OO UK 12" First Light From a Dark Site

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I have recently acquired this rather nice scope & last night had the first chance to try it out under a fairly favourable dark sky. The milkyway was shining overhead clearly displaying a dark rift through it & as my eyes got adapted to the dark thousand of stars came out to play.

I had made an observing plan which quickly got over looked as some of my observing buddies eyed up some other targets in their scopes. So I had a look at M57 at very high power in a home made 14" scope along with M92. Very impressive. So how would they compare in my own scope. Using 108x magnification the ring stood out in the sky showing an irregular outer edge & clearly darker inside. M92 resolved stars to the core. Encouraging start I thought. Before I hit my list I had to visit the veil nebula. Looking at the eastern part which can be found fairly easily off of 52 Cygni I was able to make out some wisps of nebulosity. This improved with a UHC filter. On to my planned targets for the night. I had not seen any of these objects before. Generally I located them with Rigel & RACI along with 66x magnification using Pocket Sky Atlas. I would then up the magnification to 108x for studying the object.

In Delphinus my first target was the blue flash nebular NGC 6905. I struggled a bit to find this but was rewarded with a lovely view of a small circular blue smudge. Next up was a globular cluster NGC 7006, this was small & faint with no stars resolved. A very distant globular. On to Vulpecula & a small open cluster NGC 6802 near to Brocchi's Cluster. This looked like a long rectangular mist. Then to NGC 6823 but unable to see any nebulosity. Off to Aquila & a planetary nebula NGC 6781. This was definitely disk like in appearance. Scutum next & my target was NGC 6712 a fairly small globular cluster. Bad star hopping landed me on M11 first, which was superb. Eventually I found the glob from there. Moving on I next hunted for the little gem NGC 6818 again showing it self as a disk.

At this point we all had a tea break & prepared my self for a bit of a galaxy hunt in Pegasus. I was keen to see how things looked compared to my 8" reflector so first up was NGC 7331. It was a definite improvement as it looked more extended to my memory. I then went on to observe NGC 7457, 7814, 7479, 7449. These were all quite faint but certainly visible with direct vision. Finally I came to NGC 7332 which included a surprise that I had not realised. Just close by was another smaller galaxy perpendicular to it. Better with averted vision & I could just make out a brighter core. This was NGC 7339. So all the list was completed so I could not resist a look at some favourites. M13, M31, M32 & M101, M81 & M82.

A truly amazing night for me & will definitely seek out dark skies in preference to my urban back garden. All packed up by 2am but worth it.

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