Pixies

Doh! Sorry - said Translucency not Transparency. I've been watching "The Boys" on those cloudy nights!

Congrats. The sky was nice and transparent last night and I could see the same of M51 as you - some actual structure even between the 2 cores. As for the hamburger, it helps to locate it if you look between two mag 11(ish) stars north of M66: PS - I think you might have M65 and M66 mixed up? It's a reflector you're using, isn't it?

If you can find those targets in the 70mm, you'll have a ball with the larger dob. Whereabouts are you / what sort of skies do you have there? It must be quite dark. These faint fuzzies don't require s stable atmosphere to be seen, they require translucency. Seeing and translucence are different and often conflicting conditions.

I'm inside warming up and because some high clouds rolled in. I'll give it 30 minutes and if it's not cleared, call it a night. Saw some new galaxies tonight. In Canes Venatici: M63 (Sunflower), NGC 5005 and NGC 5033. Some of the old faves too.

There is a free version of SkySafari. The Plus and Pro versions cost, though. They are often on special offer - so don't pay full price for them.

https://www.netweather.tv/charts-and-data/jetstream The VentuSky app is good, too.

This thread develops into a bit of a discussion about SkySafari:

The scopes outside, cooling down. Indeed - it's got a lot of cooling-down to do! It's back on with the winter observing gear!

Found another feature I haven't used before: "Observation Planning" Choose: 'Planner' from the Observations menu Select: 'Open Clusters', 'Globular Clusters', 'bright nebulae', 'planetary nebulae', 'galaxies'. magnitude 0-10 Constellation: Coma Berenices Do Search Make into Observation List and voila:

Yep, forget the seeing conditions tonight:

Note about the Manfrotto 055. If you are only going to be using it for a telescope mount, you won't need the 'Pro' version. As this only provides a way to have the extension bar mounted horizontally. The plain old non-Pro version is a little cheaper.

The rules in Scotland are a little different still. We are still not supposed to go more than 5 miles beyond the local authority boundary. My garden is supposedly 19.28 but it's a lot better looking North and East, as that's over the sea. There's a site used by local astro groups that is within the above limits, and that's 20.6 (using the light pollution map website). However, 25 miles away is a 21.75 site - but that should wait until the restrictions are lifted in 3 weeks (although that's full-moon time 🙄)

This is what I'm worried about when I get to start observing under properly dark skies. I'll need to up my game where it to paper charts.

Hi. What's the name of the filter app you are using? I think I'll try it out.

The Pro offers a lot of fainter objects over the Plus version. I've never felt the requirement to upgrade from Plus yet, though. But above the custom eyepiece/scope displays, the best feature worth the upgrade from basic to plus/pro is the observing lists feature. You can download ones (some from here) or create you own. Have them displayed on screen or just go through them manually. Add your own observing notes. For example, I created the list of Leo doubles one my tablet. It synced over to my phone (using their 'Live Sky service) and used that to organise my evening. I went through the list one by one, making notes of each observation. If I observed something that wasn't on the list, like a galaxy that was nearby, I can still make an observation, as the night's session is stored separately from the observing list. Later on, if I'm looking at an object, I can list all the times I've ever noted an observation of this object, and look back on the notes I made. All of this is synced across devices and on their web portal, too. Plus and Pro have scope control too, if that's your thing.

Blimey! I never knew that! I have the plus version for the observing lists functionality. I've got the app running on Android. It lacks the useful screen colour customization function of an iPhone, though.

I've worked out a way of finding targets that works pretty well for me. I'm using SkySafari at the eyepiece, though. I use the Telrad to get to the nearest naked-eye star (which is limited in my back garden skies) and then use my 60mm RACI finder with the SkySafari app. The finder's FOV is a bit bigger than the outer Telrad circle on the app display, which makes it pretty easy to compare the 2 views. Sometimes I wonder if I should have one eye on the finder and the other on the app! My finder shows just the right magnitude of stars when compared to the app, so I have little trouble matching the two views. It's slightly bigger aperture means I don't have to move to the eyepiece until the last minute, since I can often see the target in the finder (unless it's very faint). Once I'm at the eyepiece, I find star-hopping a little trickier and it's easy to get lost. I must admit to my high-tech way of changing the app display to match the reflector view - I turn the phone upside-down in my hand! 😳 It's easy to get lost with the Virgo galaxies, though - as they are in quite a featureless area of the sky I gave up with the charts in Turn Left at Orion as I find the app much easier. Have you seen the book "Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders" by Thompson and Thompson? It's pretty good and a bit of a 'next-step up' from TLAO. But (and it's a big BUT) this is all very well in my light-polluted back garden, but I know one thing: when I get to a proper dark sky, I'm going to be lost! For one, I doubt I will be able to use the app without restricting my dark adaption. I've got it at the lowest brightness and in 'night mode' (red), but little things aren't always red and I doubt the lowest brightness is low enough. I've been hacking an old Kindle Fire to get it working with SkySafari, and might even get some red acetate to cover the screen. But if I need to start using paper charts properly, it'll be a steep learning curve. Also, the big RACI finder might be a little too large. Some people have warned that it might just show too much in a dark site, and be hard to locate star-hopping pointers. In which case I'll have to either make an aperture mask to stop it down a bit, or just swap in the smaller 6x30 from the ST80.

I've never really gotten my head around the angular positions, esp in a reflector. So today was a school day and I did some research on it, mainly from a few websites on measuring double-stars. So now I get it and as you said: Kappa Leonis' secondary is SSW of the primary (211 deg). I later had a look in Turn Left at Orion and they have a diagram in there! Anyway, what I thought might have been the secondary flitting in and out of visibility was in the correct position, after all.

If you find a single dogger, that's when you have to be careful!

Nice report. The 'chain' is pretty faint apart from the 2 Messiers. I've never been able to see it apart from those 2. Your scope is a little bigger than mine, but I think you'll need pretty dark skies.

Yep. You could try making an aperture stop for the finder, to reduce the brightness.

Me too - Thanks @JeremyS

Thanks, Yep - further reading shows the magnitudes at 4.1 and 6.7 (2.3 arcseconds). SkySafari has the bad info - it says mags 4 and 11 at 2.3 arcseconds. That makes much more sense. I should have trusted my eyes and not what I read.

The third clear night in a row! I was planning on some faint fuzzies in Coma Berenices, but once I had set up, I could see that there was a slight haze. So I changed tack and made a quick list of some doubles in Leo. I made up a list from some of the entries in "An Anthology of Visual Double Stars" (Argyle, Swam & James) and another one I wanted to try was Kappa Leonis - after it was mentioned earlier today by a couple of posters. I started on Tegmine, to see how the seeing was. It was variable but OK. I could just 'notch' the tighter pair at x170 - a far cry though, from the recent nights of excellent seeing. Perhaps not the best night for tight double stars then. First one was Kappa Leonis. Perhaps not the best idea, at a 2.2 arcsecond split, it doesn't sound too bad. But the magnitude differences are +4.46 and +9.70 and with the seeing conditions, it wasn't to be. At times I thought I had seen it, but it might just have been watery eyes (from the cold breeze). The next time we have some excellent conditions, I'll try again. Nearby was the galaxy NGC 2903. At magnitude +8.79, it's a bright one, but it was pretty faint and only observable with averted vision. So the sky conditions were as I had thought. So on with the doubles... Next was Omega Leonis. A very very tight 0.9 arcseconds. I managed to get a notched split at x300 with the 2 airy disks popping into clear distinction every now and again. Gamma Leonis (Algieba) was a pleasantly easy split at x80. The main star yellow and the secondary a slightly cooler pale yellow. Now then: 54 Leonis. This was a great double and is now one of my new favourites. I could just make a split at x40 but it looked better with a little more magnification. x75 was nice. Both stars a cold steely blue/white. Back to the trickier ones with Iota Leonis. This one is another with a big magnitude difference: +3.96 and +11.06 and a distance of 2.3 arcseconds. This one I'm pretty certain I got. the small faint secondary trailing in the wake of the main star. I hope I was right - but I don't know how I saw this one and not Kappa Leonis, which should be easier. Perhaps it was just a few moments of good seeing. It was a bit later in the evening. Struve 1555 - at 0.62 arcseconds, this is supposedly at the limit of an 8" reflector. Tonight, no chance. It's going to be cloudy tomorrow.