How was the seeing last night?

[mike bacanin]

Hi ,

Just wondered if you were viewing saturn last night. I was using my c9.25.

seeing poor most of the time between 9-30 and 11-00.

i had best views with 16mm zeiss ortho and 14mm TMB Mono.

the seeing just would not support anything higher.

cassini was visible at times but difficult, whereas last week it was quite easy.

i reckon it was due to heat radiating up after a long warm day.

how was the seeing at your location?

Mike

[SteelRat]

Went out at about 2100. There were some gaps but there was alot of jelly up there. Was only testing some stuff anyhoo and was back inside by 2200.

Cheers

Matthew

[MikeP]

I tried a couple of times between 10pm and midnight using my C11 and the view was quite poor.

Unfortunately, I had to observe between tree branches, so couldn't track it for any length of time to see if there was any variation, but nothing else (save M13 and M92) looked any better. The best view was with a Pentax XW 14mm - I tried a 10mm but TBH it was pretty difficult getting a good focus, so I went back to the 14mm. I couldn't really see any detail on the surface or rings. Just not a good night.

Mike

[barkis]

I was doing some work on the LX90 last night, checking the accuracy of the GoTo after a preliminary set up. More needs to be done , but I had a look at Saturn since it was one of the Objects targeted.

All I saw, was a collimation job pending, the planet was just a mush, and not all down to the collimation either. Lots of high declination stars were blinking almost to extinction, so the seeing was to all intents and purposes, rubbish. Of course after the heat of the day, and it dissipating out of the ground and the surrounding buildings, I was not all that surprised. Better nights ahead I hope.

Ron.

[CELESCOPE]

Bit better luck myself , had Stephen Aish around just showing him my set up , never really tried my Equinox before for viewing, well not serious , so we slewed it to Saturn ,whacked in a 7.5 with the 2x Barlow, and i was surprised how good it was , clearly seeing the banding on the glob, i did say to Stephen ,the seeing is,nt great and if it was better could have used the 4 mm eyepiece and Barlow . must say it was just as good as with my C11,

Rog

[mike bacanin]

thanks guys, interesting! whilst i could see reasonable detail, ie cloud banding,cassini occasionally,shadow of rings on planet and planet on rings, it was very unsteady most the time, and moments of clarity were too short to really take in the details.

mike

[mike bacanin]

btw, speaking of collimation, i checked mine out at x294, and it was spot on,nice diffraction rings .

does this issue factor in your comments regarding the image quality?

mikw

[MartinB]

I was using active optics at 2500mm f/l and 10 guide cycles per sec The guidestar was jumping about all over the place. The AO was correcting it but every now and then the AO started to misbehave and loose the guidestar. I'm starting to wonder if it was big dollops of bad seeing that threw the star so far out.

[thing]

Seeing here in Lincoln was pretty lousy too, couldn't push much above x125. Tried Saturn with my 5 mil ortho (x200) and it was a waste of time. I was beginning to think my mirror was clagged up it was that bad. Shall be out again tonight, can't see it being much better though.

[CELESCOPE]

My guiding done a wobbly as well , weird things happening up there lol

[mike bacanin]

sounds like conditions were generally not great at various locations, so don't be worrying about optics too much!

i reckon you would have to wait till around 2am before the heat had discharged, and the seeing settled.

i'll give it a go at weekend if weather holds out

regards

mike

[MikeP]

Talking of collimation .......

Back in February I had a problem with the C11 - see http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php/topic,23347.0.html. This was my first night out with it since cleaning the secondary, so first task was collimation. After trial and error fiddling (thank goodness for Bob's Knobs) the diffraction rings looked good to me with the 10mm eyepiece (280x). The subsequent views didn't do much for my confidence, but I'll leave it alone and have another look on a better night.

Mike

[taffy]

Hi' When i went outside at 23.00 saturn was'nt in a good place for me.I had a look at M13' M92' in Hercules.Then went to Lyra to look at M57 M56.Then had a look at the cat's eye NGC6543 in Draco.And trying the webcam but give up' packed up about 1.am due to low cloud.Mark

[thing]

Well it's just turning dusk here, I have the scope balanced and ready to align when the stars pop out. I've just been having a gander at the Moon and it's like looking at jelly wobbling. That's at x75. Looks like lots of widefield stuff tonight then...........