Littleguy80

Great stuff, Stu. Is faculae what I referred to as the tendril like lines?

Mars and Saturn are in conjunction the next couple of mornings. Well worth getting up for if you have clear skies. You only need a small part of the sky to be clear to observe it

Managed a quick look with the Equinox 80 in WL. I could see the AR quite easily. It appeared as a series of light lines, almost tendril like, near the limb. Looks like a good size region. If the weather plays ball then should keep us entertained

Hehe thanks Magnus. My wife had a similar reaction though I don’t believe admiration was the emotion she conveyed to me 🤣

Thank you, Gerry. I have had some excellent mentors along the way, yourself and Iain @scarp15 included. Very much echo your point on experience. So much comes from just observing as much as you can and experimenting while you’re out there. We’re all individuals and what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. I’d also give a big thumbs up to an observing hood. I believe mine makes a big difference to what I can detect.

I have the 13mm APM and like it very much. However, for Stephan’s quintet I use my 9mm BGO. As Gerry said, orthos are the way to go for faint objects. The small FOV is a worthwhile sacrifice for the sharpness and contrast you get with a good ortho. It sounds like the Delos are a good compromise. Wider FOV than an ortho but closer to ortho performance than the APM.

hehe I never said I was doing it successfully We're doing ok though. There's enough room for them to burn some energy off in the garden. Work's quite flexible around work/family life given the present situation.

Thanks Ciaran. It’s nice to spend time with them but I definitely needed to be more organised with the schooling plans each day. They’re going to be learning A LOT about space though 🤣

Thanks Doug. Strange times and wise to be safe. Better a few funny looks than getting seriously ill or worse. My wife works for the NHS, on the maternity ward, and has been up the hospital every day this week. My days have been a mix of working from home and home schooling. With a 13, 11, 8 and 5 year old that’s quite challenging! The nice weather has helped. Clear skies in the evening give a nice escape from reality

Lovely report, Doug. Hope you and Mrs Sweeper are keeping well!

I saw one plane in the sky yesterday and that surprised me. Really great set of sketches, Mike. As you you know, I’ve been wondering about filters on Venus so this is extremely helpful. Thank you!

It’s brightened quite a bit over the last 10 days. I can still spot it’s glow in my 9x50 finder. if it continues to brighten like this then it’s going to be one to remember

Nice write up, John. I remember seeing this on one of my early dark site trips with my 130mm newt. Took me at least an hour to find. I kept passing over it because it was so faint. It’s a lot easier in the 10” dob but still a great one to hunt down. I think this is often referred to as the Intergalactic Wanderer. Pretty sure Nick @cotterless45 referred to it as that in a report at least.

Sounds like a good plan, John. Looking forward to hearing how you get on

Nice report. I did the same thing with my Equinox 80 tonight for that ISS pass. I'd seen that the Dragon X space capsule was orbiting just ahead of the ISS so there was a small chance of spotting that too. In the end it was very hazy so I only saw the ISS but it was fun tracking it. The best passes I've had is tracking it with my 10" dob using a Lunt XWA 9mm eyepiece. That's 133x mag but only a 0.75 degree FOV. It's tricky but you get a great view when you manage to follow it. Really gets the heart racing as it's moving so fast.

Great report and pictures, Iain. Excellent result with Barnard’s loop in your refractor. I’m yet to try for this in mine although I did get some great views of it in my dob. Looks like you times your trip perfectly with tonight’s news. A lovely escape from the real world.

Good job on spotting it. I completely agree that these are very satisfying targets to hunt down. I like to track them as long as they stay observable. Really fun to see them move through the constellations over a number of months. My kids are used to getting in trouble for turning on lights at inconvenient times 😂

I just picked up Comet C/2019 Y1 in Andromeda. It’s an easy star hop from M31 and quite an easy spot in my 10” dob despite being quite low. I went on for further views of C/2017 T2 and C/2019 Y4. We now have three reasonably bright comets!

I had a go with the Equinox 80 in WL without luck. Was nice to be outside though

Hey Mike. No worries and thank you for posting. I’m definitely going to try again to spot some movement. Sketching is a good idea

The forecast was clear for this morning so I decided to try and catch Jupiter and Mars while they were still reasonably close to each other. I’d been up until 1am observing comets so the alarm came hard at 5am. Grabbing the Equinox 80, I headed outside. Jupiter was immediately obvious but it took another second to spot Mars naked eye. The sky was lighter than I was expecting and was a reminder that we only have around a couple of months of astro darkness left before summer. The view through the eyepiece showed Jupiter and three Galilean moons and some distance away a pale orange Mars. I fiddled around and got a poor iPhone shot for prosperity. Increasing magnification on Mars, I believe I could see brightening on one pole which I presumed to be an ice cap. Moving away from these two planets I was able to find my third planet of the morning, Saturn. It’s distinctive shape recognisable even at very low power. It showed surprisingly well against the rapidly brightening sky. Higher magnification helped to darken the background of course. At this point my neighbour popped his head out the wonder to enquire as to whether my wife had put me into social isolation outside! Naturally, I confirmed this to be the case. I spent a few minutes trying to find Mercury without success. I think it was just a bit too low to clear the rooftops or perhaps the sky had brightened too much. It was now time to head in for some sleep before the festivities of Mother’s Day and my son’s 8th birthday.

Despite a cloudier than forecast night, I managed to spend some more time with this comet tonight. I was just using my 10” dob. I had an initial misfire due to a misaligned finder that saw me land on the galaxy NGC 2787 thinking it was the comet. The star field just wasn’t adding up with SkySafari though. Once I figured out what I was actually looking at, I fixed the finder alignment and moved onto the comet. This evening the comet was next to the triangle asterism that is commonly used as part of a star hopping route to M81/M82. The comet is brighter and easier to spot than last Sunday night. I was comparing back and forth with Comet C/2017 T2 (Panstarrs). I concluded that this comet is more diffuse than C/2017 T2 giving it an impression of being dimmer. However, I could make out the dim glow of C/2019 Y4 in the 9x50 Finderscope. I was consistently putting the comet in the centre of the FOV of my 9mm eyepiece (133x mag with 0.75 degree FOV) by putting the the Finderscope crosshairs on the glow I could see. This gave me a high degree of confidence that I was seeing the comet in the Finderscope. With C/2017 T2 I couldn’t see any hint of the comet in the Finderscope. Of course, C/2019 Y4 is much better positioned with it being closer to the zenith. Inspired by the post below, I had a go at seeing if I could get a sense of the comet moving over the course of a few minutes. Can’t say that I did. Probably if I checked back every 30 mins or so there would be a noticeable shift in position. It’s well worth giving this comet a go.

Lovely report. Did you spot the Planetary Nebula hiding in M46? That’s what makes M46 special for me. If you haven’t seen it, try your UHC filter on M46 next time

Go for it. Especially if you can pick a used one up. It’s really good to experiment. We all have different preferences so well worth trying and seeing how you feel about it.

Yeah, I had the Contrast Booster before the Moon and Skyglow filter so I used that first on Jupiter. My personal preference is again for the Moon and Skyglow though very often I go unfiltered these days for Jupiter. Filtering is good if you want to bring out specific features, such as the Great Red Spot. However, if you want to pick up fine detail then, in my experience at least, it’s about picking the right magnification for the seeing and just sticking with it for those moments of steady air. Filtering can’t sometimes remove some of the fine detail.