YASR (Yet Another Saturn Report) and some planetaries

[hgjevans]

After a decent session the previous night I hadn't planned to set up again for last night, but the clear skies persuaded me otherwise, and I did want another crack at Saturn while the opportunity remains. Also from reading the 'How much magnification?' thread I had gleaned some suggestions for planetary nebula targets that sounded worth following up - the Blinking Planetary (NGC 6826), the Blue Snowball (NGC 7662), and the Emerald Nebula (NGC 6572). More of that later.

So far I've not had great views of Saturn from my current location. Observing from my suburban back garden means I generally don't get terribly good seeing for things that low down - Saturn has been just a bright planet with a bright ring system, and otherwise no specific detail to speak of. Well, for some reason last night was a massive improvement. This time I was getting intermittent periods of much better seeing - fleeting, but good enough to pick out some hints of banding on the planet, an occasionally clearish Cassini division, as well as consistent shadows, both of the rings on the planet in the top of my view, and of the planet on the rings at the bottom.

As far as magnification goes, I tried everything I had available, up to a fully barlowed 5mm BST, giving 400x, but that was definitely over-optimistic. Probably the limit for good detail was just the plain 5mm at 200x. And for reasons I can't quite fathom the most enjoyable view was actually through the 12mm at 83x.

There's been a lot of mention of which moons people have been able to see - for some reason last night wasn't good for me. The previous night I had Titan, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, and (I decided later, but didn't identify it at the time), Iapetus. But last night I had a lot of glare around the planet, and only Titan, Rhea, and (definitely, this time) Iapetus were visible to me. The other large moons were lost in the glare, no matter what magnification I tried, and placing Saturn just out of the field of view made no discernible difference.

Moving on to the planetary nebulae, I had made careful notes for finding each of the three mentioned above, but I wasn't prepared for quite how small they were compared to the more obvious Messier PNs. Searching for them with my 16mm eyepiece (about a 1 degree field and just 63x) I missed both the Blinking Planetary and the Blue Snowball. Only after I had found the Emerald Nebula did I go back and look again, this time successfully. It really does help if you can recognise the thing you're looking for!

Anyway, this was really just an initial look, to familiarise myself with them - I'll be revisiting them, I'm sure, for some more extended observation in the coming weeks. But on first viewing they were all well worth the effort. The Blinking Planetary showed excellent structure, the Snowball really was blue, and the Emerald was such a vivid green at lower magnifications that I wouldn't have believed it possible had I not seen it with my own eyes. The colour did fade as I increased the magnification, but I suppose that was my eyes reacting (or not reacting, perhaps would be more accurate) to the reduction in brightness. They were all small enough that at low magnification I could (and at first did) mistake them for background stars, but their brightness was amazing to see. Clearly not all 'faint fuzzies' are actually 'faint'! Neither the lack of astro-darkness nor the suburban light pollution presented the remotest problem for finding or observing these little gems.

While on my way to finding the Emerald Nebula, I also came across the delightful open cluster NGC 6633, and surfing through Cygnus' beautiful star fields towards the Blinking Planetary was breathtaking. Finally, I had to take another look at M13 up near the zenith - be rude not to. All in all, a very enjoyable session, with two ISS passes (about 1030 and 0015) just for added interest.

[cotterless45]

Lovely report and a realistic summary of what is easily possible . Saturn has been very difficult, very low from here. Backing off the magnification is often better than loading it up !

The Emerald is a stunning target, a real find ! (NGC 6572 in Ophiuchus ),

Nick.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice report indeed. Some great objects spotted

[xtreemchaos]

great report mate,i really enjoyed reading it.thanks for sharing.

[swamp thing]

Nice report Huw. I specially liked your line "Clearly not all faint fuzzies are actually faint". Very true indeed.

[hgjevans]

Thanks everyone. It was a nice little session - I enjoyed writing it up too, so I'm glad it was of interest.

As it happens I pretty much repeated it a couple of nights later, object for object. The only thing to add from that was that this time I was slightly less aware of the colour in the Emerald, but more aware of structure in the Blinking Planetary.