Bits and bobs

[Size9Hex]

A few mainly new (to me) bits and bobs from last night with the 10 inch dob. It's great not knowing what to expect. As always, hope this is of interest or enjoyable to read.

Bird 3
Stumbled upon in Draco. Nifty little triple star. Wide and attractively faint.

Iris Nebula
Asymmetric reflection of light around a bright star, with the primary shape being two connected lobes of unequal size. 180x brought out a dark lane not quite cutting all the way between the lobes. Backing off to 80x revealed a tricky and incomplete suggestion of the fainter extended looping regions. Thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Cat's Eye Nebula
High magnification (180 to 250x) offered a bright disk in averted vision, with 180x bringing a couple of brief difficult glimpses of a central star. Holding the eye in one place for a few seconds gave a chance for the image of the star to develop. I wonder if it would be easier in better seeing conditions. The disk blinked out in direct vision but reducing the magnification allowed it to be held for increasing lengths of time before this happened. Eventually at 50x the light was concentrated enough to remain in place and reveal a subtle green hue. Pretty cool!

Xi Scorpii and HD 144087
An unexpectedly brilliant view and a colourful pretender to the title of Double Double. The brighter primary of Xi Scorpii itself should in theory have also be detected at 1.1" to give 5 in the view. 180x suggested (maybe) an elongation rather than a split but the seeing made it pretty inconsistent. 250x smeared the star too badly to help.

M13
High magnification got the dark lanes of the M13 propellor spinning among a buzzing hive of stars, while 80x drew in the surrounding loopy swirls and haze. What an incredible sight.

Milky Way
Naked eye, just starting to reveal hazy bright clouds in averted vision around the rift through Cygnus near the north eastern horizon. Nice to view a galaxy that isn't tiny in an eyepiece! Very much looking forwards to gazing at this when it's higher up.

[alan potts]

Nice report must try some of them, it seems that everyman and his dog looked at M13 last night, apart from me. I am still watching my lawn grow and cannot get on it to pull weeds which grow at an alarming rate. BTW it's pouring down for the 4th day, more tomorrow as well.

[chiltonstar]

1 hour ago, alan potts said:

Nice report must try some of them, it seems that everyman and his dog looked at M13 last night, apart from me. I am still watching my lawn grow and cannot get on it to pull weeds which grow at an alarming rate. BTW it's pouring down for the 4th day, more tomorrow as well.

....even I was looking at M13 amongst other targets!

Nice account Paul!

Chris

[Size9Hex]

I wonder whether anyone/anything living in M13 was looking back in our direction.

Hope the rain eases off for you Alan. The balance might well shift in your favour soon - the darkness seems to be disappearing rapidly here in the UK!

[Special K]

Another great report, Paul!  You must surely have clocked in an astronomical observing year by now

You've got the Veil and a few other summer treats in store.

 

[Size9Hex]

Thanks Kevin, it's just in the last couple of weeks I've started to realise that the constellations rising in the east are starting to look familiar (and I only trawled them with binoculars last year, so they're all new to the scope). Nice in some ways, although I have rather been enjoying my ignorance of what's going to turn up next! Can't wait for a good look at the Veil. I've had a sneaky peak but only a brief token gesture before turning in at the end of a session. Looked impressive though.

[Piero]

Very nice report Paul!  I never saw the Iris Nebula. I tried it with the 60mm  but I guess it is well beyond that..! 

Piero

[laudropb]

Very nice report. A real good session.

[Size9Hex]

11 hours ago, Piero said:

Very nice report Paul!  I never saw the Iris Nebula. I tried it with the 60mm  but I guess it is well beyond that..! 

Piero

You've got me wondering how doable this would be. 

The detail in the lobes the middle of the nebula came out at at high magnifications which would be very dim indeed with the 60mm scope, while the outer regions were faint even with 10 inches of aperture. But the two central lobes themselves were actually quite bright and span about 2 to 3 arcmins. The object as a whole is just beyond mag 7 and a lot of it is concentrated in this small central region. I'm wondering if these lobes might be just about in reach at mid range exit pupil (maybe 20 to 30x) in the 60mm as something resembling a fuzzy mishapen double star. Not saying it's possible, but weighing those numbers against a few targets that I've bagged in 10x50 binos, I wonder if 60mm might be roughly enough to see that it's non-stellar. I'll give it go in the 100mm (inc. the 50mm mask) when I get the chance.

Although, you say you've tried it and you're certainly no slouch with the 60mm! If all else fails, just hit it with the sledgehammer you keep in Italy!