Size9Hex

9 hours ago, geoflewis said:

... With Jupiter so low I do use my ADC which removes most of the blue/red dispersion fringes, which is pretty much essential with the C14.  I've had a few pretty decent sessions on Jupiter at the eyepiece using the LP filter over the past couple of weeks, so will continue to use that for visual observations. I tried the same with saturn, but the improvement was less apparent.

Cheers, Geof

Thanks Geof. Good feedback on the ADC especially with Saturn. Those red/blue fringes are partly what made me take a punt on a coloured filter this year with the planets so low. I haven’t noticed the fringe before, but it’s quite obvious now even when the planet is "high" directly in the south. The filters do tighten the view in suppressing the colour, but I wonder if the impact would be different when the planets are higher.

18 hours ago, MKHACHFE said:

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I have been observing J with my XT8 and 25mm and cheap 10mm all last week and found that a standard moon filter (the only one i have) helped a tad with seeing detail. I'm shopping for some other filters, so your post is appreciated. 

 

Cheers

Lots of factors involved when you’re trying to see things at the limits of your physiology, your kit and the conditions. Glad you had some success with the moon filter. Twilight viewing can show some surprising detail that seems to get tougher as the sky darkens - and is free! 😀. Of all the variables, I think the filters are not near to the top of the list though, so I’d recommend don’t be in too much of a rush to buy (nebula filters are a different story... 👍). A good quality high power eyepiece would be on my shopping list before coloured filters for sure. Plus collimation, seeing, patience, etc 🙂

Slim pickings right now with the late summer nights and the planets low. I can’t see Jupiter or Saturn from home, but was keen to try to get at least one decent session on Jupiter this season so headed out to a site with a low southern horizon and reasonable seeing across the grassy fields.

Nice views in twilight, including the Great Red Spot and Io approaching/merging into the disk. The seeing was bad initially (and I almost packed up), but improved fairly quickly as the evening cooled, becoming ok but not brilliant.

With a few seasons under my belt now, it’s nice to see the evolution of the features on Jupiter. Not to claim any real level of expertise mind; A few seasons more needed to learn the names too! The equatorial zone is darker/yellower and seems wider than I recall from previous years. The northern and southern belts seemed thinner. The southern belt has previously had a broad swathe of turbulence in the wake of the GRS, whereas last night it was squeezed very thin by the bright zone to the south. The GRS had a notably dark southern boundary. I don’t know if these are fleeting or long term changes but still nice to notice things evolve.

In terms of the filters, these were a recent edition to the kit. I was in two minds, given that they seem to divide opinion, but in the end I took a punt. A blue filter brought out knotted texture in the north equatorial belt more prominently. An orange filter confirmed three large festoons and made the bright southern zone particularly obvious. Equally, some features were lost with the filters, so quite feature/filter specific rather than overall better/worse. I felt these effects were noticeable within a few seconds at the eyepieces and didn’t require scrutiny or a drawn out game of Spot-the-Difference. Not to say the effect was dramatic though. With the filters removed, the improved features were still there, but less often and less easily - but then the worsened features got better, so take your pick! 😛 Overall, I’m content with their first light and feel that they contributed towards a good session.

But, with little surprise, by far the most important aspect was patience - filters or otherwise - especially with the wobbly seeing.

Saturn was terrible, but the scope was practically horizontal peering through the soup. Better views to come though!👍

Really enjoyed reading your report. Glad you had some good views. Takes some effort staying up to observe at this time of year!

The baader fluid and a lens cloth is a good idea. I’d add that I use an air blower first to blow off dust etc, then a fine haired lens brush to gently remove any further dust etc, given that such dust could be abrasive if wiped across the surface with a cloth.

Really like this topic.

If "useful" means useful for getting you excited in seeing and learning what’s up there, the minimum aperture is your eyes and anything above that is a bonus! ?

I used 50mm binos for months before getting a scope and they revealed loads. It was this aperture that gave me my ongoing enthusiasm for the hobby. The step up from the naked eye was utterly enormous. As others say, this is dependent on the skies by at least somewhat dark. If the binos had been a 50mm scope with potential for high mag, then even better!

Thanks Nick. Looks a great list. I've all but forgotten what a clear sky looks like though and the forecast doesn't look too promising!

34 minutes ago, Stu said:

Excellent results there under some quite challenging conditions! Can you let us know how the image was captured? Smartphone handheld at the eyepiece? What settings did you use?  

Phone held at the eyepiece. Tricky lining up a tiny camera lens against a tiny exit pupil. The trickiest thing however was figuring out how to switch off the flash, but having got that sorted, I picked up Venus' huge bright yellow and purple aurora no trouble at all. 

What a cracking thread. Here's my own contribution to keep it going. This is for anyone who might doubt that you can get exceptional results...

... using a wide field sub f5 achromatic,
on a bright planet like Venus,
with a high power 4.7mm eyepiece,
and then barlowed to 212x,
with a pretty dubious focuser,
mounted on a manual az,
from comfort of a nice warm house,
through a latticed window.

It's the ideal scenario and I think the results speak for themselves...

A couple more Sky Safari lists in case they're useful...

• Astro League binocular DSOs. A fantastic set of targets beyond the Messier list for binos and also wide field scopes:

Astro League Bino DSO.skylist

• Astro League Bright Nebula program for connoisseurs of faint stuff:

Astro League Bright Nebulae.skylist

Nice one! I was considering this scope for wide field / travel / grab and go, but the lack of 2" focuser put me off. Looks like a really neat upgrade and useful comments about the weight too which is something I wondered about. All the best for your trip!

4 minutes ago, Davesellars said:

Thanks, Paul!

Uff..  I have the Herschel 400 loaded which is quite a substantial amount of objects showing on the screen at the same time.  2500 is just scary! 

Definitely will be going through the AL Dark Nebulae list though!

You're not wrong! It's interesting seeing them all marked at once though. I wonder in a few places if it shows almost a straight line where Herschel dragged his scope across the sky (so to speak). Could well be seeing patterns that aren't there of course. The overall view isn't too bad once you're zoomed into a specific area though (other than Virgo which is frankly horrific).

In case it's useful to others...

I'm sharing a few Sky Safari observing lists that I've created. These give you access to a few observing projects beyond the ones that come as default with Sky Safari. These work with version 5 on iOS, but looking at the documentation, it doesn't sound like the format has changed for fair while or that it's any different on Android. These were created using an automated script rather than manually. This meant I could create them very quickly, but because Sky Safari doesn't tell you which (if any) part of the import failed, they may not be 100% correct. Looking at them in the app, I'd say they're about 95% correct which seems fair for a few minutes work, rather than days and days to create them manually! I'm using these alongside a print out of the official list, and as I tick them off on paper, any that are missing eventually become obvious.

To import, download from here, email them to your phone/tablet and then just click on the attachment in the email. Hopefully it'll all work smoothly. No tech support offered... ;-)

• The full Herschel list:

Herschel 2500.skylist

• Eagle Creek Doubles, grouped by the constellation families (with a bit of a northern bias and therefore my apologies to folks in the south):

Eagle Doubles Heavenly Waters.skylist

Eagle Doubles Hercules.skylist

Eagle Doubles Orion.skylist

Eagle Doubles Perseus.skylist

Eagle Doubles Ursa Major.skylist

Eagle Doubles Zodiak.skylist

• Melotte and Collinder for a few star clusters beyond the usual:

Melotte.skylist

Collinder.skylist

• And the Astro League Dark Nebulae:

Astro League Dark Nebulae.skylist

Enjoy! 

Love it. Quite a different image from the usual. Really striking. Nice tip on the UHC too - I'm visual only, but will give that a go!

That sounds awesome. You describe some stunning sights! Saturn must have be incredible. The first of many more great sessions to come with that scope.