Another trip to dark site

[YKSE]

Weather forecast for Saturday changes several times during the last 24 hours, all pointing towards a clear sky after midnight at least, and 11-12 degree is very mild for the season, while 95% humidity is not ideal, so I use my dew-fighting method by bringing both scopes.

The sky was all cloudy up when arriving around 19:30, so I just set up the mount, and left the scopes in the car with opening talgate for cooling and delaying the dewing.

The sky started to clear up aroun 1 o'clock, after alignment, Jupiter was already up, the view is much better than at home, more contrast of the bands, I kept switching EPs to find right magnification, it turned that 10mm BCO gave the best view of fine detals.

Turning to M42, the nebula was clearly bigger than at home, and M43( a new one!) was easily seen too.

Just then, a car came and stopped, it was a girl who took a night drive and wanted to take quiet look at dark sky after getting upset in a party! looking at Jupiter in a telescope was really a WOW for her. We talked a while about planets, stars, galaxies.

When she left half an hour later, the scope was all dewed up! Into the car with C8, out with 80ED. I tried on DSO first, M1, which I had difficulty the other day with C8 at home, was readily seen in 80ED. M81 (bode's galaxy) and M82, which I could not see with 130P last year, were visible in the same field of view with direct view.

Around 4:15 o'clock, Mars came out of trees, and 80ED dewed up. Into the car it went, and C8 up on mount again. It was still quite wet, but the dew on corrector plate had reduced a lot. The view on Mars was not very good since it was quite low yet. So I settled to have another look at Jupiter, I was so facinated by the view that this another look turned out to last an hour when I realize that it was to head home.

A long night with hours of waiting, 3 new Messiers and great view of Jupiter

[ronl]

Nice report, It's good when you can get to a dark site, but when the dew

sets in it does spoil the session, it sounds like you got some good targets

in, Jupiter is a fascinating planet with it's Moons ever changing position,

the longer you observe it the better it gets, a bit like Saturn, both of them

are quite mesmerising. 

[andrew63]

The dark skies make a huge difference - yet to see M42 this season. That's a nice combo you have the SCT and 80ED. andrew

[Special K]

I like your dew strategy and this occurred to me last night when I got dewed out that two scopes could be helpful! Jupiter is great and absorbs loads of time for sure.

[YKSE]

The dark skies make a huge difference - yet to see M42 this season. That's a nice combo you have the SCT and 80ED. andrew

Yes, it does. our light-polluted is usually 3-4 magnitute, with some implification, this 2-3 magnitude differences makes a 3" scope in dark behaves like 7.5" to 11.5" in backyard, everything else equal.