Some doubles and some planetary nebulae

[FenlandPaul]

Despite it being the eve of returning to work after 2 weeks on holiday, the stunning bank holiday weather and a full house on Clear Outside led to me putting the 12" dob out in the early evening.  Just before she went off to bed, my wife came out and looked at Saturn (she spotted Titan without being prompted), the Double Double and Albireo - always nice to share sights with those you love.  But after she went to bed it was time to get down to it for a couple of hours of deep sky action.

Sky was pleasingly - though not outstandingly - transparent, and seeing was great.  Saturn was very steady despite being so low.  I've recently downloaded an SQM app, which reported between 19.6 and 20.1 during the evening.  No idea how accurate that is so would be interested to compare to a "proper" meter at some point.  The milky way was clear down to about 30 degrees' altitude.

Delta Cygni was first up - nice and bright primary with markedly fainter companion that started off tricky but snapped into view nicely with a small tweak of the focuser.

Struve 2588 (Cygnus) - easily split, equally bright white pair.  Has the "catseye" look of Castor.

NGC6826 (PN in Cygnus) - the Blinking Planetary,  Initially quite a challenge to find up there in the "dob hole", but after 10 minutes the Telrad / RACI / Interstellarum combination came good.  Bright, condensed and very round with an obvious and really quite bright central star - in fact, I think this is the most obvious central star I've come across.  The disk appeared to have a brighter inner with a fainter, concentric perimeter that was reasonably thick, especially with averted vision.  This impression seems to be confirmed after inspection of a sketch in O'Meara's Caldwell Objects book (6826 is also Caldwell 15).  The blinking effect was clear and quite fun: look directly at the central star and the nebula fades out!

Then tried to track down NGC6884, also in Cygnus.  I could see a couple of possible candidates but neither stood up to inspection at higher magnification.  How annoying - I'm sure this should have been within the scope of the 12" in these conditions.  Maybe it was still slightly too light, or maybe an OIII would have helped.  Will try again on this one.

NGC6781 (PN in Aquila).  In Interstellarum this is dubbed "The Snowglobe Nebula", and in O'Meara's The Secret Deep (in which it occupies number 90) it is called the "Ghost of the Moon".  This was really quite large and had a low surface brightness, so would be impossible in poorer conditions.  It appeared mainly round in the 32mm Plossl and 20mm Plossl; the 7mm Nagler lost all but the general sense that "something" was there.

NGC 6751 (PN in Aquila) - called the Glowing Eye Nebula in Interstellarum and also given the moniker "Dandelion Puff Ball) in the 86th entry in O'Meara's The Secret Deep.  This one is really easy to find, forming a neat triangle with Lambda and Iota Aquilae.  Small, but remained bright with increasing magnification.  Not quite round.  Rather than glow, I thought this eye seemed to wink at me.

Before packing up I lay down on the patio and looked up at the Milky Way flowing through Cygnus.  I love just letting my eye wonder, picking up intricate dark lanes and detail flickering in and out of view.  Somehow that doesn't sound like 2 hours of observing, but it was incredibly pleasurable and so nice not too have to wait up until silly o'clock!  Thanks for reading.

[John]

Very nice report Paul

It's looking good out there again tonight. I have my 12" dob on the patio, waiting ......

[FenlandPaul]

2 minutes ago, John said:

Very nice report Paul

It's looking good out there again tonight. I have my 12" dob on the patio, waiting ......

Thanks John.  I'm thinking about another session tonight as well, but wondering whether two in a row but would be downright reckless first week back at work!  But then....

[YKSE]

Great that you got nice session, Paul.

Interesting that you looked at  6751 in Aquila, I did it in my short session last Friday.

[Piero]

Great report Paul!

The sky is quite good tonight here too. The Saturn nebula jumped up nicely with an oiii filter!

[Paul73]

Nice write up. Some unusual targets too.

The sky was only so so here. But, it was warm and I could see stars!!! I'll be going for three in a row tonight.

SQM App sounds interesting. And, I may need to look out a copy of "The Secrets of The Deep". I've tried several targets highlighted in others' observing threads and found them to be well worth the effort.

Paul

[Davesellars]

A good session and interesting planetary nebulae!   6826 I've observed and had it down as very stellar like in appearance until I used much more magnification - I didn't realise it was a blinking PN at the time...

6781 sounds like a good challenge.  Are you using any OIII filter on these PNs?  Only sometimes I bother with them if they are proving difficult to view directly that extra gain in contrast can sometimes help depending on the type of PN.  

[FenlandPaul]

12 minutes ago, Davesellars said:

6781 sounds like a good challenge.  Are you using any OIII filter on these PNs?  Only sometimes I bother with them if they are proving difficult to view directly that extra gain in contrast can sometimes help depending on the type of PN.  

I've not yet got an OIII filter, but it's on the list for next year.  I heard a very good talk by Owen Brazell at Northampton's astro soc a few weeks ago, and he highly recommended OIII to bring out the contrast of quite a few PNs.  He had some really good data on filter brand effectiveness too, and I've since seen something on Cloudy Nights that shows similar results.

Paul

[Paul73]

An OIII is a must for he PN hunter.

UHC is good but OIII will really drag out the detail.

Paul

[John]

4 hours ago, FenlandPaul said:

I've not yet got an OIII filter, but it's on the list for next year.  I heard a very good talk by Owen Brazell at Northampton's astro soc a few weeks ago, and he highly recommended OIII to bring out the contrast of quite a few PNs.  He had some really good data on filter brand effectiveness too, and I've since seen something on Cloudy Nights that shows similar results.

Paul

We had Owen give this talk at Bristol AS - very interesting stuff !

I've been using UHC and O-III filters for a decade now though so he was "preaching to the converted" there 

I still prefer to view nebulae "filter free" if it's rewarding to do so but for some objects using an O-III just makes a "night and day" difference.

Last night it was interesting to cycle through "no filter - UHC - O-III - no filter" on objects such as the Dumbell Nebula and see the varying presentation of the object. On the Blue Snowball though I found that no filter produced the most pleasing views.

It's fun to experiment

[Special K]

Nice report, Paul, and quite a few things mentioned here I've never seen yet. It's great to be worry free from getting up early!  My last assignment was terrible for that and cut into my scope sessions pretty heavily.