josefk

This is a slightly delayed write up of a wonderful session on Friday 13th October into Saturday 14th October. Friday was horribly wet until about 19:30 BST but the forecast for a clear night was correct and what a brilliant night it was. Super cold (cold stopped play in fact at 03:30) but till then it compensated (nearly) for a cloudy past 4 weeks. I took two scopes out - an 185mm Cassegrain and an 85mm refractor but it was so damp still setting up at ~20:00 i stuck with just the small refractor as i wasn't confident to manage dew on two scopes at once. In the event it got quite breezy so my kit stayed dry anyway. Targets were Saturn, Jupiter, the Veil and then i thought i would get back on track with the Herschel 400 on this moonless night. First target Saturn showed that though the sky was beautifully clear and transparent seeing was very poor. Very wobbly at x135 and x169 so it wasn't worthwhile attempting to observe Saturn itself closely. Somehow though i got stuck for a good while trying to detect Rhea and Tethys (Titan was obvious). Rhea and Tethys were very close together and i could only occasionally see one of them. I decided eventually it was Rhea i could detect. Enceladus was also close to them and quite distant from Saturn relatively speaking so favourable in that way but i couldn't tease it out at any magnification. So over to the Veil NGC 6992, NGC 6960, and NGC 6974. This object has really caught my imagination in recent weeks. I first saw a tiny part of the Eastern Veil last year in the Cassegrain but it really was only the smallest brightest part (i can't achieve the FOV and the exit pupil it needs in that scope). In the spring of this year i caught a really good view of the full arc of the Eastern Veil in my 130mm refractor and 24mm EP with O-III (3mm exit pupil) but it was only in September of this year i saw the Western part and NGC 6974. Using the 85mm refractor and 24mm EP (w/ O-III) gets me an exit pupil of 4.5mm and this works superbly for brightness and for framing at 206'. This is the (inaccurate) field sketch: inaccurate because i've misplaced the eastern veil :-(. I've taken the liberty to correct it positionally in my daytime copy: i'll also take the liberty of posting a marked up (butchered) version of someone else's lovely picture of the complex to illustrate my fascination... Everything in green i feel like i'm beginning see really well (and better on this second full attempt than earlier in September). Everything in red i'm still looking for. The yellow and blue dashes are anchor stars for putting the sketched bits in the right place and the blue ones were ones that threw me at the EP friday. Though it's lovely to see this object in this FOV actually 52 Cyg is a bit bright so the eastern part and the central part grow a little bit in contrast and extent when studied alone. It is this moving around that caused the inaccurate field sketch. Another challenge with this object is it disappears completely for a minute or two after using a red light even for a few seconds. I can't wink my viewing eye while i'm sketching so need a pirate patch i think... After the Veil it was a no brainer to have a look at NGC 7000 the North America Nebula. It was fabulous in the 24Pan with O-III and visible but not as contrasted in with a 31mm and UHC (nearly a 6mm exit pupil). The overall nebula was pretty big - i was seeing quite a lot of its extent i think and the Gulf of Mexico was an obvious dark bite out of the cloudy shape. This is also a Herschel and completes the Hershel's best seen in September. Yay. I couldn't detect the Pelican nebula in the immediate vicinity of NAM so i will have to travel to see that as i don't think my local skies could be any better than on this night. Other targets were the Fireworks galaxy - a tick for me from my "repeated fails list" so very happy to get this and also M77 Cetus A - this is also a previous repeated fail but not because it's dim - mainly because i forget to look earlier enough in the night and it drops low. I will definitely come back to M77 with more aperture because even at x56 i am convinced i could see a kind of "wiry" nature to it - i wonder how it looks with more scale. At one point i star hopped through the double cluster and wished i had stopped to properly take this in - as others have remarked over the weekend - i have never seen it better regarding density, sparkle and star colour. My only reason to not linger was because i was trying to maximise time spent on fuzzier things. One of the fuzzier things was Andromeda. I am never quite sure "what the fuss is about" with M31 visually. Shock horror. It is not difficult to see but "it is just a big glow". Double shock horror. Well tonight i got it. It was pretty high up at 2am (70-degrees). It was obvious (even big) in the finder and fully half the width of a 5-degree FOV in the scope in its long direction and with loads of gradient to the brightness. M110 which has been a bit of a challenge for me in a small scope was "just there" at x15 and big and relatively bright in such a way to make me wonder how on earth is it ever difficult. I spent ages under a hood trying to see if i could push my luck to see the dark lane or dark edges to M31 but i never could. Maybe that is asking too much of a 3" scope. There were a few other bits and bobs to follow but as it got past 3am i couldn't feel my hands and feet so that was that. Pirate patch suggestions welcome because there's more to come on the Veil i'm sure of it and i am determined to definitively see Williamina Fleming’s triangular wisp to complete the four part structure. Cheers Joe

Super sketches, super targets and i agree with Paul - great photo. What a lovely trip and what a great record of it.

Feel for you after such a long run of cloud. Never a break. 🥴

Incredible night last night. Only curtailed by very very cold extremities at 03:30 this morning. The sky wouldn’t take high mags but I can assert that correcting one’s astigmatism with a Dioptrx on a 31NT5 mounted on f5.3 flat field scope then sweeping along the Milky Way while the moon is below the horizon is an awe inspiring thing. Binocular views without the tripod limbo dance. Managed to sketch 3 parts of the veil too (highly rationed red light moments)

I would also recommend spikes. I’ve directly compared Berlebach spikes vs rubber feet on a hard packed stoney surface where the top cm or so allows a spike to penetrate. I would have liked rubber feet to “win” as it makes storing the tripod at home a little bit floor friendlier but spikes were definitely better. Not a night and day difference but not insignificant either. That is on a heavily loaded Planet.

Strange session last night. The sky was evolving all night sometimes brilliant, sometimes horrible. Anyway here my baby-q on wide field duty in front of Orion (that i never really did look at last night)…

Sounds like a lot of fun. Navigating around like that is like a treasure hunt! The dumbbell is one of my favourites and its worth checking frequently to really enjoy it on the clearest darkest nights. Sometimes its just a potato shaped smudge but sometimes it really lives up to one of its other names (the apple core). UHC or O-III can help for contrast but they're not "mission critical" to a good view.

i'm relatively confident too @mikeDnight and i also blame conditions on this attempt. Fingers crossed for some worthwhile time at some point this autumn though i may be waiting a while longer than that for better altitude. What i haven't yet had chance to do is have little and large refractors out on the same evening to compare scopes and rule out sky differences in the comparison. As you said before though you can see more in a little scope out in the field than a big one that's sitting inside. Monday was a tiny window of opportunity so it was a running grab and go...

Monday was unexpectedly (i.e. contrary to the forecast) clear early evening though "clear" turned out to be relative (it was always hazy high up) and transparency dropped over the hour between 20:00 and 21:00 BST as the haze thickened to high cloud. Anyway the target was Saturn and i was using my little FSQ-85. On first set-up and first glance I was immediately struck by the lovely colours visible on this evening. My first view was using a Tak 5mm LE and Tak 1.5 Extender so x135 and an exit pupil of 0.6mm. The equatorial area was a very clean and striking lemon colour. Above the lemon equatorial region was a subtle blue/blue-grey dusky northern hemisphere (appearing to me to be fractionally darker towards the north west quadrant so a little bit counter intuitive). The ring shadow was very soft and a mid blue (i.e. not a typical hard black line) - this blue tint was really notable against the lemon equatorial band. Below the rings was the typical sandy yellow southern hemisphere. The oblate sphere of Saturn was quite striking to me on this night (it isn't always). I was really hoping to see the Cassini Division (i haven't yet in this 3" scope) but it was a no show again (though i could imagine it easily enough i am sure i was imagining it). The outer circumference of the A ring was soft and i'm not sure i was seeing this ring very well TBH. The TOE EP's are superbly friendly, comfortable and easy to use EPs even at just 18' and 15' FOV respectively in this configuration and on a manual alt/az - just a pleasure to use. Absolutely no drop off in crispness as Saturn drifted over the field stop (which was rather often). The lack of transparency (i think) prevented catching three moons closer in than Dione showing below. Enceladus and Tethys were between Dione and Saturn and Rhea was also close by but i couldn't see them event though i was letting Saturn drift out of the FOV to see if they popped out. Strangely the haze (even glaring haze to the naked eye) didn't appear as glare next to the body of Saturn through the EP though...mmmh.

i think anything and everything counts right now! 😂

Managed an unexpected hour on Saturn last night. Seeing and transparency both very poor. By mid session (20:30 BST) very few stars visible naked eye in fact due to a high hazy cloud that seemed to be thickening. Nevertheless a pleasure to be out after a long cloudy break. Saturn was showing a mild amount of blue, blue/grey, lemon and yellow shading at the start of the session very nicely but transparency/clarity definitely dropped as time went on. No sign of the Cassini Division and this was my main target - i really want to nail it in my small 3" scope. I was struggling to NOT imagine the CD flickering every so often but i'm positive this was imagination only on this evening. Swinging to Jupiter at ~21:00 and the GRS should have been on show at the western end of the SEB but transparency had really deteriorated so only smudgy NEB/SEB to see though SEB looked a bit truncated in the west (short of the limb). Jupiter was glowing in the haze when viewed naked eye. Still. 1st time out in the dark since the beginning of September i think!

At the second time of asking (i bought the book twice in two weeks) the slides i was really after have come attached to this book recommended by @F15Rules. Yay. Thanks for your kind offer offline Dave BTW on this topic. I have a redundant beaten up and slightly smelly ex library copy of the title now (without slides) and if anyone in the UK wants me to post them that copy i'll happily do so if you reach out on PM. It will go to Oxfam at the weekend if not.

Star hopping against passing cloud is an exercise in zen (zen? stoic?) resilience. It makes you a better person (or something like that) 🤣

Hardy stuff with the brolly out 🙂 i hope not to resort to those measures but feel like this planetary season is passing me by with the weather system that seems to be stuck here so you never know. ...and food for thought on the 10mm BCO - interesting.

Check out the price of film and (if you can't do it yourself) developing and printing rather the price of kit if you want to talk yourself down 🙂

absolutely lovely - i have come and gone over the medium format "should i shouldn't I" case so many times...enjoy

I like that very much - with the side notes it has something that puts me in mind of Wainwright's lakeland sketches (which I also like very much).

Very very cool Marios. I'd be interested in your method/materials for such a nice impression.

The optical rewards (planet slayer) could be well worth you looking out for a simple extension tube though - its a pet peeve of mine for sure ergonomically but optically its super - and though i have no clue what i'm talking about maybe that optical superbness is more usefully leveraged in a fast scope when the PM is slowing the light cone of the scope down before the image is formed rather than doubling up the magnification of the image as part of the eyepiece (i only have a fingertip grasp of what i am actually on about and could be unbelievably mixed up on the topic 🙂 )

hi Joe - i think you'll find focus moves out more than 50mm when inserted before the diagonal - this is my pet peeve re. an otherwise optically brilliant and very useful accessory. i put some pics in this thread :- https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/409800-extender-q-16x-or-powermate/#comment-4380381 😞

Book came without slides! Nooooooooo!

i know the feeling when i run out of room for a series of craters in a given space on a sketch of the moon 🙂

And ditto the AZ100. It’s a weighty lump but an extremely useful one and compact in outline so it packs well for travel (by car at least).

Happy Birthday for the website Matthew. I’ve always enjoyed your reviews and observing notes. Thanks for taking the time putting stuff out there for our enjoyment and interest! 👍🏼

Glad you’re happy with it @Concordia000 - I will never be scrutinising mine visually to the extent you are with that inspection SW but I do like the fine, round, in-focus to the edge, stars I see in mine 😀. Which ring won’t unscrew for you? I can reach focus leaving the CAA attached, then minus the Tak standard extension, minus the Tak visual back, plus a Baader click lock (similar depth (length) as the Tak visual back bit, and with a Baader 2” prism (110mm lightpath). Cheers