RobertI

Personally I think 1.3 meg resolution is perfectly adequate for this kind of application and will be for years to come. I use a Lodestar for my EAA which is a mere 0.43 meg and it produces some pretty satisfying results (albiet black and white) - not mind blowing, but way more than eyeballing through a scope. Just my two cents.

I read an article recently (with some pretty in depth analysis which I didn’t understand) which concluded that for a given aperture, the focal ratio makes no difference to how it is affected by seeing. It was primarily about aperture. I need to see if I can find the article now! Edit: Found the article https://www.fpi-protostar.com/bgreer/seeing.htm Re-reading the article, it actually says that longer focal ratio scopes might sometimes perform better in poor seeing than their shorter focal ratio counterparts, but not because of increased depth of focus.

Amazing image Chris that’s a lot of stars!

That is a weird looking object! Thanks for the detailed references, very interesting.

Great result Chris, you must be dead chuffed with the result. Can you post the final image?

Well done for grabbing the opportunity, that actually looks like a nice observing site. I forget that you don’t have to wait until it’s dark to observe the moon!

Thanks for the comments @Lockie, @domstar and @Stu I was really surprised that the galaxies popped out so well as the skies didn’t seem that dark, both naked eye and through the eyepiece, but transparency must have been pretty good somehow. It did make me realise what a difference a really dark sky could make to viewing galaxy detail. I didn’t realise the ngc3628 was the hamburger - do you think that the dark line could be visible in a 6” Newt under my skies?

Another gusty night, but transparent with moderately dark skies. I cooled the 150P with my newly installed fan on full blast for an hour, then turned it down to minimum speed and began the festvities at 10pm. Seeing was pretty bad as usual, but by the time I finished at 1am, had improved a lot. Bit of a mix tonight starting with some doubles: Iota Cancri - a beautiful double, the 'Winter Alberio' with yellow primary and blue/grey secondary. Zeta Cancri (Tegmine) - A triple with splits of 6" and 1.1". Recently discussed in another thread so thought I would have a go and was pleasantly surprised to be able to split the close pair quite easily at x240, despite the bad seeing, although there were moments when the gap was not clearly visible. A couple of carbon stars: X Cancri, a lovely rusty orange colour. 'La Superba' in Canes Venatici, a beautiful deep fiery orange. Although the sky seemed quite bright, I thought I'd try some galaxies, and was very pleasantly surprised. Mostly observed at 57x: A triplet of M65, M66 and NGC3628 in Leo all visible in the FOV - a thrilling sight. M65 and M66 both pointing in the same direction and very easily seen with bright cores. NGC3628 much fainter, long and thin with not much of a core. NGC6307 and 3608 lay nearby, both fainter and without any discernable shape or bright core. M51 in Ursa Major was very bright, with two bright nuclei and extensive nebulosity apparent. Over to the more challenging M101, but suprisingly easily found, a large but faint pale diffuse disc. Finally M64 the Blackeye Galaxy. Very bright and compact, I really wasn't sure whether the black eye should be visible in a small scope, and I really tried, but with no luck. I upped the magnification to 120x to darken the sky, and the galaxy was more apparent, but I really couldn't see a black mark. By this point I was also using an observing hood and eyepatch! 😄 Overall a nice session and I was very pleased with the scope's performance on galaxies. As for the fan, I did try comparing views of Tegmine with the fan on and off, but could not see a difference. I suspect this may be of more use on planetary and lunar, or under different conditions (perhaps less windy). No sketches tonight, too windy!

It does look intriguing. More than likely a plane or satellite. If you can remember the exact time, you can probably use Sky Safari or similar to eliminate or confirm whether it was a satellite. Could also be a plane at an angle - there is a very famous 'UFO' video which is actually a plane showing this effect.

Great resource Mike, a project for next year as Orion has disappeared behind my house now (I can't really see much of the Western sky). VV790 looks interesting.

Thanks Stu, I can see now that I should ignore the description in SS and go by the orbital view. 👍

Nice session Stu, what a lovely setup too. Tegmine is also on my list of doubles for the next session, the tighter of the pair looks pretty close, but I’m having trouble getting an accurate figure from my resources; SkySafari says 0.8” as of 2005 but widening, another source says 1.0” as of 2008 but widening, so I am assuming it must be between around 1.2” ish and 1.4” ish by now? Edit: after a bit more rooting around, seems like it’s reached a maximum separation of around 1.1”,so that’s a good split to have bagged.

Just fitted a home-made cooling fan to the back of the scope using instructions from a fellow SGL member. I didn't do a fantastic job (missing some vital tools), but it does blow a nice breeze up the tube, has a variable speed and is vibration free. My hope is that it speeds up cool down time, but more importantly improves high powered views of lunar, planets and possibly doubles, by removing the boundary layer of warm air that sits over the mirror. It's clear outside but I have a streaming cold so will wait for another time to test it.

Nice session Mike, the Whale and Cocoon are two of my favourites, particularly the latter with its knots and curves. Nicely captured galaxy group too.

Well done for being brave enough to share this Chris, why shouldn't we share the failures as well as the successes, perfection can get boring (not that I would know!).

Poor seeing, a bright sky, breezy with some cloud - not an ideal recipe for a good session but I did bag a few interesting doubles with the 150P; Iota Cancri - a lovely wide double with a bright yellow primary and fainter blue/white scecondary; HR4028 - two members of 4 and 6.5 separated by 1.5", only just achievable in the poor conditions. The highlight though was two doubles in the same FOV - at 60x I could see both Kappa and Iota Bootis - a lovely sight and worth seeking out even in the smallest of scopes! Kappa comprised a creamy yellow primary and grey/white secondary separated by 13". Iota comprised a bright white primary faint secondary separated by 38". Rough sketch below. I searched for some interesting open clusters but there is precious little about in the spring*. Time to put the 150P away and break out the C8 for some galaxy observing or a bit of EAA I think? Rob * Edit - I can only see the eastern half of the sky so can no longer see most of the winter constellations by the time I get out.

Well done on seeing the pup John, I've just had a similar slightly diappointing session which yielded a couple of good things, will try and write up.

Nice report, glad you are enjoying your observing so much. Nice phone shots too!

Well, I obviously can't rely on my memory - looking back on a report from 2017, it appears I did pick up the F component in my venerable C8. It obviously wasnt that memorable at the time!

Nice early morning session and a very lucky alignment of objects, must have looked wonderful.

Another interesting EAA object to add to your book

Nice work Martin, I love your capture of NGC2017, worthy of the imaging forum! An interesting looking cluster, I'll try and track this down. I'm mostly doing visual at the moment with a newly acquired 150PL which is fun, especially on doubles. But I shall return to EAA soon, probably when the council fixes the nearby streelight and my garden is illuminated once more - thank heavens for EAA! That's really gutting Mike, so sorry to hear that. Could you recover some images from your posts on SGL?

I don’t like to overuse the word ‘wow’ .......but WOW! Impressive stuff, this is motivation for me to develop my observing skills and have more patience at the eyepiece.

Thanks for the reminder about the benefits of dark skies - I often forget the huge difference this makes. Like you i often take my smaller scopes on trips to Cornwall and France and am amazed at what they show, but I should make more of an effort to take the C8 to really go deep.

Blown away, not by the views, but by the wind! Extremely windy tonight with scudding clouds, but I thought....what the hell......I'll have a go, and just to add to the challenge, I'll use my longest scope - my new 150PL. Not surprisingly the seeing was pretty awful, just to find out how awful, I put a high power eyepiece in and aimed at Polaris - it was not good, I estimated 3 to 4 on the Pickering Scale though I think it improved somewhat an hour later. I had a brief look at some better know doubles (often waiting for clouds to dissipate) but, the views were disappointing so I decided lower power was the way and after failing to find M97 or M108 in UMa, or any of the brighter galaxies in Leo (I didn't try very hard!), I ended up having a nice twenty minutes on M44, observing the very subtle colour differences of some of its members and attempting a sketch. Surpisingly the scope was really steady in the high winds, I think the Skytee on the heavy 2" tripod at its lowest setting provides a very solid base, although I did sometimes worry whether the very gusty high wind was capable of blowing the whole lot over!