Tales from Santa Luce, Tuscany, Episode XII: Last Session at Santa Luce

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

After the big galaxy session of August 12, I managed one more session from Tuscany. On August 13, my PhD student Ugo Moschini and his borther Francesco drove up from Viareggio where Ugo's parents live, and joined me for dinner and a stargazing session. They brought along an older Vixen 20x80 to add to the arsenal of scopes present (the Espace allowed me to take practically all the gear, and still leave space for the shoes of the missus ). Conditions were not ideal, with just shy of half a moon and a little bit of haze, but the C8 showed some nice detail on Luna, and Saturn, provided you did not push far beyond the 22T4 at 93x.

I decided to go on an extended Messier/Caldwell tour of the sky, rather than hunting for faint stuff. M13 was first up, an obvious choice with the moon still up. NGC 6207 was not visible.

M57 was great as ever, and despite the moon did not need assistance from the UHC filter

M11 ellicited comments of: "It looks like a city" and indeed, it almost does look like a city seen from an aircraft at night.

I picked up nearby NGC 6705, and demonstrated the use of the filter-switch diagonal on such panetaries.

M26 followed, largely "because it's there", and we swept on to M16, M17, and M18. The Lagoon looked particularly stunning in the UHC filter.

M24 is always a bit of an odd-one-out, as it really looks better through the finder scope (14x70) than it does through the main instrument.

M8 was stunning in the 31T5 with UHC filter. The large FOV really frames the object nicely, and the filter brings out the full extent of the nebulosity very well indeed.

M20 mainly showed the lower, emission nebula part, the upper, reflection nebula was much harder.

M22 followed by M28 were next, and the former in particular was the cause of some "wows".

We then had a planetary intermezzo, and looked up the current position of Neptune. After some to-ing and fro-ing I found the right spot, and spotted a star absent from the charts in the finder. Looking through the scope we could make out the blue-green colour, but it did not really look any brighter than the stars (or only ever so slightly so). Seeing, as noted was bad!

We then moved to M27 and M71, followed by M72, and the most boring Messier bar M40, M73.

Nearby, the Saturn Nebula (NGC 7009) showed up nicely, showing up th etypical blue-green of planetaries.

The Helix (NGC 7293) could just be made out, but was not nearly as good as the day before.

As the mount started to play up a bit (not tracking), we decided to compare the Helios Apollo 15x70 HDs with the Vixen 20x80, both mounted on tripods. M31, M32 and M110 showed up very nicely in both binoculars, and the image quality was quite comparable. M33 appeared as a ghostly haze, gradually showing a bit more detail as the eye tuned in to it. A hint of spiral structure could be made out. Both pairs of bins performed very well indeed, with very little to distinguish. I tried the Vixen 20x80 without tripod, and was stunned at the low weight. If anything, it is slightly lighter than the 15x70. I had little difficulty using the bins without tripod, but then I apperently have very steady hands. I must say this experience does tempt me to get the Vixen Arc 16x80, which could (dare i say it?) replace the Helios Apollo 15x70.

We swapped out the C8 with the APM 80mm on the mount (which was still showing tracking problems), and used the 31T5 with UHC filter to spot NGC 7000 and the Pelican. Both showed nicely, with the 80mm APM blowing both binoculars out of the water in terms of image quality. The Pelican was quite pale compared to earlier views, but still a nice sight.

The Veil was our final target, with the Eastern Veil showing up nice and sharply, and the Western Veil a bit harder. Pickering's Wisp could not be made out.

Still, the Veil was a nice finish to a great session. Ugo and Francesco left very pleased.

The whole vacation was a roaring success (and not just astronomically speaking) bagging 77 new objects including 38 galaxies (not at all what I expected), apart from wonderful views of many old friends.

[KevUU]

Whoa that's a nice haul, talk about a personal guided tour

Glad you enjoyed the holiday, thanks for the write ups I'm sure now I'm looking to observe again the weather will turn, but you've certainly stoked the ole fires.

[cotterless45]

Lovely report , Neptune does indeed stand out due to it's lovely colour.

Kev mate, by the looks of your avatar , not only have you stoked the ole fires but have set the street alight !

Nick.