Right place wrong time (and some nice views from a "wrong" location)

[zhgutas]

So I finally got to a nice quiet camping site to try my ST 80 8) (had to travel over a thousand miles for that!). Nice and hot sunny day, crystal clear sky and steady weather promised a good night of viewing. We set our tents, arranged a bonfire and I managed to find a perfect spot on a hill for my "perfect" night. All I had to do was to wait till it got dark

And there I was: 01:45, all set with my scope out and ready, wind blowing at my face, a dozen of bunches of campers (where and when the h**** did these come from?!!!) playing different music so loud it seams you're in the club, all car lights on and bonfires and torches everywhere and the sky looking like it's a dawn already! :crybaby: "no way that will stop me".. So I tried M31 (too silly) and could only make out an extremely faint blob just in the center of my 32mm plossl surrounded by bluish-reddish-milky sky. Nothing to talk about much.. Thought I'd go for something brighter, and turned my objective to M13 (hey, I was waiting for sooo long, I wasn't going to give up so easily).

Slightly better (having in mind that reaching near-zenith position with my photo tripod was pure hell (did I mention someone nicked my chair, so positioning my eye to the EP meant kneeling down?) and the sky was still not even close to the one I remembered it to be :/ ) still a faint blob, but it was bright enough to let me up the magnification to x40. (used 10mm skywatcher stock EP, not the best idea in the world, believe me). Decided to stay with 20mm televue. Quite nice, but I just couldn't concentrate, and taking eyes away from the EP meant being blinded by one of the lights immediately.

I couldn't bare any more and packed away.. It's definitely nothing like the last autumn when seeing Andromeda with a naked eye was a piece of cake, and bringing old dusty binos to your eyes revealed a stunning widefield with tons of small diamonds on a black silk.. I was nothing but extremely disappointed.. And the nights are getting shorter and shorter... Hope to get some viewing time this week, and hopefully, have something to tell ..

A nice place all in all (crystal clear lake water, and a smell of jasmine) an extremely wrong time.

Marius

[lunator]

Marius

Sorry to hear your session was ruined.

Hopefully it will work out next time.

Cheers

Ian

[MikeP]

Have you tried your Barlow yet? Hope it is OK.

Mike

[zhgutas]

Cheers guys. yes Mike, I did try it, and found it works pretty well with the 20mm Televue, during the daytime with no visible loss of light. Although barlowing the 10mm stock SkyWatcher EP is probably not the best idea as I said earlier I did not have a chance to use it on a moon etc., but tonight it'll be positioned nicely from my balcony, so I'm hoping to give it a shot.

To add to it all, I had a really nice night yesterday from the same balcony! In fact, I even think it was better than my disaster at the campsite! (less fuss, although extremely light polluted sky. (I live in the city, in a 12th floor and basically have a good view of NW, N, NE, so stuff located in Cassiopea and Cygnus are my main targets (pegasus is a tad too low and e.g. Andromeda gets severely washed out, but still possible to see)).

I thought I'll try and find M81, but that was plain silly No luck. After finding out that andromeda looks like a smudge on the optics, I thought I'd go to something easier. The double cluster in Perseus looked superb in a 20mm (a bit to small in 32mm) and loads of stars were visible with direct vision after like 10 minutes of observing. I even caught two satellites crossing the FOV, one perfectly dividing one of the two main star pairs in the cluster. I am pretty sure the third extremely bgight object slicing the FOW was a shooting star! Awesome 8) What more could I ask for?

I then went to M39, an open cluster in Cygnus, and was able to make out a what I thought looked like a heart shape made of small dim star mist among the main 25-30 stars, after a while of observing. A slight averted vision helped here.

That made me happy for a night and I new this lil' fella is capable of delivering some nice views

Marius

[jgs001]

Shame about the campsite Marius, but I'm glad you got the chance to use the little scope and some good targets for it too. I have found and seen M81 with my comparable scope, but it's hard to see.

[zhgutas]

Cheers john

Marius

[John]

Thanks for the reports Marius. Just wait until you can find some really dark skies and you will be suprised how well the ST80 will do on the brighter DSO's. I was looking at M13 through mine the other evening and I could just make out some individual stars resolved against the misty ball of light. I also tried a barlowed 10mm Kellner eyepiece on the Moon and was very pleasently suprised at the quality of the view - the barlow increased the effective focal length to F/10 which reduced the false colour at the lunar limb considerably.

It's hard to believe that such a small package can deliver so much viewing pleasure

John

[zhgutas]

Spot on here John about the viewing pleasure As they say, best things come in small boxes (and in this case, with a ridiculously low number on a receipt ).

Had another go the on a night from Tuesday to Wednesday. same location, same LP sky and even brighter night Although that night I managed to stay up till about 3 a.m. when Cassiopea and Pegasus rose up slightly more and were not that corrupted by the city lights. The tuesday evening was rainy, so the sky now looked steady and very transparent. No haze or city dust in the air. M31 was still washed out severely, and only a small blob could be visible (core). However I then moved again to the target, that is becoming one of my most favourite (and definitely THE most favourite from my balcony ) the double cluster in Perseus. A stunning view in a 20mm Televue. And a magnification is not too high, so no need to move the scope for minutes of viewing. I had a good look at it

I then noticed that, since it was so late (early?) , Dubhe and Merak were easily visible from the corner of the balcony (the rest of the time they are in the position that would be impossible to move to with a scope :? ). I knew it was a long shot, but.. hey, I had to try M81 tried to star-hop there using Dubhe as the start point three to four times, checking with the Starry Night each step I take. And nothing :? Then I checked on SNPP again to find a rather distinctive star triangle just barely touching the M81. I went for the last time, found the triangle, couple seconds of looking. and... Its there! When I said that M31 was extremely faint... ehmm.. Then it wasn't with Bode's galaxy, I was even thinking it was a post-image of the one I saw in the lappy screen couple of seconds ago It was THAT faint! But it stayed there whole 5 minutes I was observing it and even when I shifted the view slightly. Yup I've FOUND IT! And The last minute I think I saw M82 as well, but don't want to brag about it, since I'm not sure myself

All in all - a wonderful night

P.S. (the other thing i love about my living place, I have a stunning view of the wonderful sunsets and dramatic cloud compositions each evening, that completely take my breath away. Such an opposition to a boring view of the concrete city jungle. ~35 meters above the ground have some advantages:) )

Cheers

Marius

[jgs001]

Congrats Marius on getting M81 and it sounds like you had a good session.