

Hi Andrew

Nice report.

I'm just down the road from you and the conditions weren't great.

The seeing was worse than average and the transparancy was also not to good.

Well done on clown face target

Cheers

Ian