Keffalonia 2, 19th & 21st September

[KevUU]

Hi guys, here's the second instalment of my Keffalonian stargazing efforts

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19th September

2200 - 2300. Same position as last time (behind apartment, complete with floodlights on the site and streetlights to the side and over the field). The sky is entirely clear. Approx VLM 5.4 again.

Tired (from bashing my head on a tree yesterday...) but we went out for Andromeda

Good clear view. Stood up to x50 this time. Then went looking for the two satellite galaxies (thanks to rory for encouraging me to try these despite my small scope): Found M32 fairly easily - looks starlike at first but is fuzzier and larger on closer inspection. M110 very very faint and indistinct, very hard to find but just managed. Although it's wider than M32 it's less bright because of that so quite easy to miss. Can see the disc of Andromeda faintly extending beyond the edges of the x13 eyepiece (3.75 degrees).

Naked eye: Dust lanes in Milky Way through Cygnus and Aquila are very visible. M13 in Hercules and the Coathanger are visible :-)

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21st September

2200 - 0045. At a quiet beach car park. Moon is out, about one quarter waxing. Had been looking forward to some real dark skies after the floodlights at the apartment, but although it seems clear some haze seems to be affecting the darkness for most of the sky, since everything is grey not black Approx VLM 5.0 at zenith (up to about 5.2 after moon set) but rather worse lower down.

Started off with some targets in Sagittarius before they set:

M7 Ptolemy's Cluster and M6 Butterfly Cluster - both easily found, but with a very light background as they set towards the sea they weren't very impressive. Averted vision gave hints of what was missing, so they maybe much better in better conditions?

Headed a bit higher, for M8 Lagoon Nebula - could see something here naked eye once we knew where to look, I presume it was the mag 4.6 oc part (NGC 6530). In the scope, the core of the main nebula cloud is clearly separated from the open cluster, so I see why this is two separate NGC objects. The main nebula seems to have some faint stars visible averted, and the cluster shows some vague background nebula haze. This is probably the most complex object I've observed, so I really liked it for that. This is so far away that it's taken 4.3 million years for the light to get to my eyeball, but still bright enough that I could glimpse something naked eye; I can't digest that. Would be interesting to view it under better conditions.

M20 Triffid Nebula - I definitely had the star patterns matching, and I thought I could see a vague haze at x50 but that may have been my imagination talking; nothing conclusive so I'll leave this to try again some other time.

M21 - a fairly tight oc just above the Triffid. Not very interesting...

M23 - this is meant to be good, but it was getting close to the horizon so the background was an orangey-grey washout, and so we found it a disappointment.

Time to move around a bit to try a better part of the sky. So at my partner's request it was Capricorn next:

M30 - This is a very small glob, which is just a tight fuzzy patch in my scope with nothing resolvable.

C63 The Helix Nebula - This was a very hard to see, wide, thin haze cloud, which was unfortunately mostly lost to the background haze. We definitely saw it but couldn't pick out any detail to speak of.

This seemed like time to call it a slightly disappointing night, but I noticed Neptune was nearby so figured I'd claim it since we were there. I couldn't tell any difference between it and the surrounding stars.

We then noticed that Jupiter had just popped up over the Eastern hills. It was pretty poor seeing so the view was a bit wobbly. CA was obvious but I put the mask on the lens which improved it a lot. Io, Europa and Callisto were in view (Ganymede was eclipsed). At x50 banding was just visible, although only between the waverings of the image caused by the bad seeing so not at all clear - but I was chuffed anyway. Our first look at Jupiter with the scope so a great end to the evening

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Thanks for reading, and clear skies.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice report, nice list of Messiers and the odd Caldwell bagged. The Helix is very difficult. I spotted it at 65x with my C8 as a ghostly smoke ring, but not much more. It is a big, but very dilute planetary.

[Astro Imp]

Nice reports. I'm really enjoying reading these reports from Keffelonia and look forward to seeing the next one.

[KevUU]

Very nice report, nice list of Messiers and the odd Caldwell bagged. The Helix is very difficult. I spotted it at 65x with my C8 as a ghostly smoke ring, but not much more. It is a big, but very dilute planetary.

Nice reports. I'm really enjoying reading these reports from Keffelonia and look forward to seeing the next one.

Thank you.

It was good to get some 'proper' sessions in and now I'm back it's quite nice to be able to put some 'proper' reports up (and relive my sessions a bit that way too). I about doubled my DSO tally during the holiday, and I'm starting to feel a little more like I have a better breadth of experiences and observations to contribute usefully on here - although I'm aware there's a huuuuge long way to go yet...

Re Helix: I knew it was fainter and more diffuse than M27 (which seems the natural thing to compare too), but I was expecting to see a little more. The moon really scuppered things here and I was quite disappointed that it was having such an effect, so very glad of Jupiter to lift my spirits. I definitely want to try for Helix again without the moon, but I don't know from where as it's probably too low in the sky here

Anyway thanks for reading and for your comments