John

The skies at Lucksall can be rather good. I can remember a night there when M101 was clear and quite extensive in my 50mm finder. From here it can be a challenge with my 12 inch dob ! I still think Pauls original post is valid though - M1 is really not a regularly seen 10x50 binocular object for many folks.

This is from 25th March 1620. Nice conjunction of Jupiter and Mars. Maybe not quite what Paz meant though

For interest, you could try making a card aperture mask for the 150 newtonian. Something like this: If the aperture falls between the secondary vanes you get an unobstructed scope albeit of smaller aperture. You get some nice results on double stars and bright targets such as Venus - "refractor-like" views

Not sure that the EQ5 is good enough to image with that scope on it. It will do fine for visual observing though. Instead of ES 100 degree eyepieces I would go for the APM / Lunt ones. There is not much in the performance but I think the APM / Lunt 100's are slightly better performers and may well be less expensive.

That does seem a bit over-optimistic for most observers Paul. I'm not sure that I've clearly seen M1 with 11x70's let alone 10x50's.

Great report Mark !

Makes sense to me - its fun to compare the views with different scope types

I think the seeing can also be impeded by quite local factors such as a heating plume from a building which you don't even know is there. I remember once observing Saturn on a warm Summer evening when the planet was just above a line of trees. The seeing was very unsteady. I read somewhere later that under certain conditions, some tree species can emit a sort of haze, maybe even tiny insect swarms which occupy the air above the tree tops.

Nice report as ever Nick I have a soft spot for Algieba and Leo generally because it was the first part of the sky that I explored when I got my first scope way back. I was so thrilled to see those 2 lovely golden orbs separated through the eyepiece of my old 60m refractor.

Venus looked nice earlier this evening after the Sun had gone down behind our hedge. That was with the Tak FC-100DL. Quite a nice crisp, steady image even at 280x.

That's what Venus currently looks like. Its at around 50% phase right now so will look like a tiny version of a half phase moon. The 25mm eyepiece is delivering magnification with your scope of 48x which is quite low power.

I found this comet and Panstarrs again with my ED120 refractor tonight. Panstarrs is still a little brighter and a little larger. Both easy to overlook still.

Thanks Iain. So many others that I could have got as well when I look at my charts.

That's more my style Mike Last time I wore a suit was at my sons wedding last June. My god that seems a long time ago now !

At least it's an easy star hop tonight: Sigma 1 ------> Sigma 2 ------> Rho --------> ??????? now where is the darn thing ???????

I have a similar issue with the eyecup on the ES 17mm 92 but more than a niggle - I'm not finding it as comfortable as my Ethos's. I've read that the ES 92's are great for those who wear glasses when observing and they are really well corrected eyepieces though. 90% of that session last night was with the 21mm Ethos in the 12 inch dob.

Brilliant Mike - every inch the "gentleman astronomer" I was a scoundrel with a dobsonian last night though

Not an app I'm afraid. Its a PC application. I tend not to use a mobile when observing especially when going for faint stuff.

When I observed it Last night this comet was very close to the "small triangle" of the star hop route to M81+82 that Stu shared some time back: It will be just off the top star of that triangle tonight at 9:00 pm so relatively easy to find its position:

I tend to hop from galaxy to galaxy and that way have some idea what I'm looking at. If I bump the scope away from my path though, I get lost rather easily in that part of the sky. Still, being lost in "the realm of the galaxies" is a rather nice thing in these troubled times !

Nice report. Doing this stuff is good in these difficult times - good for the mind I think

The Leo Triplet looked nice. I could have gone on and on in the Virgo / Coma area. I spotted a dozen or more other fuzzies that I could not ID with any certainty. There are quite a few Messiers in amongst the NGC's and it can get a bit confusing !

Quite a good haul of (mostly) galaxies spotted tonight despite mediocre transparency: Ursa Major: M 81 M 82 NGC 3077 NGC 2976 M 101 (faint trace !) M 108 (M 97 planetary nebula close to it) M 109 Canes Venatici M 51 NGC 5195 M 106 M 94 M 63 NGC 4490 NGC 4485 Leo: NGC 2903 NGC 3193 NGC 3190 NGC 3162 NGC 3226 NGC 3227 M 105 M 95 M 96 NGC 3384 M 65 } M 66 } The Leo Triplet NGC 3628 } Coma Berenices / Virgo M 64 M 84 M 86 NGC 4402 NGC 4387 NGC 3388 NGC 4435 NGC 4438 NGC 4458 NGC 4461 NGC 4473 NGC 4477 NGC 4459 NGC 4474 Note: M84 through to NGC 4477 are members of the well known Markarian's Chain of galaxies that span the Coma / Virgo border. Hercules (rather low but a good place to end the session !) M 13 (globular cluster) NGC 6207 (same field as M 13) M 92 (globular cluster) Packed in at just after midnight - got rather cold ! Not a bad night - 2 comets (earlier), 2 globular clusters, 1 planetary nebula and 42 galaxies. Markarian's Chain was the highlight I think. I've attached a photo (not mine !) of this spectacular galaxy group. The IC and PGC galaxies are very faint - didn't see any of those ! John

I find Cartes du Ciel pretty much spot on with comets.

Unfortunately Andromeda is behind houses for me currently. They are reasonably bright but I would not want anyone who has not seen them yet to think they are in any way spectacular objects to be honest. Worth finding but hardly showstoppers !