RobertI

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!

On 29/01/2020 at 22:35, RobertI said:

This is the first time I have caught the F component in any of my scopes

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.

On 05/02/2020 at 20:46, Martin Meredith said:

But what I really like about this field is the 'false saturn' that is evident at 8 o'clock. This triplet is aligned in such a way that the two fainter 'wings' are just offset to give the tilted Saturn-like impression.

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!

On 17/02/2020 at 14:21, Mike JW said:

all 330 of my Arp images on the laptop and the two back up copies held elsewhere  have all been corrupted and lost!!!!!!!!!!!

That's really gutting Mike, so sorry to hear that. Could you recover some images from your posts on SGL?

57 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

Just to prove that it works, all the attached sketches were made using a 100mm refractor from the suburbs of a Lancashire town. Not exactly a "dark site!"

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!

I've been going through the same process - I have a 150PL (F8) and a 5mm BST giving 240x, but feel I could go to higher mags for some doubles. The 4mm NIrvana was top of my list, but then I thought that another option is to replace my 5mm BST with a 5mm Hyperion. With the fine tuning rings (which I already have) I could get 5mm, 4mm, 3.2mm and 2.6mm, all from one eyepiece. To be honest, I would only use the 2.6mm on my other shorter FL scopes, but it does give the option of a range of focal lengths with which to experiment. I know Hyperions are not brilliant on F5 scopes (edge distortion), but they are very good on my F8 scope (sharp to the edges) and from memory work fine on my F6 scope (I'm sure others can also advise).

Interesting captures Martin, NGC is reminiscent of the Coathanger Cluster to me,  but on a smaller scale of course. The blue/white stars are really striking against the background of redder stars.

Some great observations and fascinating background - I'm glad you did the inverted images and ringed the clusters, I really couldn't make out Berkeley 26 without it.

Looked beautiful over Manningtree a few minutes ago...

Although Sirius was boiling and bubbling the views of the moon through the 150P were actually exquisite. Loads of detail and tonight I was using a moon filter which I have to say made observing more enjoyable. Also managed to takes some pics on the phone to aid my memory - the real eyepiece views were far more spectacular. Most viewing done at x240. Highlights (south to north, top to bottom):

A - Schiller, an intersting non-circular crater.

B - A tri of large prominent craters; Phocyclides,Wargentin the middle with some lovely 'veins' visible in the floor and the largest, Shickard.

C - A feature prominent in the darkness - it looked just like a seagull flying away from the moon.

D - Two twins, Billy and Hantseen, identical shape and size but one with a flat floor and one with a rippled floor.

E - Craters within craters, Damoiseau sits inside an unidentified larger crater

F - An albedo feature named Reiner Gamma

G - Aristarchus, incrediby bright even through the 9x50 finder, with the spectacular Shroter's valley nearby and a network of Rimae and Rupes!

H - Mare Imbrium and Sinus Iridium, amazing mottled shades of grey and brown on the flat surface.

The final surprise was the occultation of a 6th magnitude star which, after careful viewing for a good five minutes, winked out of sight in the darkness near the terminator. Thanks to @Stu for the heads up!

Just got it! Stood there for what seemed like ages, got really close to terminator then winked out of existence, no dimming (as theory would suggest), just gone. My first occultation! 🙂

You make these tight doubles seem so easy John! 😁. Sounds like a good night out there, I’ll have a quick go myself. 

Congratulations on your new arrival. That’s a cool looking scope and looks just ‘so right’ on that AZ100; the combination of that scope and mount together must make observing a dream.  I must admit my instant reaction was that red tube rings would look better, but it seems such a petty comment! As for the finder, I’d stick with the 6x30 and save some money! I recently bought a scope which came with a 6x30 finder and remembered how how effective they can be. Looking forward to second, third and subsequent lights. 

2 hours ago, Helen said:

If EEVA was available for booking then that would really fill a gap in the outreach market I think.

I have been thinking the same thing for some time. I think remote EAA is a very l interesting opportunity, I’d be interested! It doesn’t place the same demands on the equipment as traditional imaging so needn’t be so expensive. EAA sessions are sometimes streamed live on YouTube by the user - could potentially provide some useful ‘exposure’ for IKI (excuse the pun). 
 

Also it might not just be for outreach, there are plenty of people doing EAA observing  ‘projects’ who would kill for a decent setup with guaranteed skies. 

Superbly captured, well done. 

8 hours ago, chiltonstar said:

Sounds like a nice, fun scope!

Stelle Doppie has STF 1338 with mags 6.7/7.1, sep 1.0 and PA 320, and 57 Cancri 6.1/6.4, sep 1.6 and PA 309. Are these the figures you used, as the PA looks a bit odd on your sketches, although I always struggle with the upside down and reversed images from a newt??

Chris

 

 

 

 

Thanks Chris.

Sky Safari said 7.1/6.1, 1.0”, PA322, and 5.4/6.4, 1.5”, PA311. So my mag differences are a bit wider than yours, but I think your figures are more accurate as I didn’t feel that there was a full magnitude difference between either pair. 

My sketches are not that accurate I’m afraid (added for interest!), my visual estimate at the time was that both pairs were pointing roughly NW, giving PA of 315 or so, which seemed close enough to confirm the catch (hopefully).

I believe (and hope) that the PA is measured counterclockwise through a Newt starting at North. 
 

I will try and work on my sketches! 😁

2 minutes ago, Lockie said:

That's wonderful to hear Robert One day I'll own a 8.75" f6.3 which I hope will perform well and be a great compromise for most things. Just need to get round to finishing it!

You do have nice old collection of scopes now  

Thanks Chris, looking forward to seeing the 8.75” F6.3, no rush! 👍

5 minutes ago, Stu said:

Or how about an 8" f8 Robert 😉

Seriously though, your comment about convenience shouldn't be underestimated. 1600mm focal length can be a little unwieldy and I tend to use it for lunar or planetary sessions, not for star hopping around many targets. The EQ platform really helps too.

Yes, good point Stu, if planets and luna are the main targets, then the eyepiece height is not going to vary that much.

My journey to the 6" F8 was realising how nice the Heritage 130P was, thinking that a slightly larger, closed tube newt with a R&P/crayford focuser would give even better results and still be super-convenient. It came down to a 6" F5 (nice a short, useable for EAA, but 'pin cusioning' effect visually, at least with my Hyperions) or a 6" F8 (less convenient, but brilliant for doubles/planets and edge to edge sharpness). I concluded that an F6 was probably a good compromise, but not many 6" F6's about (perhaps a gap in the market for a new StellaMira @FLO? 😉). In fact, during my research, many people said that the best 6" F8 scope is an 8" F6! But a 150PL came up used, and as I am currently getting more into doubles,  it seemed the answer for the time being. I will of course eventually run out of space for any more scopes!  

Thanks for the link John, a very interesting read. I suspect the F11 will lose some of the convenience of the F8, but lots of optical pluses.  At some point, because enjoy comparing my scopes, I am going to do a planetary head to head with the C8, which has performed brilliantly on Jupiter, but awful on doubles! I'm curious to see how the 150P gets on.

7 minutes ago, johninderby said:

I think that OO will still do a 6” f/11 to order. Now that should spilt a few doubles I think. 🙂

F11 - now you're talking!