John

Another clear dark night and another session with my 12 inch dobsonian.

Planetery nebulae - not a class of target that I've given special attention to up to now, apart from the brighter ones. These fascinating deep sky objects are starting to grow on me though. There are lots about, a wide variation of shapes and sizes and many of them can be picked up even when there is a little light pollution around. Some of them are rather small though so higher magnifications are often needed to show the true nature of these objects.

They do have some odd names attributed to them. Sometimes it's clear why, but other times they seem a little bizarre.

Tonights little clutch of planetaries were:

- NGC 6210, AKA "The Turtle" in Hercules.

- NGC 6543, AKA "The Cat's Eye" in Draco.

- NGC 6826, AKA "The Blinking Planetary" in Cygnus

- NGC 6884, not named and rather small at just 7.5 arc seconds in apparent diameter, in Cygnus

- NGC 7008, AKA "The Fetus" in Cygnus

- NGC 7027, AKA "The Pink Pillow" or "The Gummy Bear" in Cygnus

And lastly good old Messier 57, AKA "The Ring" in Lyra.

All of these were found without a filter. Some had their contrast enhanced with an O-III or UHC filter. A number of them showed their central star and the filters mostly made those invisible. I like seeing those stars though so, for me, I preferred the unfiltered views tonight.

All credit to Stellarium for highlighting these planetaries and also proving accurate when pinpointing their precise location with the scope.

The image below is of NGC 6210 by the Hubble Space Telescope. I think it might explain why it's been dubbed "The Turtle"

1 hour ago, simonharrison said:

Thanks that looks better than some taxi magnets! What's the make / where can I get it?

cheers

It's a Meade item. Probably best bought used to keep the price down.

Very interesting report

I had the Meade 12 inch Lightbridge for a while. It was a nice scope but for me even that was too heavy. Glad I didn't go for the 16 inch !

I found a light shroud very effective at keeping stray light out of the light path and this increased the contrast on deep sky objects quite noticeably.

I had similar issues re: "nose droop" with heavy eyepieces in use so I put one of these sliding counterweight systems on the lower tube assembly and that worked well:

It is actually designed for the large SCT's but fitted quite easily to the Lightbridge.

36 minutes ago, HollyHound said:

...... and the last thing I want is not to know (and feel) that a scope is secure 😬

 

I agree 100% with you, having had a scope (my lovely Vixen ED102SS) fall off a mount and onto the patio a couple of years ago

Very fortunately the damage to the scope was quite minimal (tougher than they look !) but it was a horrible episode.

Since then I have taken great care when mounting and dismounting scopes as you might well imagine

10 minutes ago, HollyHound said:

After my first session with the Mewlon 180 last week (first and second light report will follow sometime soon), I decided that I’d prefer a Losmandy dovetail rather than the standard Vixen supplied... just feels more solid and quicker (safer) to adjust in the dark with this scope 😬

Both my AZ100 and AZ Mount Pro have dual saddles, so seemed sensible to change.

So a StellaMira Losmandy dovetail delivered today and now fitted. Also more stable when resting on the table too 👍

 

Looks like the one that I bought from you a while back !

Mine is bolted onto my 130mm F/9.2 triplet refractor and is used with my T-Rex mount. They do seem more stable than the Vixen size bars.

32 minutes ago, Pixies said:

Really is starting to pick up again. I should be able to have a quick shot later tonight, if it stays clear.

Fingers crossed for you.

It's just clouded over here

I wonder if FLO will ever stock Meade

I've owned a few Meade products over the years but none have really impressed me that much.

100mm refractor at 37.5x. The Nova seems to lie somewhere between the stars HD 220057 and HD 220819 in brightness tonight. Those are listed as magnitude 6.9 and 6.6 respectively so I'll go for magnitude 6.75 for the nova

I've used cardboard and also made one from an old camping mat and they have both worked fine.

I have a Hyperflex 7.2mm - 21.5mm zoom and I've been surprised just how well it performs.

Like most zooms, the field of view is narrower at the longer focal length but in terms of sharpness I've found that it has exceeded my expectations. It's light throughput is pretty good as well which is an area that I have found that other zooms do not do so well at.

I bought it as an outreach / travel / quick look eyepiece but I've found myself using it surprisingly frequently given that I have a couple of eyepiece cases full of much, much more expensive eyepieces.

Sorry to burden you with another option

Clearly the white dwarf is still busy accreting material from it's larger companion.

Hopefully I'll get another look this evening.

I'm very pleased to hear that this setup has delivered the goods !

One issue with barlowing a long focal length eyepiece is that the eye relief is extended by the barlow. With a long focal length eyepiece the eye relief is usually quite long anyway so pushing it out even further can cause eye positioning challenges and the need to "hover" the eye well above both the eye lens and the eye cup.

Telextenders and Powermates usually leave the eye relief more or less unchanged. They also have less tendency to vignette a large AFoV than barlows do.

You never really know what the weather will do in the UK.

I recall the transit of Mercury in November 2019. The forecast was pretty awful here with solid cloud cover and drizzle all day apparently.

I set the scope up anyway and kept it inside just in case. Amazingly there was a small break in the clouds for just a few minutes and I was able to see Mercury in transit and snap a few hasty mobile phone photos. Then the clouds thickened and I think it rained for most of the rest of the day. But I did at least get a glimpse. The next one is 2032 !

2 hours ago, Nik271 said:

.... I don't know if you've done this already but if you haven't: a dew shield is very useful on cold nights, that is all nights except maybe midsummer.

I have two Maks, one of which is the 127 Skymax. I made dew shields for both from a single foam exercise mat. Its very cheap and with Velcro straps works just as well as the custom made dew shields....

 

Having owned a few mak and scmidt cassegrains in the UK I would say that dew shields are pretty much an essential addition. A higher priority than any of the other upgrades with these scopes in my view.

5 minutes ago, Captain Magenta said:

Also discovered a top tip. With these fancy eyepieces which have both 2” and 1.25” nose pieces, it really helps to remove the 1.25” end-cap to be able to see things. Cost me about 10 mins tonight 🙄 trying to work out why I couldn’t see anything....

I've done that more than once with an Ethos eyepiece.........

Excellent report. Thanks for posting it

Last night was a cracking night for observing. Tonight =

Excellent images

I have one of the old "gold tube" ED120's and the optics are superb . Your ED120 is clearly just as good !

I had a nice split of both pairs of Epsilon Lyrae with my 102mm refractor last night at 92x.

When I was playing around a week or so back with my 120mm stopped down to a 52mm F/17.3 I could split the wider of the pairs but just got a "peanut" shape on the closer pair. That was at 225x I think.

I had a superb evening last night with my 12 inch dobsonian. I'm sure others were enjoying the warm, clear, dark skies as well.

I spent 4 hours mostly as a "space tourist" visiting and gawping at the many showpiece deep sky targets in Hercules, Cygnus, Lyra, etc, etc. 

I won't list all the many targets I observed but there were a couple that stood out during the session:

- In Hercules I managed to see the very distant galaxy NGC 6196 and traces of a couple of the other NGC and IC galaxies in this faint and far off group. They are close to Messier 13. I think I've spotted 6196 before but I've not had traces of the others in the group. High magnifications (300x-400x) proved the key to teasing these faint patches of light out of the background sky.

- In Lyra, late in the session, when the constellation had risen high in the sky and my eyes had become dark adapted I spent over an hour studying the planetary nebula and the surrounding stars at very high magnification (454x) to see how faint I could get. For the first time I managed to get several clear glimpses of the central star in the Ring Nebula which is around magnitude 15 I believe

Previously the faintest star that I have managed to see was magnitude 14.7 but last night I broke the mag 15 barrier for the first time. I had wondered if my mirror coatings, being 10 years old now, might prevent going any "deeper" but last night things came together very nicely

This was the magnitude guide that I was using. I don't know how precise the brightness figures are but it gives some idea at least:

And, yes, at 400x plus the Ring Nebula really does look that large in the field of view !

In in all a great session and a target achieved that I've tried for, unsuccessfully, many times before

I get them occasionally down here. None tonight although it's an excellent night for astronomy in all other respects.

The best noctilucent clouds I've seen were a memorable night last year which coincided with comet Neowise:

Clear night and another brightness estimate data point from me, this time using a 102mm refractor at 28x magnification. I feel that the nova is really quite close to the brightness of the star HD 220057 which is magnitude 6.9. So I'd say mag 7.0 for the nova ?

13 hours ago, paulastro said:

That's a shame John. When you are having your family commitment,  couldn't you get away with nipping outside wearing a pair of solar eclipse glasses?  😎

That's a thought - I'll keep a pair handy where ever we happen to end up.

As a non-glasses wearer I found the soft foldable eyecup of the ES 24mm / 68 more comfortable and more effective at blocking out stray light than the hard flat, wide, top of the Maxvision 24 / 68. I enjoyed using both eyepieces and their optical performance was comparable (I owned both for a while) but I did ultimately prefer the egonomics of the ES.

Eyepiece ergonomics are an area subject very much to personal preferences though. Some of it may well be affected by the shape of your face, depth of eye sockets etc, etc. We all vary to some extent on such things.

1 hour ago, Deadlake said:

This model was also an option

https://www.365astronomy.com/apm-telescopes-super-ed-apo-astrograph-107-700-apochromatic-refractor-telescope-with-3-apm-focuser

is F6.5, it’s been discontinued due to SharpStar quality control issues. However there is a Long Perng 104/650 built model for APM in the pipeline with an optional Starlight FT focuser option. Not LZOS but half the price.

 

I was looking at doublets that use FPL-53 rather than triplets. The above and the one that Stu links to are certainly options though.