A bit... meh!

[Davesellars]

It all looked so promising. Nicely clear skies and no Moon. I didn't manage to get out until 11pm however I setup with the C8 pretty quickly. I'd have a good hour or so and have to call it a day but better than nothing...

I started with the now obligatory M13. Focus seemed a little hard to obtain with the RACI and M13 I noticed seemed to shimmering in and out of view. Through the eyepiece it seemed OK though I wasn't able to apply a lot of magnification on it this time restricted to 116x The nearby galaxy NGC 6207 was visible but rather faded out.

NGC 6802 Open Cluster (New) - I failed last time I attempted this but it was in much worse conditions. As it's tight next to the coat-hanger asterism and between(ish) two pairs of stars it's position is fairly easy to mark out. Uff. Took a while to get this one though it is tough indeed! I managed fleeting glimpses of something at 116x so I pushed up to 190x with the ES82 6.7 and again something was there more averted vision... Occasionally there would be about 6 or 7 stars that seemed to resolve and show themselves over a faint patch of light. I confirmed it with my 6mm BCO which I was able to hold the vision longer to the open cluster.

NGC 6781 Planetary Nebula (mag 11.6) (New) - A reasonable size disk of light pretty much perfectly round. I worked through all magnifications but 67x with the Televue 19mm Panoptic seemed to produce the brightest image showing some contrast between the outer edge of the nebula and the centre. Higher magnification just gave a more featureless disk.

NGC 6633 Open Cluster (New) - Really nice large bright cluster. Many stars of different magnitude filling the view of the 11mm ES82. The cluster appears to extend further north-east but I don't know if is part of the cluster's designation.

Then... It all went a bit pear shaped for the H400 objects...

NGC 6426 Globular Cluster mag (11) - Fail. Perhaps getting a bit low and in to the murk. Spent quite a bit of time trying to pull this one out.

Then in Aquarius after taking a quick stop at M2 which look pretty nice (small) but resolved OK nothing special at 116 a few galaxies...

NGC 7606 Galaxy mag 10.8 - Fail
NGC 7727 Galaxy mag 10.6 - Fail
NGC 7723 Galaxy mag 11.2 - Fail.
All of the above absolutely nothing not even a mere averted vision glimpse. Ok they are not particularly high up at 22 degrees but should be sufficient. It did look rather murkier than I've seen it on other nights towards the South and again I was having an issue with focusing on stars. Perhaps the transparency was really not that good at all in this direction.

I could see the Milky Way fine enough as it stretched over the zenith. Actually it was pretty clear from Perseus right over to Cygnus. I though to just give the Veil a go without any filter (as I hadn't brought one out with me). This, of course was a spectacular failure...  Meh.

I packed up as it was now gone 1am somewhat a little annoyed at the conditions which seemed to trounce an otherwise excellently clear Moonless night. Oh well... Hopefully tomorrow night will be rather more fruitful! 

[Paul73]

Same here. Got a few nice clusters and some new planetaries up high. But, galaxies were a complete washout.

Better luck tomorrow.

Paul

[FenlandPaul]

You still managed to pack in quite a bit, Dave!  Conditions here were fairly poor too, despite the apparently clear sky.  There must have been a high altitude haze that simply stopped much getting through, and the seeing was attrocious.

[Stu]

Some you win, some you lose Dave. It's strange how some nights look good but turn out not to be. Nice to report the failures aswell as success though, hope you have better luck tomorrow (or rather today now!)

[Ouroboros]

Thick cloud cover over here in Cornwall.  I was looking enviously at the apparently clear skies across the rest of southern England on the satellite image. Sorry the seeing wasn't good. Annoyingly it had been a lovely clear day and I had everything set up when the cloud rolled in so had to pack everything away. 

On the positive side it was the first time this 'season' I got to assemble, test and play with everything gain. I had a few dummy runs reminding myself how to use EQMOD polar alignment, the game pad, Carte du Ciel etc. So not time wasted. 

[Davesellars]

It wasn't just me then... Sometimes this site seems to have its own little climate with more humidity / low fog but I think the humidity was just really high last night full stop causing dreadful seeing and poor transparency for anything that wasn't high up. I should have concentrated on the clusters remaining in Cygnus rather than faffing nearer the horizon after which it was too late to do more.  Oh well, you live and learn....  

[DeepSkyBagger]

That's not a bad session. The objects you didn't see do have their own problems. NGC 6426 is a very low surface brightness object. The most significant factor in the visibility of a globular cluster is not its magnitude, but its concentration. 6426 is a class IX, which makes it pretty loose, and thus hard to see. Based just on magnitudes, several of the Palomar globular clusters should be easy objects - a couple of them are brighter than 10th magnitude, but they are incredibly difficult to see. I've only ever caught two of them from dark sky sites, and even then they were extremely difficult objects. 6426 will require good dark skies and it'll need to be caught near culmination.

The three galaxies - their problem is that they're a bit low for murky polluted northern skies. I've seen all three, but I got them all at the Galloway Star Party under excellent skies.  Don't give up on those three though, given a reasonable night, you should get them.

[Davesellars]

Thanks for the info on 6426!   I'm sure I'll be able to get this and those galaxies on a much better night.  Fortunately those do come around occasionally...   Hopefully I'll get one before Aquarius disappears again...