One difference between thunderchild and suki is the collimation. Suki barely needs touching but Thunderchild has needed a tiny tweak every session. I say needed. I'm sure that to anyone but a perfectionist its collimation drift would be wholly undetectable.
I decided to have a bit of a play with my P and S camera on the piggyback taking some largely unsuccessful 8 second shots. Had i waited longer i could probably have had a better result... next time i should get some before i pack up.
With the skies suddenly becoming gloriously clear I decide to have a stroll through the heavens, after taking a look at Mizar and splitting it again i swung around to vega. It was obvious just how much the sky washes out in summer. However i managed to just make out Lyra and was sure i had a glimmering of the milky way to the left of it (stellarium confirms this, its the first time ive actively noticed this!). For the first time i consulted a book as i knew the double double was in lyra, but wasnt sure where. Pinning it down to episilon lyr, i then struggled to spot the target, with the finderscope view significantly more detailed then the sky I struggle to determine that i am viewing the right thing.
After a while i settled on what i thought was the target and was clearly a binary split under 50x mag. Taking the mag up the double double was brilliantly clear with both binaries in different orientations. I should really have more confidence in my pointing skills! stellarium confirmed the target this morning.
My book indicated that Hercules was a close neighbour to lyra so my next task was to locate this massive constellation. I finally made out the keystone asterism and began casting about for M13 which i am sure i saw in the early days with suki and was a diffuse smear of light.
Scanning scanning, OMG. It leaped from the eyepiece at me! The great globular cluster in Hercules was truly great. With a massive number of specks of light in view I must have watched it for a good 30 mins, with each second seeming to note more and more in its densely packed field. I really cannot wait for darker skies if this is what washed out DSOs look like. M13 ticked off my list.
The question was do i now look for another target while i wait for Jupiter or pack up and get some sleep. A quick check on stellarium cleared that one up for me. It wasn't due to appear over my house for a good hr at least. I decided to try for the Dumbell Nebula as i could set my circles on m13. As the coordinates neared however the control knobs on the mount clashed and i still haven't worked out how to read RA on the opposite side. As I had no other target in mind I decided to pack up rather then ruin the night with fustration.
A great unexpected session given the truly dire recent weather and very enjoyable.
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