Littleguy80

I’ve got loads on my list. The Messier and RASC Finest NGCs lists still sit incomplete. Just tonight I created a new list of Quasars. I want to see how far I can see! Every year my observing evolves. Summer 2017, I got my first views of Sagittarius. Summer 2018, I learnt my way around Sagittarius without an atlas. Summer 2019 and I want to look for dark nebula within the Sagittarius star cloud (M24). There’s more to see than I could ever achieve in a life time!

Whoever got that 12.5mm is a lucky duck

Woke up to clear skies this morning. Despite it being after 7am, it was still worth a scan with the binoculars for planets. Venus was incredibly bright in the sky. With the 10x50s, I started low to the Horizon and slowly scanned up. After a few passes, I found what I was looking for...Mercury! It's been several months since I last observed the little planet so I was very pleased to see it again. After a couple of minutes, I decided to throw caution to the wind and get the dob out. It's currently stored in the garage to make room for the Christmas tree so it was fairly well cooled. I used the binoculars to help position the scope in an appropriate place to see both planets. As I was out front of my house, pointing the scope not far above people's rooftops, I felt a little inconspicuous. I first set my sights on Venus. After adjusting the finder scope which was way off for some reason, I soon had it in the eyepiece. With the 9mm BGO, it was like a little moon. A lovely fat crescent. The way the light faded away to the terminator gave a very clear impression of the planet. Through the 9x50 finder, I started near the Horizon and worked my way up. I got the the star like planet in the centre of the cross hairs and returned to the eyepiece. Something was wrong, Mercury was too big! Then it dawned on me....it was Jupiter. I hadn't expected the big gas giant to high enough to see. I could just about make out something that could have been an equatorial belt but no moons. Not great views but I was still really pleased to see Jupiter again. I returned to the finder and carried on up until I found Mercury. Even at 240x, through the 5mm BGO, it was small. When I saw Mercury for the first time through a telescope it had been bigger than I was expecting. Despite the small size, it appeared to showing a phase, perhaps two thirds of disc showing? I put the Neodymium filter in and spent the next few minutes looking at each of the planets in turn until I could leave it no longer before getting ready for work. Best Monday morning in awhile!

There are, in fact, two types of people in the world. Those that can extrapolate from incomplete data.

There was a brief break in the clouds right before I went to bed last night, around 1 am. Got 46P easily with the 10x50s, going down and left from the Pleiades. It was bigger than I was expecting in the bins. I last saw it a week ago in the dob. I took some sky reading with the freshly updated iPhone DarkSkyMeter app. 19.27 at the zenith and 18.97 in the direction of the comet. I couldn’t send it naked eye under those conditions but I also wasn’t dark adapted. P.S. Congratulations on your 500th post, Stephen, @Nyctimene. I particularly enjoy your observing reports. Always great reads whether you’re out within the big dob or the little 130P

The RASC NGC finest list. A good follow up to the Messier list. Based on this PDF. http://www.astrosurf.com/mmorin/pdf/rasc-finest-ngc-list.pdf RASC NGC Finest Objects-1.skylist Note that the Eastern and Western Veil is listed as 99a and 99b so the list is 111 despite the final count on the PDF being 110.

Hey Doug. The DS guide is a companion to the DS Atlas! Using Stephan’s Quintet as an example, here’s how it works! The Atlas: Stephan’s Quintent has a close up Star chart too. The deep sky guide picks a selection of objects and provides images and/or sketches plus observing notes for each. There’s also a diagram under the notes showing the position of the object in the Atlas. Below is the page dedicated to the Veil which is really awesome. I can wholeheartedly recommend both. I picked the Atlas up secondhand and got the guide new. Not cheap but well worth it in my opinion. On a side note, I updated the sketch in my post above as I realised that I’d only marked 2 of 3 fuzzies that I saw!

Hi Doug. I was lucky enough to have an encounter with the Quintet recently. I was using a 9mm Ortho (BGO). The SkySafari screenshot below shows the field of view as seen through my scope/eyepiece combo. The two stars highlighted are the ones I was using as reference points. I knew the Quintet lay between them. I remember seeing three dim shadows with averted vision. I kept thinking of the Leo triplet because two were close to together with the third slightly further away. I marked the sketch below, taken from the Instellerium Deep Sky Guide, with the galaxies that I believe I saw. My magnification was 133x rather than the 419x of the sketch! I didn’t appreciate at the time that I was actually seeing 4 galaxies. I’d purposely hadn’t done a lot of research on the configuration of the galaxies so I could base my results on what I actually saw! I hope that helps you in your hunt for the Quintet

Thanks Iain. That’s a new one for me. I still feel like a have some work to do on the Merope Nebula. I have a good start but I think with more practise there’s more to be seen.

SkySafari is a big help. You can set up your equipment to show the true field of view for each of your eyepieces. You can also flip the image to account for the mirror reversed image through the eyepiece. I have the pro version now but used the cheaper plus version for this purpose very happily.

I got the 21st Century Atlas of the Moon, by Charles Wood, to encourage a bit more lunar observing and to do the Lunar 100. I think that’s the same atlas you’re referring to. Very good and have had some great sessions on the Moon as a result

Excellent info, Iain. On Sunday night, following my testing on the Flame, I had a go at Barnard’s loop. Starting at M78 and NGC 2071 and moving across in the direction of the loop. I thought I could a detect a slight contrast change when moving across but when static I struggled to see it. The best I could say was maybe! M78 and NGC 2071 were both visible through the H-Beta filter.

Great report. I’m always really pleased when any of my kids want to come out and take a look through scope

Thank you, Mark! The discovery of the Flame with the H-Beta was purely by accident by definitely an interesting result. The Lumicon OIII is quite an interesting filter. It’s definitely darker than the Astronomik OIII but I do find it can draw out the fainter nebulosity better. When I look at the main Eastern and Western Veil, the Astronomik OIII gives a great bright image. If I go for Pickering’s Triangle then it’s more prominent with the Lumicon. I intended to sell the Astronomik when I got the Lumicon but now I’m leaning towards keeping them both.

Last night time I carried out some filter testing on the Flame nebula at Seething. Results here for those that are interested