Knighty2112

Thanks Neil. My brother and his wife have just gotten into astronomy, and my brother was convinced he'd seen Pluto about a week or so ago in his 5" SCT blazing away at about magnitude 5. When I told him I think that Pluto it at least 10 magnitudes less than this and that I doubt if I could see it in my C8 SCT at home which suffers the same amount of LP as he does he looked a little disheartened. He's now also getting the bug for Imaging too after getting a camera from RVO!

Fingers crossed for you for clear skies Piero. So far supposed to be good again where I live tonight, but you know how changeable the British weather can be so that's not always a given alas!

Nice work David. Well done! If clouds allow I may get the scope out to have a close looksie too at the AR's!

I used to have a 6" Newtonian, but whilst the views where good the tube assembly was too cumbersome for me, so I eventually went for a second hand C8 SCT, which gives great views and is much easier to manage. In fact I can carry the scope & the Celestron SE goto mount it normally sits on very easily in one go out in to the garden, something which I couldn't do with the 6" Newt which had to sit on either an EQ mount (which I don't like at all I'm afraid), or one of my AZ mounts, and had to be a two trip job to carry outside and set up. New SCT's are more expensive than Newtonian's in general (there are exceptions of course!), but the benefits of larger aperture with a much smaller size with the SCT easily out weigh an downsides in my eyes. Worth a thought maybe.

Cheers Neil for the feedback mate. I'll give it a try a soon as I can and let you know what I see!

Nice work Doug. Well done mate. I'm regretting selling my OIII filter now after your successes!

Nice report Neil. Well done! And an extra well done for balancing on a step ladder like that to view things! Looks a little dodgy to me, but you seem to have mastered the skill well! Have to say I never looked much at the elephants trunk, but may give it a try again on the next good night. What magnification did you use to see it with successfully?

After getting some further unexpected clear skies last night, I had two sessions to view objects; first one from just gone 10pm until around 11:45pm. Pleased to say that I got my wifi working first time last night, and for the first part of the session I used my AR90S f5.5 'frac on my goto mount. Did the three star alignment first time and it was working great, with most objects not far away from the centre of view OK. Cruised round the sky a little, looking at all the usual subjects. M27 Dumbbell was showing pretty good too, although some slight high altitude cloud kept skimming in the way occasionally. Bode's were easy to see in the wide field view of my EP using my 10mm Delos EP. After a break inside from about 11:45pm, I came back out at just gone 1am, and set up my C8 SCT on my goto mount which caused me issues last night when trying to use it on the mount. I had previously doubled up the dovetail bar to allow me to position the C8 a little further forward on the mount so that I could reach zenith OK when viewing objects. This I think caused balancing issues which manifested last night after initial alignment. I took off this extra dovetail bar I had fitted to the scope, and sat the scope back in the mount as far forward as it would allow with just the normal dovetail bar, and did a three star alignment OK first time also as well. After quickly checking that objects were lining up all OK again, I got down to viewing both Uranus & Neptune with my 18mm X-Cel EP in the SCT. Both planets were very easy to see, and even Neptune stood out even though it was small still, it was clear that it wasn't a star when looking at it through the EP. High altitude wispy cloud had built up a little more than earlier, so I knew my time was limited at the scope, so I had a quick look for a new object to see. After checking SkySafari, I found the asteroid Iris was in Aries, which was nicely placed for me to try to observe it. After tapping on Iris on SkySafari, the mount slewed across to its position, and after aligning things up and checking with SkySafari again to match up the stars etc with Iris in the FOV, there she was sitting at about the upper 2 o'clock position in my EP. My second asteroid ever seen! Woohoo! The forecast again for tonight is looking pretty good, so hope to track Iris down again as it sails through the solar system. All in all even though seeing or sky conditions weren't at their best, I had two good sessions to observe with last night.

Looks like you had a great night Doug. Well done! I still need to see any sign of the Veil still in Cygnus, so I'll try your trick and see how I do.

Nice sketch Shane. I may get my scope out to have a looksie of the sun after some din dins!

Nice report. Well done! I view the Saturn nebula for the first time last night, however not with my C8 SCT as I had issues with it on my goto mount, but with my wide field AR90S f5.5 'frac, so magnification was much lower. Easily visible, but due to lower magnification I couldn't make out any extensions that give it its name. None the less easily identifiable as a planetary nebula still.

M101 sounds as elusive as M33 unless under dark skies then John.

Nice report Nick. I had a rewarding (but initially frustrating) night last night too. Saw the Little Dumbbell nebula for the first time last night, along with the Saturn Nebula too, so was chuffed in the end when I reired to bed.

Last night was the best chance to be had to do some observing unhindered by any cloud cover, so got my Celestron SE goto mount and C8 SCT outside just after 10pm. Planned to use my wifi connection on the mount with my iPad Air, but after 4 failures to do the 3 star alignment required by Sky Safari, I then just used the hand controller on the mount to align things up. Sadly with the C8 scope still the alignment was not bringing any objects in the FOV correctly, so I decided to take the C8 off the mount and use my Opticstar AR90S f5.5 'frac to see how that performed. After alignment with the handcontroller again, I slewed around to Vega, M57 and M13, all of which fell into the centre FOV pretty much spot on, so looks like the was a balancing issue with the C8 I need to sort out. Strange, 'cos I've never had an issue with the C8 on the mount before. Either way, after an initial 45 minutes wasted time faffing around with the C8 I eventually got my observing session underway. I had planned on looking at some objects in Sagittarius, but this was now behind my house mostly, and didn't fancy moving the scope and mount, and then setting up from scratch again in the back garden, plus there are too many street lamps shedding their light into the back garden anyway, so that makes it much harder to observe from. After cruising round the old favourites (M57, M13, M92, NGC7662, NGC6543 etc etc) I then tried M27 (Dumbell nebula) in Vulpedula with my Celestron 18 X-Cel EP in the small 'frac. This normally gives me a good indication of the sky conditions, and sure enough M27 was easy to make out and observe. Not far away in Pegasus, the globular cluster M15 was again easy enough to spot. I then upped my EP to my 10mm Tele Vue Delos and resolved things a little more on the glob. Hopping around the sky a whole on some other globs and open clusters, I then decided to see what Bode's nubulea were looking like (M81 & M82). With both fitting nicely in the FOV in my EP the where very easy to make out, even with the yucky LP where I live. I tried M101 in Ursa Major too, but couldn't make this galaxy out, but could just make out M51 lower down in Ursa Major. After this I thought I'd try for some new planetary nebula's I'd not seen yet, so headed over to NGC7009 (Saturn nebula) in Aquarius. Although I couldn't see much of a resemblence to Saturn it was easy to make out as a planetary nebula. Next came M74 (Little Dumbbell nebula) in Perseus. This was small and faint, but after observing for a while became much easier to see, especially with averted vision. It had now just gone past midnight, and alas I was getting tired, so I had a look at another planetary in Cygnus to finish off with which I'd seen a few times before, NGC6829 (Blinking Planetary). This was again very easy to see in the scope & EP, and finished off a rewarding session where I saw two new objects (M74 & NGC7009). I had also hoped to observe Uranus last night too, but it would not come into a favourable position to observe for another hour or so, so feeling chuffed after finally getting the mount and second scope to work well I headed off to Zedland for some sleep.