John

It's the same or similar to the ones marketed under the Oberwerk branding to carry big binoculars Dave. I got it from the Astroboot. It's not quite as sturdy as a Berlebach Uni but pretty close and a few kg lighter.

I'll go with mag 7.8 as well. It seems to have been stable at that for the past 3 nights.

Great report Stu

Thanks Paul - I've really enjoyed tonight and I'm glad you have had some fun as well I'm loosing my clearer patches now with more and more clouds starting too intrude so I'll be bringing things to a conclusion shortly. I've just been looking at Gamma Leonis at 450x (which is a bit nuts ) - amazingly well defined airy disks with a very fine single diffraction ring around each star. Rather lovely. I could have done with some more nights like this when Mars was at opposition.

Here is another of my setup tonight. I have to hand it to my old Skytee II on the Oberwerk-type wooden tripod - I've been using up to 450x at times for lunar observing tonight in the excellent seeing conditions and my F/9 100mm refractor has been held really steadily by this mount / tripod combo. A sharp rap on the end of the scope tube results in a quick shimmy of the image which settles back to completely steady in less than a second. For a rig that is light enough for me to carry easily in one piece all around the garden, this is pretty good performance I reckon

Really excellent seeing conditions tonight allowed "silly" magnifications (ie: 300x plus) to be used even with my 100mm refractor. The moon is looking serene at 62% illumination. So many wonderful targets to enjoy tonight. I'll just mention here highlights in and around the Mare Nubium: - The Rupes Recta (AKA the "Straight Wall") and nearby the delicate Rimae Birt. At high magnifications the "wall" really is not that "straight" ! - Crater Alpetragius with it's bulbous interior mass - some say it looks like a giant egg set in the craters floor. To me it resembles a huge hi fi base speaker cone too - Crater Arzachel which seems to bring together a range of classic lunar crater features in one place - finely terraced walls, a distinctive central peak complex, floor craters and a curving rille for good measure. - Crater Davy sitting on the edge of the of the indistinct but much larger Davy Y but most interesting of all the remarkable crater chain known as Catena Davy. a chain of 23 small craters in a straight line that run right across Davy Y and out over it's crumbled rim. Thought to have been formed by a multiple impact event where the impacting body broke up before hitting the surface. - The long straight "highway" of the Hesiodus Rille that runs for 300 km across the lunar surface. - Crater Pitatus with rilles along the foot of it's walls on two sides. - The immense and ruined crater Deslandres with Hell (crater) on one side and another fine Catena (crater chain) comprising of 5 craters gradually diminishing in diameter on the opposite side. And so much more besides ! How's this for a great view of Catena Davy snapped by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and then projected onto the lunar surface in Google Earth

As has been said, the seeing is exceptionally steady tonight. There is quite a bit of thin hazy stuff up there as well so deep sky is no go and I'm having to star hop using the brighter constellation stars but binaries and the moon are looking superb. Sirius is about as steady as I've ever seen it.

This is a post on another forum where Don Pensack gives a good list of O-III filter friendly targets for modest aperture scopes: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/675309-just-bought-a-oiii-filter-what-targets-should-i-go-for/?p=9624343

Observed with my 100mm refractor again this evening. Nova looks around the same brightness as it did last night. Certainly no dimmer. Maybe a tiny bit brighter ?

Similar to Baz's shot above, nice views of the moon tonight with my 100mm refractor:

A few years ago, at an SGL star party, I had the chance to observe Messier 13 with a superb 20 inch David Lukehurst dobsonian. The view was, to put it mildly, jaw dropping The cluster completely filled the field of view and was resolved into 100's of thousands of stars right into it's core. I'll never forget that view !

M13 and M92 in Hercules (both excellent globular clusters) are starting to look quite decent by around midnight here. I was observing them last night as it happens.

If there is one target that really benefits from increased aperture, globular clusters are it. Dark skies help as well as does a modicum of magnification. At 200x with my 12 inch dob on a decently dark night Messier 13 really does look like this: Many globular clusters though are not as bright and well resolved as the showcase ones, especially some of the more distant ones (they are all actually quite far away). Examples of fainter globular clusters that are still interesting and worth observing are Messier 71 in Sagitta and NGC 2419, the so called "Intergalactic Tramp" in Lynx, the latter being a whopping 275,000 light years away.

Nobody knows as yet. Novae like this can brighten, fade and then brighten again. We will have to wait and see ......

Nice Sky & Telescope piece on this nova and novae generally: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/bright-nova-erupts-in-cassiopeia/

Nice shot Neil - pretty much mirrors the view I was getting with my 100 refractor. M52 is a delicate little cluster isn't it ?

Observing it with a 100mm refractor at 37.5x and making comparisons with the AAVSO chart I'd say that it's still around mag 7.7. Noticably brighter than the 9th mag star nearby and a touch brighter than a mag 8.1 star a little further off. There might have still been some thin cloud around when I first got the binoculars on it. So I reckon very similar to last night. Has it peaked I wonder ?

Just had another look at Nova Cas 2021 with 11x70 binoculars though convenient gaps in the cloud cover. Does not seem any brighter tonight. Perhaps even a bit fainter ? I might have the chance to get a scope onto it and see how it looks through that.

Great report ! I love Gamma Leonis - first double star that I ever observed with a scope. My old Tasco 60mm refractor many, many years ago. Gamma Virginis is also a lovely one, rising later in the evening here. A yellow-white pair of mag 3 stars a bit closer together than the Gamma Leonis pair.

Just to move this onto things more astronomical in nature, here is an article from 2019 from the Chandra X-ray Observatory on the latest image of Tycho's supernova remnant in Cassiopeia: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2019/tycho/

This is a bit oddball but I came across this article and thought it interesting if not perhaps strongly astronomical: https://www.entandaudiologynews.com/features/ent-features/post/the-astronomer-s-nose-tycho-brahe-s-controversial-prosthesis For a more conventional biography of this very important astronomical figure, this webpage does a good job: https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Brahe/ This portrait of him seems to show that he decided that a splendid moustache and an "interesting" haircut might distract from his nasal repair

The good thing about this one is that, with the help of the charts and sketches in this thread, it is quite easy to find in binoculars. So you only need a smallish clear patch of sky to be in with a good chance

I told a little fib there - just enough of a clear patch appeared so I bunged the 4 inch refractor out for a quick gander at 30x. Quite a busy starfield with the additional aperture and magnification. Using nearby stars I'd estimate that the nova is in the mid magnitude 7's as well. Huge wall of cloud now rolling in from the NW so the scope is coming back in. Grab and go astronomy - you can't beat it under UK skies

Clear patch again. Nova somewhat quite easy now and M52 is also visible glowing faintly with the binoculars. I think its an evening to keep the binoculars on standby. Not enough clear sky to warrant setting a scope up really.

Thanks to the above excellent finder chart from @Waddensky and a surprise cloud break. I have just managed to see Nova Cas 2021 with my 11x70 binoculars ! I had about 20 minutes before being clouded out again so after picking up the nova I whizzed around the sky with the binoculars and managed to spot: M81 and M82 in Ursa Major M44 and M67 in Cancer (nice to get this fainter open cluster in the crab) M42 in Orion M 35 and NGC 2392 in Gemini (pleased to get this well known planetary nebula) M 41 in Canis Major And that's it for this evening I suspect - thank goodness for binocular astronomy