John

3 hours ago, HollyHound said:

.... However, I can't carry this across the farm or take it on holiday, and it does need a little while to cool 👍

Refractor brands other than Takahashi can be carried across farms as I understand it

I've owned a Tak FC100-DL and a TMB/LZOS 130mm F/9.2 for getting on for five years now.

They are superb examples of refractors of their aperture - probably around as good as it gets and certainly the best optics that I've looked though.

Game changers ? Not for me.

It's nice to own and use them of course but my Skywatcher ED120 is not outclassed by them to any significant degree (which is why I still have it) and my 12 inch dobsonian (which cost less than any of my refractors) has consistently been the scope that has given me all my "firsts" and the biggest "wows" over the years.

I'm just an observer though. Maybe for imaging Tak's can do things that other scopes cannot ?

I don't regret spending the money on the Tak and the TMB/LZOS though. There is nothing like finding out for yourself

1 hour ago, chiltonstar said:

Some brilliant views last night - best for me at x190 with a 180 Mak. Schickard was amazing, but even Copernicus was showing a lot of detail in the escarpments.

Chris

There are a couple of interesting dark patches in the ejecta from Copernicus. Copernicus H lies in the centre of one of them. It looked like a tiny bright edged pit surrounded by a darker halo of material last night. Not sure what the other one is called. I've arrowed them on this image by Andre van den Hoeven. They both stood out well under last nights illumination. At one point they were thought to be of volcanic origin but Lunar Orbiter images have showed that at least H is definitely of impact origin:

Aristarchus looked wonderful tonight. The illumination caught the dark striation down the inner terraced walls of the crater. This is a HST image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys. My ED120 views showed the more obvious bits !:

19 minutes ago, Pixies said:

Think I got it in the 8" dob.

With the Baader zoom, I had no luck. Seeing wasn't great but seemed to be improving from earlier.  Tried the higher powered orthos, but no luck there, either.

Then I got out the Vixen LVW 8mm, which hasn't seen much action since last October when Mars was near opposition. I barlowed that with the x2.25 - to give me x337 magnification. This was a bit of a mess, but at least the wider angle could let me watch the star for a while. I could see something behind the star as it drifted West. I removed the barlow and it popped into occasional clarity:

 x150 magnification

I tried the 7mm ortho again, and the zoom, but it was only the 8mm Vixen that would show it. 

That looks to be in the right position for the newtonian view. I reckon you got it

It's not an easy one, especially if the seeing is a bit variable.

ED120 for me tonight. Lovely lunar views.

Mons Rumker very nicely showing close to the terminator and plenty of other stuff too !

Yes, some lovely detail showing on the moon just now

I've been able to split A and B Eta Draconis with my ED120 refractor this evening at both 225x and 257x (slightly easier at the latter).

With plenty of high level cloud around last night, after a session observing the moon I turned to easy to find double stars as they showed in the gaps in the cloud cover.

I was using my 130mm refractor.

Eta Draconis has become one of my favourites lately being easy to find and well presented in my sky. The A-B pair of this binary system  makes an interesting challenge for the seeing conditions and the scope. The component stars are magnitude 2.8 and 8.2 respectively. The separation is currently 4.4 arc seconds. The large brightness difference and the relatively small separation make seeing the B component quite challenging - I had to look for it very carefully before I spotted it at around the 7 o'clock position (refractor with diagonal view).

I had a rather half-hearted look at this one a couple of nights earlier (also under hazy / thin cloud conditions) with my 100mm refractor and could not spot the B star then. I'll give it a try with my 120mm refractor soon and see if that can winkle it out. I reckon the seeing conditions are a lot to do with success vs failure on this target, more so perhaps than scope aperture ?. We will see.

The comparison I mentioned in the thread title is with our old friend Polaris. As most know, Polaris has a 9th magnitude companion and personally I enjoy seeing the pair of them pop into view when I'm star testing a scope. As I recall, all my scopes, even the 60mm refractor, have showed the 9th  magnitude companion star which lies around 19 arc seconds from the magnitude 2.04 Polaris. And there is the thing, the brightness difference between Polaris A and B is a little greater even than that between Eta Draconis A & B although they are in the same "ball park". The separation between Eta Drac is over 4 times tighter and that turns it into a much more challenging pair to split.

Eta Draconis is well worth the trouble though

Close to Eta Drac is another binary, STF 2054 which is a very tight 1 arc second pair of magnitudes 6 and 7. Another sort of challenge !

This is adapted from an illustration by Bob King for Sky & Telescope. It shows the refractor / mak-cassegrain / SCT orientation:

I had quite a lot of cloud here last night but enough gaps to make observing with my 130mm refractor worthwhile although some patience was required and I had to opt for targets as they became visible so choice was restricted.

Apart from the moon, I stuck to double star observing.

4 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

Not been out because of health reasons not sure in my light polluted skies what is the lowest mag I could go down to. The SN in Cassiopeia I tried over a week ago I meant to check if I had seen it in stellarium. 

Some great objects there and I bet they look great in a 12". 

Hope you a feeling better soon wookie

15 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

FC 100 DC is lovely. And then this appears today: https://ensoptical.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=10610

🤔

The FS 128 he has on UK AB&S is not too shabby either. Where he gets his stuff, goodness only knows

56 minutes ago, Stu said:

I specifically bought mine to use with my 8” f8 Dobsonian. Whilst it is a fairly ‘classic’ Dobsonian, it is also pretty tall and spindly, with a narrow base for its height. It tends to wobble around a bit when nudged, so does benefit a lot from the tracking. The views are well worthwhile though. Nice review of a similar scope here:

http://www.scopeviews.co.uk/OrionOptics200Dob.htm

The base of my 12 inch dob is modeled approximately on the OO base design but carefully made from quality plywood. I suspect it's footprint is a little larger than the OO version would be but not by much. Each time I use the scope I offer a little vote of thanks to @Moonshane who made it for me

While being very smooth in both axis, it also does that other vital thing which is to hold the scope really steady on the chosen target, even at very high magnifications.

I did own an equatorial platform (made professionally in Cornwall) for a while and that worked well with the scope. Eventually I decided that I could manage well without though and loosing those couple of extra inches of eyepiece height was actually an advantage

1 hour ago, Marki said:

And its not a "school night".... . Forecast looks excellent here! Fingers crossed... .

 Well, the BBC forecast is looking good. Clearoutside shows the total opposite and tells me I'm currently under 91% cloud.... better put me coat on again as the blinding sunshine I can actually see had me fooled

I have the same from "Clear outside" as well but it's pretty clear here now as it has been all day

16 hours ago, IB20 said:

Well had a decent moon only first session. I’ve discovered that the Hyperflex 21.5-7.2 zoom eyepiece is an exceptional lunar tool and even beat the 10mm BCO.....

 

I'm glad you enjoyed your session. I agree with you re: the 21.5-7.2 zoom. I have one and use it a lot more than I thought I would. I often use mine with the Baader 2.25x barlow lens to great a 9.55-3.2 zoom - great for high power observing when you need to tweak the power frequently.

Excellent write up Luke

If only I could get on with binoviewers

I have tried them a few times but even in my 130mm triplet (which is binoviewer ready) I could not get on with them

I did see traces of the rille again last night (the central section where the valley floor and the rille are their widest. But that was using a 12 inch scope again

I found the seeing more variable last night than the previous evening. Tantalising glmpses of really fine detail rather than longer looks.

I did spot St George crater again next to the Hadley Rille (which was still well defined despite the change in illumination.

Another target that the larger aperture helps with is resolving the tiny craters that form the Davy Crater Chain. The larger 3/4 are resolvable with smaller apertures and the others as a sort of pale line but during steady moments the 12 in scope resolves the smaller ones as well in this long, gently curving chain.

I didn't realise that they all had names !:

3 minutes ago, Stu said:

Good one wasn’t it? I picked it up as it re-emerged just before 10:53. Amazing how quickly it moved away from the Moon.

I missed the re-appearance - I'd got distracted by some other targets 

These events that demonstrate the mechanics of the solar system at work are fascinating to watch though

After some very fine lunar observing with my 12 inch dobsonian, rather randomly I decided that I would like have a look at a couple of the brighter supernovae again to see how they were coming along

SN 2021 hiz is in the host galaxy IC 3322A in the bowl of Virgo. Rather close to the bright moon (which is in Leo tonight) but I managed to star hop to the right location. No sign whatsoever of IC 3322A unsurprisingly but I could see NGC 4365 glowing softly nearby. Apart from the moonglow, the sky transparency is quite good. SN 2021 hiz is still showing up at around magnitude 13.2 or thereabouts I'd estimate.

On to Draco to try and spot SN 2021 hpr which is in the reasonably bright galaxy NGC 3147. Up close to the zenith and further away from the moon in the sky, finding the host galaxy was reasonably straightforward. Seeing the supernova called for more magnification than the 122x that I'd used to locate the galaxy so I went up to 199x and that did the trick. SN 2021 hpr was visible shining dimly in the far edge of the halo of light around it;s host galaxy. I'd estimate it's brightness at 14.1 or thereabouts. I believe this one is the 13th supernova that I've managed to observe.

I was pleased to be able to find these distant points of light (hiz is at around 81 million light years and hpr around 130 million). Quite a contrast to the lunar observing that I'd been doing earlier where my target lay just 1.3 light SECONDS away.

Also had a lovely view of the Cat's Eye nebula, also in Draco, NGC 6543 with it's central star gleaming forth. That one is around 3,300 light years away.

Continuing the session theme of "variety" I decided to have a look at Nova V1425 in Cassiopeia. That one was easy to find and it is still shining away at around magnitude 8 as far as I can see. In the same field of view was the delicate open cluster Messier 52 which showed very nicely indeed with the 12 inch aperture scope.

Switching back to 199x magnification I got a nice split of the lovely showcase coloured double star Izar in Bootes and also the similarly well known and famous "double, double" star Epsilon Lyrae.

Back up and west a bit to Hercules. The two superb globular clusters Messier 13 and 92 were reasonably high in the sky now and were deeply resolved by the aperture and magnification in use. Messier 13's dark lanes, which form the "propeller" feature, were also well defined and a short pan of the scope also picked up the galaxy NGC 6207 as a dim oval of fuzzy light.

Finally and as a prelude to the summer months, I went back to Lyra and found Messier 57, the famed "Ring Nebula". At 199x this looked surprisingly bright and well defined despite not having risen that high above the Bristol "glow" to the north east of me. A nice way to end a very varied session.

Despite covering a rather eclectic mix of targets I really enjoyed my observing tonight. It's great fun being able to switch from our nearest neighbour in space to a cataclysmic event that occurred in a galaxy far, far away and long, long ago and all from my little patch of patio with a good sprinkling of other fascinating sights thrown in for good measure 

I hope others have been enjoying these fine, clear skies

11 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

It's a bit more unstable than last night. There's enough steady moments to see some fine detail though. Copernicus looks lovely.  There's a deep shadow in Schiller. Plato is also looking good.

Yes, that's pretty much as it is here Michael.

Fine detail that was holding steady last night is a bit more fleeting tonight. There one minute, not quite so much the next.

Still enjoyable overall though

Thank you Stu

And there it was, gone !

Thanks for the feedback folks

Last nights observing prompted me to have a look through some Apollo 15 mission information. Amazing to think that it all happened 50 years ago this year. I was 11 years old and very heavily influenced by the Apollo programme which is why I guess I'm here now

I'd forgotten that this was the mission which included the hammer vs feather experiment:

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/329/the-apollo-15-hammer-feather-drop/

27 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

James T Kirk and crew contaminated every planet they stepped on. So much for the prime directive 

You were the Science Officer Mr Spock - did you try and dissuade Kirk from this damaging activity ? 

If it's any consolation to those who didn't manage to see this rille, my seeing conditions here were excellent but even so it was a very challenging thing to see even with my 12 inch dob which has very good optics and is well collimated. It was not visible consistently by any means and even when it was, I just got glimpses of a few sections of the rille. Plus I've seen it before with this scope, and that helps a lot !

I've not seen the rille with any of my smaller aperture scopes which include some pretty good refractors to 130mm in aperture.

As well as the really excellent scope and, obviously tonight, seeing conditions, mikeDnight possesses visual acuity well beyond mine I'm sure to get this with 100mm of aperture

Great observing Mike

27 minutes ago, Stu said:

A question, I saw a small dark patch near the Apollo 15 landing site which I haven’t noticed before. Did you see this and do you know what it is?

 

I didn't notice this myself Stu but I was concentrating on the area where the rille goes around the foot of the Mons Hadley rather than the flat plain where the LEM touched down. You might have seen shadows caused by either the North Complex or South Cluster formations which are a few km either side of the landing site ?