Turned out nice .....

[John]

Nice clear sky right now and Orion has risen above the rooftops

Bit of a late session but I could not resist getting my ED120 out to have a peek at Jupiter and M42 - my first look at the latter this season.

Seeing conditions are good. 250x easily usable on Jupiter with great belt / zone contrast on show. Even looked nice at 300x !

In Orion I checked out Rigel and it's 10th mag companion was easily and clearly resolved. Then moved on to the lovely 4 star system of Sigma Orionis just below Orions belt. The faintest member of this group (9th mag) was clearly resolved.

I had to test the scope and seeing conditions with a look at the challenging pair of Eta Orionis. The contrasting colours of blue / white for the primary and pale brick red for the secondary in this pair were clear. At 150x and above the split of 1.7 arc seconds was nicely defined. The seeing conditions must be good as this pair were well defined and split even at 400x - way above the theoretical max for a 4.7" scope !

Finally over to the glorious sight of M42 - the Great Orion Nebula. It was an amazing spectacle as ever with the "arms" of nebulosity sprawling across the field of view at 100x and above. The conditions allowed 6 members of the Trapezium group (Theta Orionis) to be resolved with the E and F members being glimpsed at 150x, E being more readily picked out than F.

A very welcome session under great skies albeit somewhat unplanned !

Note: During this session I was trying out a Revelation 2" 2x barlow lens that I've recently acquired as a sort of experiment. It's performance was very good although, like many barlows, it does "eat up" nearly 2cm of inwards focuser travel. The views through my 8mm Ethos barlowed were matching the views my 4mm Nirvana put up and the 100 degree field of the Ethos was fully preserved. For a sub £50 2" barlow I'm impressed

[rory]

nice going john. im looking foward to mooching around the whole orion area this winter having moved to 8" from 3" aperture, should be an eye opener.