John

Lovely moon tonight

Hesiodus A is the largest of what are known as Concentric Craters - craters with a raised ring structure within their outer ramparts.

Tonight this little beauty is well illuminated. It's right next door to the much larger Hesiodus, a little to the west of Pitatus on the shoreline of the Mare Nubium.

Even though Hesiodus A is the largest of these concentric craters, it's still quite petite at 14km in diameter. Not always easy to see but tonight the light is right !

I found it nicely displayed with my 120mm refractor at 225x magnification

Many other great features to see as well of course !

Enjoy the views !

13 minutes ago, Stu said:

This very lovely Celestron Omni XLT  120 arrived today, beautifully packaged and in wonderful condition! Looks like a proper refractor and I love the blue finish.

I have often wondered about those Stu.

At one point FLO were going to loan me a Celestron Omni 120 and a Skywatcher Evostar 120 so that I could compare them and see if the claimed aspheric figuring of the Omni objective and / or the XLT coatings made any difference in visible performance.

Nice colour scheme the Omni has and they retained the collimatable objective cell of course, which Skywatcher seemed not too keen on in the later Evostar versions.

I did have the Evostar 120 for a while generally liked it but that was before I'd used an ED doublet of any type.

I'll be interested to read your views on the Omni 120

2 hours ago, lenscap said:

Just a Skywatcher 6 x 30 RACI Finderscope for my 150p.

Been looking for one of these for months but everywhere has been sold out. And FLO don't seem to stock the RACI version at all.

Noticed stock at Bristol Cameras. Ordered Wednesday, delivered Friday by RM. They're still showing "in stock" as I type.

 

I use 6x30 RACI's on 3 of my refractors and find they do a very good job

They show a true field of around 7 degrees and stars down to around magnitude 9.

While 9x50's go deeper the 6x30's I still find very useful.

Quite a few years back the GRS was rather grey visually, although larger than it is currently. It went through a phase for a few years where it's size reduced but the reddish / orange / rust tone seemed to deepen. Now it seems to be fading back to greyer again.

A few years back the south equatorial belt more or less disappeared altogether which left the GRS sort of "hanging" on it's own, which was odd.

It is these changes that make observing Jupiter so interesting IMHO. You never quite know what you will find when you observe it and things change over a matter of hours.

Saturn is very lovely but less dynamic observationally, apart from the moon positions.

18 minutes ago, Nik271 said:

I'm pleased to say that I managed to resolve Dubhe last night with the 180 Skymax and 6mm EP, at x450 magnification. The seeing was superb around 11pm, and Dubhe presented very steady view. The diffraction rings were elongated and more dense towards NW and in short periods I could spot a blob forming on the first diffraction ring  I wouldn't call this a clean split because it was never there for long periods of time and did not separate from the Airy disc of the primary but I'm pretty happy with this result! Dubhe was getting low at 40 degrees elevation and dispersion was starting to show up, so it's position is not ideal right now. I think in winter this will be even better when it is high overhead.

This high pressure system has brought us very good seeing, at least in the south east!

Great stuff Nik

I could not get anywhere with it with my 12 inch dob so I'll have another go with my 130mm refractor when I get a chance. I'd like to try when Dubhe is somewhat higher in the sky too.

13 minutes ago, Deadlake said:

Ok, so using a 4-6 “ APO allows you to see a lot,  what are you giving up for lack of aperture? An example would be observing Jupiter or Saturn, summer night, good seeing. Aperture in this case wins, but what more can you see? For instance Saturn’s rings of fine structure of Jupiter’s atmosphere?

White ovals on Jupiter ?

Structure within the GRS ?

Detail of vortex's and eddies that follow the GRS ?

"Spoke" type shading at the ansae of Saturn's rings ?

The Encke minima ?

Cloud belt details of the main belts on Saturn and more belts / zones ?

Fainter saturnian moons ?

When the seeing and positioning of the planets is good, aperture can help tease out the above and more, more easily.

Of course the skilled observer can probably pick such things out without the need for larger aperture but for the rest of us it can help

With Jupiter and Saturn where they currently are though, I think the edge can be taken off the benefits of larger apertures.

Sometimes, it's just not meant to be

Personally I have found having a 12 inch dobsonian for the past 8-9 years has been the most rewarding phase in my 40years in the the hobby of astronomy. Yes it's large but it is manageable and pretty quick to set up / tear down.

A 4 inch aperture increase makes a really noticeable difference to deep sky observation.

I have a nice garden and can keep the scope within a short carry (in two parts) of where I observe though.

So for me, I would go for it !

2 minutes ago, maw lod qan said:

...But yes, wouldn't it be interesting to sit down with Galileo today, and show him what there is to see!

I have the feeling, the words he would mutter just might make the Pope angry with him, again.

Better show him this as well !:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13618460-600-vatican-admits-galileo-was-right/

With Jupiter now starting to be on show at a more reasonable hour here in the UK I think it is an apt time to post this NASA video of the Juno spaceship flyby of Ganymede and Jupiter last month. Music by Vangelis. Breathtaking imagery

As one of the comments on the movie says, what would Galileo have made of this !

I bought one of the very early Skywatcher ED100's - the "blue tube" version. It was pre-owned but  practically unused as I recall (it was about 12 years ago) and cost £300.00 shipped. Cracking scope that was and a bargain

25 minutes ago, Deadlake said:

What I did see was the Cassini division and then another gap in the rings towards the outer permitter, which I was presuming was the Encke division.
Maybe something else, as I can imagine a 4" APO with a 1.6 HR running at 506 x magnification is still not going to see the Encke gap.
What else could it of been? Saturn was framed in the EP with the edge of the rings at the edge of the EP view.

 

 

Encke minima perhaps ?:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/674315-enckedivision/

1 hour ago, Deadlake said:

Managed to see Encke gap last Friday night. Didn't know what it was called, so thanks for that.

I did have to use a HR 1.6 mm and 2 mm EP on it to get enough resolution and a goto mount otherwise too  much wobbling going on.

Spent most of the time on Saturn that night as Jupiter was a little too low in the sky.

What scope ?

Many report I've seen have folks needing 18 inches of aperture or more to get a definitely sighting of this tiny division.

I've owned and used Powermates, the Meade TeleXtender and the Explore Scientific Focal Extenders.

All pretty good really. Powermates are pretty much invisible in the optical chain apart from the additional magnification.

I used to have the 3.7 and 4.7 Ethos and used them with my 12 inch F/5.3 dob. Like Don I didn't use the 3.7 all that much. I actually let both of them go but then missed having the 4.7 so bought another one last last year

If I want to go above the 338x that the 4.7 gives me I do have the Nagler 2-4mm zoom or the 3.5mm XW. Picking out faint point sources such as supernovae and planetary nebulae central stars sometimes does benefit from these very high magnifications.

I believe that the APM 3.5 is actually a 3.7 ?

20 minutes ago, Highburymark said:

I collimated my C8 within a nanometer of its life, but never got close to what I saw on Jupiter last night. Makes me think my C8 may have lacked precision as clearly they are capable of good planetary views.
Should also add that Saturn has been much less impressive these last two nights. Put that down to the fact that it’s lower in the sky. 

I've noticed that refractors do seem to "cut through" to the low lying planets better than other scope designs. When Jupiter and Saturn were high in the sky a few years back my 12 inch dob gave fabulous views of both but where they are currently, the fracs are delivering much more consistently.

I'm pleased that you like your TSA120 Mark.

One day I'd like to see how a TSA120 compares to my ED120  

57 minutes ago, PeterStudz said:

I could just make out the Encke gap, although it would “flick” in and out of view - a second or two now and then....

 

What scope were you using ?

It's a great achievement to get a glimpse of it even with large scopes I believe.

37 minutes ago, PeterStudz said:

Yep, I agree. I popped out for a bit and basically saw the same. Saturn wasn’t bad too with surface banding clearly visible and I could see several ring divisions. Not just the Cassini. 
 

 

That's interesting. Apart from the Cassini and the gap between the C ring and the planetary disk, I find other divisions really tough to see. I'm thinking of the Encke gap which is really hard to spot. Which ones did you see ?:

Orion (USA) branded products always seem to be priced higher than their Skywatcher branded counterparts in the UK, if you can find them. Shame really because, while optically the same, some of the Orion products have some really nice features of their own, eg: the Intelliscope "push to" system.

The main Orion dealer in the UK was SCS Astro down at Wellington, Somerset but that business closed down a few years back when the owner retired.

Excellent presentation Chris

I loved the "attack of the Tele Vue" !

Some really good stuff in there explained clearly and with a touch of humour.

I'd highly recommend people to have a look at this before jumping into the eyepiece world. In some ways the issues and options are almost more confusing than selecting a telescope 

Your video will help a lot though

37 minutes ago, Xilman said:

It's just coming up to midnight (22:47 UT at time of typing) and circa 21:30 solar time.

The air temperature is 30C.

The wind will almost certainly produce lousy seeing.

The air is so full of dust that Polaris is the only naked-eye visible star in UMi.

It's too hot to sleep but I am not going to open up the observatory in these conditions.

Sorry to hear that.

Nice one here again.

Just had a look with my 102mm frac at 39x. Still looks around mag 7 and a bit I think.

Bit of widefield gazing tonight. Got the Lumicon O-III filter ready for the Veil

I don't use 2 inch eyepieces with my FC100-DL very often. Usually my low and wide eyepiece in that scope is the 24mm Panoptic. I have other scopes which are more suitable for wide field observing.

For high powers my most used eyepiece is the 4mm-2mm Nagler zoom. Not often at 2mm though.

On 16/07/2021 at 12:15, Alan White said:

Post person been to me with a new EP, courtessy of AB&S and Mike Baccanin.

Now have 10, 7 and 5 in the XW range 😃

Great eyepiece !

My favourite lunar eyepiece with my 12 inch dobsonian I reckon