Captain Scarlet

I too managed to observe that comet three nights ago through a 5”-ish scope. Your account describes very well my experience too. Glad to have ticked it. Cheers, Magnus

Last night the MW was on show, a good observing session was had after a long break, and I had to commemorate by getting more than just a phone pic of the occasion. So I put my 6D on a tripod, snapped 30 seconds and did a couple of seconds of phone-torch light-painting of the immediate scene. Cheers, Magnus

It’s been more than two months since I had a session worthy of a report, the last being 15th May, with my perfect-seeing night with my 140mm refractor. There was no shortage of clear nights, but a few factors combined to prevent me from getting out and setting up. The weather has been ostensibly fine but terrible for observing – so much wind! Much of May saw a continuous and strong North-East to Easterly, the only direction for which around my house I have no protected observing site. The Easterlies were followed by a lull and some very hot weather, but at mid-year I have to wait up too long before it gets dark enough. Take a look at a time zone map – you’ll see that the very West of Ireland is half way into the next-west timezone from most of the rest of the British Isles! Which means sunset and maximum darkness for me occurs 36 minutes later than, say, London, and with daylight saving on top means that “true” midnight for me happens at 0136. I just didn’t manage to stay up during June, sadly, although “loss of Astro dark” notwithstanding, even June 21st gets to mag 21.4 at that time. Then, after the wind lull, came the Westerlies, again very strong for at least a fortnight and preventing meaningful observing. Finally, last night, though it still only gets dark very late, the wind and the clouds behaved enough to tempt me out in spite of my being tired and wanting an early night. I loaded up the wheel-barrow and set up in the grassy triangle around the south side of my house. I eschewed my 12” newt, normally my staple for a night like this, and took the easier option, the Stellarvue 140. Using the Nexus DSC controlling my AZ-EQ6 on Berlebach Planet, and giving Second Light to my Baader BBHS mirror diagonal (about which more a little later) I aligned on Polaris and Altair. The night was also First Light for my new-to-me Delos 17.3 and 4.5 eyepieces, and Astronomik 1.25” UHC and Baader 2” Oiii filters. My list, gleaned from reading SGL’s observing reports, was necessarily a bit random, so I was dancing around the S-SE sky a bit. First was the so-called Struve 485, a prominent double in the OC NGC 1502 which bookmarks one end of Kemble’s Cascade. I had the Delos 17.3. A very nice OC, I have observed the double before but never “noted” it. I took the opportunity to cruise the length of the Cascade too, and possibly for the first time, having observed it many times before, I did notice the variety of colours in its stars. Exhausted, as you can imagine, at this point by my first proper observation in 2 months, I needed a break, so I quickly measured the sky. It was 23:24 and the sky measured 19.55, still quite bright for here. I’ve noted @John regularly lately regularly splitting Antares, so this was next. Sadly low down as it was, it was twinkling to my naked eye, and there was no split. To be revisited. Stephenson 1, the OC surrounding Delta Lyrae was next, and was lovely in the 1.3 degree view given by the Delos 17.3 (54x). Again, myriad star colours were quite evident. I had to refer to Sky Safari repeatedly to check that what I was looking at was what I wanted, and eventually managed to reconcile the patterns. Comet 2023 Atlas E1 featured in SGL’s reports, but lately not for a while. I decided to give it a go nonetheless, having read it was, at least before, an easy binocular object. I looked it up in SkySafari, and noting its current position a viewfinder’s width south of the star 59 Draconis, found a _barely discernible_ smudge in just the right place. I didn’t have bins with me, but I doubt I’d’ve been able to see it with them. Has anyone seen this Comet recently? Anyway, a “tick”. By now, midnight, the Milky Way was fairly clear, and my meter showed 21.15. I turned to an “old friend” on which I think I missed out completely last year, M11, the Wild Duck Cluster. At a wide 54x, it appeared as a startling concentrated bright patch of myriad tiny dots, almost globular-like in its intensity, but not at all a smudge. Trading up to the Delos 10 for 94x, its squareish shape and eponymous V-formations emerged. A real favourite of mine. My list suggested I move to 61 Cygni. describing it as a wide “red/red” double, but I must admit I didn’t get any redness. I quickly moved on to 52 Cygni, a double not unlike Polaris in relative magnitudes but much tighter. Exquisite. I’d read that this star is the “Veil star”, in that you reach this when hopping to the Veil. So that’s what I did. When I’d had my fill of the double, I widened back out to the Delos 17.3 and fitted my Oiii filter. There was the Veil, plain as day. I replaced the Oiii filter with my UHC filter, after a bit of trouble getting it out of its case – I’d forgotten it was brand new and the seal was still unbroken. I found that patch of Veil (Western IIRC) just as prominent with the UHC, brighter and less green, as you’d expect. I also had a new 2” Baader narrow-band Oiii filter, which I fitted to my Nagler 31 for a 2.7 degree FoV and 30x. I found it less satisfying than with the half-as-much FoV of the previous twice magnification. In the course of all this I had a problem with the adapter I’d been using as my 2”-to-1.25” step-down. It’s a Glatter Parallizer, which I swear by. But I found that even after supposedly tightening, a 1.25” eyepiece was wobbling around, then jammed while I tried to extract it. Most odd. The parallizer has an angled setting-screw, and when I felt around the inside surface with my finger to feel for anything wrong, there was clearly something loose, which detached and landed onto the mirror face of my BBHS diagonal. Oh no! My first thoughts were that it might be an insect (no), a piece of soil or grit that had somehow got in (no – thank God!). It turned out to be the nylon tip of the Parallizer set-screw, which over the course of its years of use had obviously cracked and fatigued off the grub-tip. I was able to gingerly retrieve it from the face of the diagonal mirror, and carried on. By now, I was done. It was half past midnight. As a final hurrah before packing up, and because the central part of the Milky Way was prominently on view, I went inside to get my Canon 6D and Samyang 24/1.4 and took a 30-second exposure of my “scope in action at night”. I measured the sky as I finished and it was 21.5 with the MW nearly directly overhead. I could hear the bats flittering around too. Not the longest or most memorable session I’ve had but a very welcome return after eight weeks off. Cheers, Magnus

This turned up on eBay a few months ago, I couldn’t resist putting in a cheeky low bid, and ended up the only bidder. I collected it from the UK just recently. It’s a ridiculously sensitive spirit level/90-degree block/V-rest. Each gradation on the bubble level is 5 seconds of arc, or 0.0014 degrees. I’ll never need that level of accuracy of course, but it is a lovely instrument. Cheers Magnus

I used to microwave one of the very big ones, sold as wet-shoe inserts, silica gel in a cotton bag. I put the microwave on to max, 800W, I forget for how long. But I then, for some idiot reason, decided to go for a run. While I was out my wife smelled smoke, went to the utility room to find a not-small fire in progress: the cotton bags had ignited. Boy was I in trouble! So, as David mentioned one post up: “do not walk away”! Magnus

Imager good god no 😁. The filters came up on eBay and I fancy doing a bit of comparative RGB star-testing so I put in a silly low bid. Nobody else bid so they became mine.

I've just returned from my UK trip to, amongst other things, retrieve all my ebay purchases over the past few months that I'd had delivered to various friends' addresses. So finally, thanks to @7sharp9, @Alan White, @bilbo , @Franklin and eBay for the following. And apologies for taking so long to acknowledge receipt. Delos 4.5, Delos 17.3, Vixen HR 2.0, Tak LE 5, BCO 10, Nikon HG 8x32, Nikon Prostaff 7s 8x42, Baader RGB. Cheers, Magnus

Head over to @jetstream’s, pretty sure he’s got a 120 he doesn’t want. You’re both in Canada so he’ll be just round the corner 😁

Lovely engaging read. Some nice targets duly stolen, TVM. I’ll bet you were wrecked on Saturday after that 🥱. Magnus

One of these came up, and I was curious. Nagler 11mm (de facto Type 1):

Gerry @jetstream already has a great (SV) 90mm, and of course the TSA120. No, he needs to fill the gaping void between his TSA120 and the 15”. Namely an SVX152T 😈

Well of course I have a 3-month-old SVX140T, which whoever has read my most recent obs report, performs to my eyes as a _superb_ scope. Its star tests also seem to match exactly Suiter’s “perfect” columns. I can also attest to its manufacturing quality, the fit and finish are flawless, and the native focuser is just like the several Diamond Steeltracks that I have on other scopes. I would have chosen an FT had it been available, but I wouldn’t be confident of ever getting one. Being as I am, far from any testing facilities and not prepared to risk taking it to the UK across a customs border, I’m unlikely to be able to have it tested any time soon. Cheers, Magnus

This just arrived, as others have mentioned it looks robust.

The EOS utility and other canon dslr software that comes supplied with any canon dslr works on my MacBooks. I often tether my cameras to the macs and control from them. If you got the camera used I think you can get the software from their website using the serial number of the camera IIRC. Cheers, Magnus

I have an FT on my 105mm LZOS, and of course it’s very good. I also have an FT micro focuser on my Skymax 180, very good too, it seems to eliminate mirror-shift. But I have 4 Diamond Steeltracks, one on each of the 8” and 12” newts, one on the back of my Intes Mak, and one in reserve for my 20” dob build. I find they are very good indeed, to my mind nearly at the standard of my FT. My Stellarvue has a native SV focuser and it feels very like the Steeltracks, which is good. I’ve had other makes of Crayford which have been horrid: “bouncy” is a good term. Magnus

Thanks Stu. In some ways I wish I’d had the biggest scope I have out, the 12”, but I’m not complaining too much. It certainly lays to rest any doubts I might have had about this scope though.

Thanks Mike. I did try to look up various resources including SIMBAD to find out about the magnitudes of those various stars, and where I could find anything the numbers were often different but in the same ballpark. The numbers I used when writing up were simply taken by clicking SkySafari, but for those obscure objects SS isn’t reliable I guess. Those mag 14++ stars are generally not commonly observed by we amateurs so the magnitudes supplied by databases are likely at different wavelengths and purposes from just pure visual magnitude; certainly they seem to list a few different types of magnitude all slightly different.

Thanks John that’s a useful chart, and with 90 degree ACW rotation and L-R reflection does correspond to what I saw. Where is it from?

I seem to have been getting a reasonable run of clear nights now we’re into Spring, a welcome change after extended periods of weathered-out months over Winter. Last night wasn’t forecast clear until the final moment, so I decided to set up just outside the garage where the scopes live, not bother with the 12” and use the 140mm refractor instead. The SV is too heavy, at 14-15kgs fully loaded, for any but my AZ-EQ6 so that it was. I had no planned list except one I keep maintained gleaned from SGL observing reports. But I did want to give First Light to my new 2” Baader BBHS mirror diagonal and to compare it directly to its competitor in my knick-nack box, a 2” Revelation dielectric diagonal. I also wanted to look at Venus now it’s showing distinct phase and growing rapidly. Venus is currently 19 arcseconds across, and will grow to nearly 40 arcseconds before it gets swallowed by atmosphere. I aligned on Polaris and Regulus. As soon as I saw Polaris through the Delos 10, for 94x, I sensed I was in for a good night. I’ve aligned on Polaris for possibly 80% of all my alignments ever, never tiring of little Polaris B, but the purity of the view of the pair tonight was somehow in a different league. Venus was first, and I traded up eyepiece to the Delos 6, for 156x. I have never seen Venus so crisp and stable. Very little surrounding glare, a perfectly-defined planetary edge and lovely slightly-faded terminator. Perhaps even hints of different shades of white. I moved her just out of the field of view to check the glare, and switched diagonals to the Revelation. This diagonal gave an identical view in my opinion. I moved it just out of view and the behaviour was the same. To be fair there were wisps of very thin cloud moving across so any hints of difference in view would have been obscured by that. I understand the Baader BBHS mirror is as good as it gets, so I can only conclude the Revelation is a very good diagonal. There was one big difference however. At least one of them is not exactly 90 degrees. When switching a diagonal back in, there was a vertical displacement of whatever it was I was observing, perhaps a sixth of a degree. I suspect it’s the Revelation. I moved on. Mars was next. Very small obviously, even at 156x so I headed for the eyepiece case to up the magnification, selecting my TOE 2.5 for 375x. Whoa! Mars suddenly became huge, dimmer and fuzzier than I’d been expecting. I suspected I might have grabbed the wrong eyepiece, went to get my headtorch and discovered I’d actually put in my Vixen HR 1.6. Even on a night such as this, nearly 600x was a little too much for Mars 😊 . Back at a correct “mere” 375x, Mars did show some hints of detail and a pole I think, but the most satisfying view was actually with the Delos 3.5, giving me 268x. I spent almost the entire night with this magnification. But I still had no real idea just how good the seeing tonight was. I was about to find out. First on my gleaned list was a double I’d noted down only as HR 3208, which I duly entered to the Nexus handset. When it hove into view, I recognized it immediately, a beautiful triple, one brighter component and a much closer double at a distance. All perfectly defined and separated with no visible diffraction discs, and everything still and unmoving. It was of course Tegmine. I recall having had to tease apart the close double before and could not believe how crisp this view was, essentially perfect. By now, I knew this was a rare night of near-perfect seeing. I decided this night was going to be all about supposedly challenging doubles. 19 Lyncis followed, an easy wide but attractive double. Alkalurops, aka Mu Bootis, is another wonderful triple not dissimilar to Tegmine: a wide double where one of the components is itself a tighter double. On my notes I’d written OMG! It was absolutely textbook, once again, literally as though what I was looking at was printed on a chart. The tight double this time is more nearly aligned to the further component. Zeta Herculis was easily split, but this was the only star of the night where diffraction rings were actually moving around a little. I was looking back directly over the middle of my house so there was some heat-shimmer involved. Izar was again textbook, yellow and bluish. Shifting from South to East, I headed to Delta Cygni, the first star on Cygnus’ Northern wing. I’ve not observed this before, and I awarded it on my notes with the second OMG! Stunning: it strongly reminded me of Polaris and Polaris B, except with the B dragged in right close. They were still clearly quite distinct though, just over 2 arcseconds apart. Perhaps it’s practicing to be Polaris because in about 9,000 years it will be our Pole star, due to Earth’s axis’ presession. Normally, I’d go to Epsilon Lyrae early in a session to check the seeing. But tonight I held off knowing the seeing was great, to delay the treat. And what a treat it was. I’ve observed the Double Double perhaps tens of times. But tonight’s view of it was far and away the best I’ve had. Mesmerizing. There’s another double-double in Lyra, called Struve 2470 and Struve 2474, sometimes known as the double-double’s double. While in the vicinity, I took this in too. It’s altogether much wider-spaced than Eps Lyrae and certainly no challenge, but pretty enough. At this point I put in my Nagler 31 to give me a very wide field, going from 268x to 30x! This doppelganger now looked much more similar to Eps Lyrae, even with a similar field star off to one side. And of course, a 30x wide-field of this region of the sky is beauty itself. I recalled from my session a couple of weeks back with the Stellarvue, I’d tried and failed to get M57 the Ring Nebula, which surprised me even though there was a Moon. In fact in my report I wrote back then: “… decided to finish off with the Ring Nebula, M57, to see if I could see a particular dim star nearby. Well, not only could I not see that star, the Nebula itself was extremely dim, to the extent I had to use averted vision to detect it as a Polo. I’m sure I’ve seen it bright and clear in a small scope before, so I put it down to increasing foggy haze exacerbated by a 78% Moon ...” So tonight I decided to have another go at that peripheral mag 13.1 star, apparently just off the edge of the visible ring. I went back to 268x, and saw that star immediately, it couldn’t be missed. So I thought I’d have a go for the central star instead. I stared and stared using every trick I could, averting, tapping, but no. I’d put in my TOE 2.5 for 375x, and spent in all 20-25 minutes at least trying. However, all was not lost. As mentioned, that peripheral star was obvious, as was another other dimmer star a ring’s diameter “below” the mag 13.1 star. There was also another much dimmer star coming and going “above” M57 still on the same side, and I wasn’t certain whther it was my imagination or not. So I drew a little diagram and a “?” where I seemed to think this elusive thing might be. Looking later on SkySafari once I’d come in, the second easily seen star was the well-known (😊) GAIA 2090483595129569024, at mag 14.1 . And Skysafari confirmed that my “?” does in fact match the next “brightest” object in the vicinity, a multiple system called HL9001. Although SS suggests the brightness of this system is 13.5, that cannot be correct, as it was right on the edge on my detection, whereas mag 14.1 was plain to see and 13.1 even more so. The central star that eluded me is mag 14.8, and of course obscured within the PN itself. On that basis, I’d estimate that my “star reach” tonight for this 140mm scope was high 14s. I put the Nagler 31 back in to give a wide view of that Lyra region. Of course M57 was now tiny but still just about a bright ring and in a huge field of stars, lovely. Naked eye, I could see where The Coathanger was, and was curious to see how much I could get into the Nagler31’s 2.7 degree field. First I needed to know what it’s “officially” called: Collinder 399, in case you’re interested. In 2.7 degrees I could see all of it, just about! I always laugh when I see the Coathanger. Finally, before packing up I scanned the skies around Cygnus with my binoculars and found a nice little asterism I’d not noticed before, just trailing the flying swan that is Cygnus. I immediately thought of a Christmas Tree, it was a highly triangular open cluster. This was M39 it turned out, the first Messier I’ve “discovered” with binoculars only. What a night. Nearly everything was perfect. My views of most of what I observed will serve as my benchmarks for a long time, I expect. I took a quick sky reading just before I went to bed, it was 21.95 . Thanks for reading, Magnus.

Forecast-only-at-last-minute clear night last night, and near-perfect seeing. The best seeing I’ve ever experienced. I had the SV140 out and slew a whole host of doubles, but the main result was how deep I was able to go on the stars around M57 Ring. The nearby mag13.1 was plain to see, a little further down the 14.1 was also easy, and I drew a”?” on my notes to question whether there was another faint object coming and going. Turns out there was, HL9001 apparently, clearly dimmer than the 14.1 so I guess I was seeing down to 14.5. Central star eluded me though, at 14.8 and obscured of course. Full report of my best ever seeing to come later, a magical night. Cheers, Magnus

Very nice Joe. I too am envious of your SH access. How far do you have to go to get to a dark site? Do you do that? Cheers Magnus

It really works well, totally exceeded my expectations. And yes the FF does add back focus I think, I’ll try it without and see, but anyway without the FF the curvature is _severe_, intolerable actually. The choice of Pan 24 is very lucky. It’s the only one of all my eyepieces that can reach focus, because the nosepiece is really short. I looked at the TV site eyepiece specs, and the Pan24 has the shortest of their entire eyepiece range. I might try to get a metalshop to professionally take 10mm out of the middle of the main tube (everything unscrews cleanly) and splice it back together to give me more options. M

Our first summer-like day this year saw daytime temperatures reach 19 degrees, and a forecast for a clear and still night, though I was concerned about rising currents as the evening cooled. Seeing was indeed somewhat poor to begin with, a combination of cooling air and likely a cooling scope too, as my new tactic to fend off dew involves bringing the actual scope out at the last minute, and simply tolerate the first few tens of minutes as the mirror cools. I spend that time collimating and lining-up finders, anyway. Speaking of finders, tonight was First Light for my new super-finder-deluxe, the SW Evoguide 50ED, with FF, Baader T-2 prism diagonal and Panoptic 24, making it a 10x50 finder every bit as good optically as my Leica 10x50 binoculars. I found (!) the Finder very nice indeed, not only a finder but every bit a supplementary co-aligned wide-field scope too. Collimation hadn’t shifted at all since my last session, and I aligned for the first time on Vega and Algieba (I did have to align again later, see below). I was using my Nexus DSC, and not having planned any sort of list I decided to start off with some satisfying easy targets, and then use the Nexus DSC “Tour” feature to find all PNs, CGCSs and NGCs within 7 degrees of a chosen centre point. First target, mainly to check the seeing, was Epsilon Lyrae. With the alignment- DeLite 18.2 still in for 100x, I could not split the two doubles, they were two bits of mushy mess. I swapped in my Ethos 13 for 141x and yes I could now split them, but far from the best view I’ve had. Cooling ground and cooling scope, I guess. I moved on to the Leo Triplet, M65 and M66, easily seen through both the 12” and the finder. The third galaxy, NGC 3628, was distinct in the 12’ of course, but not so in the finder. I headed across to Hercules to M13. The seeing seemed to be better at the slightly higher elevation (in fact it got better the whole night) and M13 was as ever entrancing, the Propeller quite easy tonight. M92 was similarly splendid. I’ve not observed M57 Ring Nebula for a while, indeed I couldn’t even see it some nights previously through my SV140, Moon and haze prevented it I think, so to see it as such a pronounced Polo tonight was gratifying. However, looking through my 10x scope, it wasn’t at all obvious which of the myriad white points was M57, though I was confident it was definitely in there somewhere. I suddenly remembered I now have a whole drawer-full of hardly-used filters, so I “popeye’d” my observing eye and went inside to retrieve my Oiii filters. The 7-degree FoV through my finder was, pre-filter, a blaze of lovely stars, one of which was M57. Simply sticking the filter between my eye and the eyepiece, all the dimmer stars disappeared, except one! M57 was left clearly standing out on its own just where it should be, between Sheliak and Sulafat (Beta & Gamma Lyrae). So, what @Stu suggested might be one of the more difficult Messiers to catch through 10x50s, was easily seen through this, er, 10x50 monocular. But being so small, one needs to know which bright spot it is. I went for M82, and stared at plenty of detail especially the diagonal dust-gap in the middle, moving along a little for a quick look at M81. Finally from my intended “all-stars” list I went for M51, near zenith it should have been spectacular. Unfortunately, because my deluxe finder is rather heavy, with usually only my SkySurfer V attached (which was also on the scope tonight too), I’d had to shift the whole tube further back in its rings to keep closer to balance. I knew at the time I set up that zenith-objects might be a risk. And so it proved: as the tube approached zenith and rotated around the RA-Az axis, we had Tripod-Strike!, followed by a hideous-sounding screech from inside my mount. Immediate switch-off, re-level, re-align and thankfully all good, phew! M51 would have to wait for another day. Using Nexus DSC’s Tour feature, I chose a 7-degree field around Alphecca, Alpha Corona Borealis, as my “area”, and set my catalogues to show PNs, CGCSs (carbon stars) and NGCs (likely to be dominated by faint Corona Borealis and Hercules galaxies). I listed the objects I managed to see, and the first ones all seemed to be mag 12-14,5 galaxies: NGCs 5958, 6001, 5961, 5974, 6020, 6008, 6027, 6064. They were all faint, mostly right on the edge of averted-vision detection, and through this I learned that my galaxy-limiting magnitude was slightly over mag 14. Some supposedly brighter ones actually eluded me. I noted these and when looked up they tended to be face-on galaxies of low surface brightness, like much dimmer versions of M33 or M101. Nonetheless, it was nice to see galaxy after galaxy in close proximity. Oh for my 20” to be ready when I’ll be able to see the field of them. Eventually, my list directed me to a non-galaxy, in the form of CGCS 3679 and later CGCS 4038. “CGCS” stands for Catalogue of Galactic Carbon Stars. Both these stars were noticeably and highly orange, and I must dedicate a future session to this category alone. Also, M56 appeared in the list, a first for me and a small globular. I checked if I could see it in my finder, yes there it was. I had been hoping for more PNs, I was really just trying pot luck on my area and I guess there aren’t many in this region. One that did pop up though was something my Nexus called “Turtle Nebula”, aka NGC 6210. As I looked through at the field of objects, there was one quite bright thing slightly more “blobby” than the neighbouring stars, so I attached my Oiii filter to the Ethos 13, and my goodness, the PN, for that was undoubtedly what it was, leapt out! Very nice. For scope-play, that was it for the night. As I packed up, I noticed a streak of pale cloud appearing from the East, then slapped my head. It was the Milky Way, really quite prominent and parallel to the horizon. On one packing-up trip I grabbed my EOS6D and Samyang 14/2.8 and took the above 30-second exposure (non-tracked), painting my observing area briefly with my head-torch in white. As the picture shows, it’s nice to see the central part of our galaxy coming into view, and the complexity really was evident naked eye. My SQM-L showed 21.83 at zenith. It was also nice to see Antares again and the highly distinctive shape of Scorpius appearing. A meteor streaking right from Lyra gave me my final Hurrah! Of the session. Finally, I confirmed from a separate thread I started a few days ago, that most if not all the Messiers are detectable through 10x50. Certainly all mine were this night. Although it helped that the 10x50 in question was directed by a Nexus DSC and fixed to the OTA. Thanks for reading, Magnus.

Last night, a wonderful clear night just before I packed up around 1:30am.

Just come in from a decent session with the 12”. Did a few usual suspects then a tour of NGCs mostly faint galaxies and some PNs a few degrees around Alphecca (Coma). Also first light for my Evoguide 50 deluxe finder which worked beautifully. Full report a more adventurous session-photo to follow tomorrow I hope. Just winding down with a Franziskaner. Magnus