SuburbanMak

Post holiday garden session with GSO 10” Dob & Towa 80mm f15. Seeing and transparency best around midnight with for a few seconds at a time some super views of Jupiter & Saturn. My first look at the gas giants with the Dob, Saturn in particular really impressive - 4 possibly 5 moons and good views of banding in the disc and grey tones at the North Pole. The rings in moments of good seeing were almost 3D and the Cassini division bobbling in and out at times. Jupiter showed many bands with at times some detailed whorls at their edges. The Galilean moons two even pairs either side. Still feel I can tweak better collimation out of the Dob but on balance tonight it just edged the f15, although a crisper view, for brightness and feature resolution. in both scopes the sky was supporting around 120x for best views with the Baader Zoom a great and convenient pairing in the Dob and Classic Orthos in the f15. Also enjoyed M31 with M32 clearly visible and a super view of M57 - both with the 10 inch. Clouded out now but a nice compensation for no longer being on holiday.

A cracking holiday session from Port Isaac, Cornwall last night. Enjoyed the company of eldest son to look at Jupiter & noted close pairing of Io & Ganymede. Main equatorial bands about the limit of the ST80/Barlowed Hyperion zoom combo giving clearest views around 80x. Saturn also nice & crisp, shadow of the rings & younger eyes claimed the Cassini division plus banding & a couple of moons, I could only make out one moon & nothing on the disc, age creeping up I guess. Holiday garden is elevated but faces NE so no Sagittarius goodies on offer but the double cluster & M31 were looking good until recurrent dew set in and I abandoned the ST80. Number one son retired (he had put in an impressive shift with his brothers at the Golden Lion so did well to be out at all tbh…) and I settled in on a lounger with the 10x50s. Once the moon was down transparency was as good as I have ever seen - Andromeda galaxy visible with considerable extent naked eye and incredible in the bins - dense core and really wide outer nebulosity visible over more than half the 5.5 degree field. The double cluster jumping out naked eye and rich in the bins. Pleiades popped up over the horizon and gave a terrific show. Best of all M33 was an easy find! Haven’t seen it with so much contrast before and loved sweeping back to it and picking up its diffuse oval cloud time after time, just in case it never happens again! Turning the lounger round I ogled the Milky Way through Cygnus without really identifying features, just boggled at it - amazing dark lanes naked eye and staggering density of stars in the the 10x50s. Picked out M13, M57, M27 and M81/2 along the way. Quite a few bright meteors in evidence too all accompanied by the sound of the sea below. Could have stayed out all night but had kayaks and coasteering booked for the morning so called it a day at around 3:30. CO says it’s Bortle 3 SQM 21.7 here and it certainly makes a difference!

@Stu there was some competition for roof space… Nice solar session apres kayak today, 5 active groups meandering across the disc and some nice faculae + 2 of the four teenagers vaguely interested which is a win. Also can make a recommendation for Tarquin’s Cornish Gin. If this high cirrus clears there might be some observing later

I tried but couldn’t fold his legs into it

Woah!

@Stu - I really should have thought this post through, it was inevitably going lead to some serious "kit envy" on my part. I think the 76 DCU is at the top of my "I promise this is the last 'scope I'll buy" list.

I listened to that one too - love the podcast. Mine is more of a "Backpack Observatory". Yours is a considerably higher spec setup than mine, I bet that gives some great views - I aspire to an ED upgrade to the ST80 some day...

I did briefly consider trying to squeeze the 10" Revelation Dob in but couldn't really leave one of the kids behind...

Like a lot of SGL-ers writing recently I've been through a bit of lean patch astro-wise so far this summer through a combination of work and family commitments coinciding with a lack of astronomical darkness and dodgy skies on the few nights I had available. Looking forward then to the next two weeks on holiday down in Cornwall and then Devon, with promised Bortle 4 skies, good forecasts and the jet-stream away to the North I am hopeful of getting a few relaxing sessions in. I've enjoyed assembling my holiday rig which I am determined to squeeze in among the assorted watersports gear, kids and I guess a few clothes.. I am taking: ST80 with 2 inch focusser & diagonal from TS Optics. AZGTi Manfrotto 55 Basic SW RDF Baader Hyperion Aspheric 31mm (yes there's a good deal of aberration at the edges but sweeping the Milky way with a 5.5 degree field is awesome!) Baader 8-24mm zoom + 2.25x Barlow. 2 inch Neodymium filter in the diagonal & 1.25 OIII filter (mainly to have a look at the Veil) Solar filter + Baader Solar Continuum. Celestron Nature ED 10x50s. Got me wondering - what's your holiday rig?

A combination of work vs. lack of darkness vs. life have conspired to keep me out of the game for the last few weeks. Got out with the Mak 127 in a gap in the clouds tonight though and enjoyed looking at Saturn (some banding, 2 moons, occasional glimpses of the Cassini division) , Jupiter (3 moons main bands clear, occasional glimpses of more detail) and a still blurry Mars. Also looked at a couple of the usual Messier suspects- M31, M13, M57. Lovely warm summer session!

Definitely going in a frame that one, priceless stuff.

Thoughtful Astro-themed fathers’ day presents from eldest away at Uni and a hand painted masterpiece from daughter (12) showing the Clarkson 3” out on the South Downs.

Unplanned garden GoTo session with the old brass Clarkson 3” f15. Seeing good & transparency moderate to good depending on the high haze bands. Aligned carefully on Arcturus & Altair and enjoyed pinpoint accuracy from the AZGTi all night. Looked at: M27,M57, M56 (surprisingly well seen), M10, M12,M14,M3,M5, M13. Galaxies M94, M81,M82 (dim in LP but oval & stripe shapes apparent on the same field) & could just pick out M51 in AV but no form seen. M39, M29, M52, NGC 457. Finished on some doubles Alberio, Rasalghetti (a first for me), 95 Herc & Dabih (Capricornus). Switched between Celestron 40mm Plossl & BCO 18mm & 10mm all night giving powers 30x, 67x & 120x. Love marrying this 120 year old scope to a computerised mount. Best of all, no work in the morning - fab way to start the bank holiday.

You can email Don Machholz and buy direct from him dontheastronomer@gmail.com - I was delighted to receive mine with a personalised message from him, which when you consider he's the discoverer of 12 comets is a thing worth having! Its a great book, the running order, which Messiers are available when, best dates to run a marathon out to 2050, and finder charts & finding notes, and other data its a real in-the-field-guide,

I’d go for the Supernova - everything else is local traffic. Brilliant thread btw

Short, garden widefield session with ST80 & 31mm Baader Hyperion on board (13x). Seeing and transparency both fit for purpose between thickening cloud bands. Toured the available Messiers: Open clusters M39, M29 in Cygnus. Planetary Nebulae M27, M57. Globular clusters M13, M10 & M12. Even got a galaxy, M94. Split Albireo, Cor Caroli, Mizar and Omicron Cygnii along the way and enjoyed super widefield views of the Milky Way around Cygnus, Lyra, the whole of Delphinius in one field and a super look at the Coathanger cluster. Well worth staying up an hour late for - still love my 2inch converted ST80 on the Manfrotto 55 for a quick ad hoc tour!

Thank you! Would love to see this whole region from Southern latitudes someday!

Thanks Nick, I think you’re right - M83 will elude until next spring! I was a bit surprised at how well M7 cut through the light extinction. From the Downs looking SE my horizon is basically 0 degrees but Gosport, Fareham and Portsmouth lie that way about 25-30 miles away and the sky is consequently quite bright down there. At 3.5 degrees when I caught it M7 was well into the light extinction zone and not visible in the finder, but at Mag 3.3 (O’Meara upgrades this to 2.8) the main group have the power to cut through. The view in the 18mm BCO which darkened the background was really quite good.

Good work! Yes, some of those dim southern globs are going to be a challenge for me - I was surprised by how brightly M6, M7 shone through but the last few globs at similar elevations are a different matter. I have those plus a few dim galaxies to go, fun though!

Aside from picking up globular cluster M80 from the park last weekend, my Messier tally has languished in the upper 80s for some time. Ticking off all my forecasting elements as Friday afternoon wore on I was pretty excited about the prospects for last night's session: Weather, warmish, light wind. Met office cloud forecast, clear. Jetstream forecast, kinking away from the southern UK from later afternoon, CO Clear to 3 am. No moon until 4 am. At this time of year, what we give up in terms of astronomical darkness, we gain in family sociability. I was able to enjoy the evening meal with the kids and then catch up on a couple of episodes with the lovely Kathy as dark fell. (The latest series of Bosch is great btw and the soundtrack left me with a hankering for cool jazz, so my observing session last night was accompanied by John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan and the gang - as a soundtrack to the stars it works surprisingly well. Nice...) I pulled into my normal layby up on the downs at just after 11 to find I was not alone, a couple had stopped off to relax on their evening drive, & presumably enjoy the stars... Unpacking and swiftly moving on I checked out the sky, transparency was quite good although not as perfect as hoped, some big bands of thin haze were taking the edge off to the West and worse to the South. Very clear overhead and through Lyra and Cygnus however. The Milky Way well seen and 10+ stars visible in Ursa Minor, so can't complain. Hit a snag, had left my diagonal in the Clarkson 3", so had a bit of faffing around to get the tripod at the right height to be able to see into the 9x50 finder and not have to roll around on the floor to execute straight-through viewing. Alignment was a pain - first go was rubbish, but readjusted and aligned on Spica and Altair which then set me up well for accuracy in the Southern sky. My forgotten diagonal had the effect of committing me to low angle objects. I'd made a vague time plan and knew that if I was to get M83, The Southern Pinwheel, before it set this would need to be the first target. Spent a while hunting for that first GoTo then an expanding search pattern but, nope, couldn't pull anything out of the LP over Southampton. Similar result in the search for M68, glob in Hydra. Switched to other targets on the list and the fun began.... M4 Nice, slight sparkling. Wide extent, diffuse. The best I've seen this and one to revisit with the big Dob another time. M9, Smudge in finder, well seen. Similar extent to M3, less bright. Denser core in AV. M19 - shining through the murk at 10 degrees. Compact. M80 - small & quite bright. Nice star field. M10 for comparison. Much brighter, many tiny points on edge of vision. M14, Fainter, slightly uneven. Triangle of stars to W. M107 - Sparser quite wide, unstructured. M4-like diffuseness. M17 - Swan Nebula lovely in 40mm - green tinged. Central dust lane.. M16 - Eagle Nebula. Mainly the star cluster. O111 revealed a blob of nebulosity but seen it better. Best seen in 40mm Plossl (37.5x) M20 - Triffid nebula, hints of the dark lanes in AV, exciting object but not the best view I've had. M21 - Webbs Cross open cluster, bright & nice view. M8 - Lagoon nebula, slightly in the haze but still a fabulous object, greenish glowing nebulosity punctuated with bright white blue stars. M6! Offset square with outliers. Maybe 20 stars with more in AV. Well seen at 6 degrees above the horizon. Filled the field (1.04 degree) M7! Sparse, fairly bright to penetrate the murk at 3 1/2 degrees. Twinkling away above Fareham! Main group about .75 degree across. Both M6 & M7 improved with the Baader 18mm which darkened the bright background sky and pulled out more resolved stars. Pretty loose clusters both and chuffed to catch these most southerly of Messiers, let out a "yes!" on each. M54 - dim glob but seen. Tapping to confirm. Unsure with 40mm, definitely there in 18mm. + Baader Neodymium filter. M62 - a bit higher in elevation that M54 and correspondingly better view, compact globular, easily seen. Not resolved. After the first crop of objects in & around Ophiuchus I gave my back some time off and had a nice binocular tour lying on a camp mat on a grassy bank whilst waiting for Saggitarius to. get up. Milky way through Cygnus was fab and followed the tracks of a few satellites. M13 good in the 10x50s plumb overhead at that point and could just make out the tiny circular smudge of the Ring Nebula, M57, in Lyra. The Sagittarius Messiers looked great in bino-sweeps too. Surprise performer of the night was the 40mm Celestron Plossl which worked well in straight-through mode in the Mak 127 at low magnification, nice flat, bright views and easier to get my eye around the whole field at the odd angles compared to the Hyperion 24, whose immersive 68 degree field required closer eye placement than the Plossl's immense eye-relief, & entailed consequently more gymnastics to view the whole field. A good night all round and the Messier tally up to 95.

A good night of Messier chasing - in the end 7 added to the tally including, at last, M7 the most Southerly in the catalogue. First views this year of the Sagittarius region too. Had thought to wait up for the Mars Jupiter conjunction before dawn but numb fingers & the need for refreshments overtook at around 2am. Highlight of the night M6 & 7 - pretty open clusters that I’ve not managed to catch above the horizon before.

Glob-fest with the Mak 127 on the South Downs with 3 new-to-me Messiers so far, M9, M19 & M107. Nice views of M4, M10, M12, M14 too and the night is yet young!

I've had a Mak 127 as my main scope for 18 months now and am up to 88/110 Messier objects with it. The best nights I've had have been when I've driven 15 minutes out of town to a decent Bortle 4 site on the South Downs - well worth seeking out a local dark-er spot if you can given the Mak's robust, easy portability. Certainly on a few of the most transparent, moonless nights I have seen some structure in M51 - the two cores linked by a hazy arm. Also some spiral structure in M99 and M61 on one particularly great night last spring. M104, The Sombrero Galaxy low in Virgo/Corvus looks surprisingly good too with clear shape and a hint of a dust lane. Markarian's chain area (including M84 & M86) is great to wander about in marvelling at all the smudges that are individual galaxies. Leo likewise, with the groups of the The Trio (M65 & M66 usually attainable in the Mak and their fainter companion NGC 3628 popping into averted vision on the best nights) M95/M96 and M105 & its NGC companions usually available (when I say usually, I am referring to moonless nights with decent or better transparency, any high haze or much more than a sliver of moon and I don't bother hunting galaxies). M81 & M82 usually look good in the Mak, with a dust stripe occasionally perceptible in M82 and both in the same field of view with my Baader Hyperion 24mm 68 degree (my favourite fuzzy-hunter) or 32mm & 40mm Plossl EPs. M94 is another good bright one to go for and is easy to find being right next door to Cor Caroli - itself a truly beautiful double star. On that note I do quite a bit of observing of doubles and the Mak is an excellent tool for this, especially at this time of the year when the skies are brighter. The Mak will split doubles down to around 1" of separation on nights of very steady seeing (Tegmen in Cancer is my benchmark for this claim!). You should also be able to get reliably good views of the Ring & Dumbell Nebulae (M57 & M27) and the brighter globular clusters like M13 in Hercules, M3 in Canes Venatici (easy to find near Arcturus) and M5 in Serpens are my most visited. M13 and M5 show a "diamond dust' of resolved stars in the almost-5 inch Mak. These are good garden (mid Bortle 5) objects for me for nights when I can't get out to the darker spot Many other globulars & countless open clusters are within reach of the Mak 127 - the Auriga open clusters M36, M37 & M38 along with M35 in Gemini and M67 in Cancer all show really well. Clear skies and happy hunting!

Great stuff - I managed to catch M80 last weekend but otherwise summer Messier progress has been slow so far. Good to read of your success and dedication to the cause with odd-hours observing!

Lovely night out there with my trusty 127 Mak - seeing nice and stable and transparency good for a time, eventually succumbing to widening cloud bands. Many targets observed - globulars, planetary nebulae, galaxies & a couple of favourite doubles - report to follow but did add one “new” Messier - M80, concentrated glob in Scorpio, 23 to go!. Report to follow when I am less sleepy….