Observing on the night of 11/5/2012

[Moonshane]

Joined by my neighbour, I took advantage of the first clear night for ages last night and had a good night of observing with my 16" dob.

The scope had been out for a couple of hours and it was just starting to get dark. As Mars had popped out of the gloom I used my aperture mask and reduced the aperture to 170mm in order to enhance the contrast available. The Baader Neodymium filter usually enhances detail on Mars and I used this too. The view was really quite nice, encouraging me for the night ahead. The phase displayed was distinctly gibbous and the planet somewhat 'egg-shaped'. Both poles were very bright and Syrtis Major was quite obvious. The disc was really quite small compared with previous views even at 300x (although 200x provided a crisper view) and the lure of Saturn great, so I turned my attention to the ringed Planet.

I took out the Baader filter as this does not work so well with Saturn. Given the good seeing I was hopeful of good views and was not disappointed. The Cassini Division was a constant feature and showed a good way around toward the centre of the planetary disc. The rings were edged dark as they crossed in front of the disc and we also managed to see the inner C ring a.k.a. the Crepe Ring as a misty grey wedge inside the inner main ring. There was a notable purplish band across the northern half of the planet and I thought I could detect a hint of brightness in the northeast, possibly a storm feature but this was intermittent and possibly a figment of my imagination. I have to say that Saturn produces visual images better in most cases than the majority of photographic images I have seen; it’s rare that I see a photograph that exceeds the sharpness of what I see at the eyepiece. At least five moons were visible including Titan of course but I have not yet checked what they were.

I looked at a few double stars to pass the time to full darkness and observed Izar, Epsilon Bootis, one of my favourites, with it’s lovely yellow primary and small green blue and rather close secondary star. Then Porrima, Gamma Virginis, which seems to have opened up notable since last year. Rasalgethi, Alpha Herculis is another lovely yellow green double star worth a look if you can. Finally I could just get Albiero, Beta Cygni, above the trees, a great way to end a brief double run.

It was starting to get pretty dark now so I turned my attention to the main area that I wanted to cover, Draco. I have not spent a lot of time observing in this constellation and intermittent cloud had started to drift through, spoiling things a bit. I did manage to see the two main target objects, both of which are new for me. NGC 6543, the Cat’s Eye Nebula is a small planetary nebula quite close to Zeta Draconis. I hoped that I might just be able to pick this up given the light pollution in my area but what I saw was nothing short of stunning. The nebula was indeed quite small but even unfiltered was an intense blue-green colour, similar to my eyes to the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini. The central star was really obvious at about 140x and not quite white, but had a hint of the greenish hue of the main nebula. The nebula itself was extended, being approximately rugby ball shaped (cat’s eye shaped??) and with hints of structure. A UHC filter deteriorated from the view and I quickly removed it. Well worth checking this out.

The other object I wanted to find was the ‘missing’ Messier, Messier 102. This is (I think?) generally accepted to be NGC 5866 and is a pretty bright object. It is a side on galaxy and showed as a bright slash in the sky, again somewhat rugby ball shaped. No hint of the central dust lane but perhaps from a dark site it may be possible.

I then went on a tour of ‘old friends’ and added a fair number of objects to the night’s observing list. These included globular clusters M13 (and associated galaxy NGC 6207), M92, M3, M5, M53 and M56. Each of these was resolved to the core and especially with averted vision, really came alive.

M57, the Ring Nebula and M27, the Dumbbell Nebula were great to see again and we took another look at the galaxy M64, the Black-eye Galaxy which showed hints of the central darker areas.

I really could not resist repeatedly revisiting the globular clusters as the night went on to see the changes the increasing darkness made.

Eventually the murk started to increase and I packed up at about 1am.

Great to be back under the stars.

[Double Kick Drum]

Great write up. Thanks for sharing a level of detail I can only dream about at the moment.

I am currently on a mission to convince my wife of the merits of a 10 inch dobsonian. Hopefully by the winter, she will have given in.

Happy hunting!

[Moonshane]

cheers DKD - good luck with the war of attrition!