Assortment Mixtures 2/1/17

[Timebandit]

 

The evening was cold with a touch of moisture in the air. And the car windscreen was starting to freeze up, looking at the temperature it was around -2.  I could see the sight of a brilliant light of Venus rather low in the sky just starting to go between a clear section of the neighbouring tree line. Refractor or reflector I thought, in all fairness a simple choice as I did not want to carry the 14" Dob about 40ft to get it into a suitable observing position.

The Az 4 mount was set up in the clear line of sight and then the 120ed refractor placed onto the mount. The brilliant light of Venus was clearly now in a suitable position to observe. The televues dielectric diagonal was placed in the scope and the Nagler 20mm was placed in to act as a finder for the planet. And locating the brilliant bright venus in the dark sky was easy.The Ortho were next out of the case with the Baader Genuine Ortho going in at the 18mm focal length and then with that followed the 6mm BGO. Venus was just so bright and spectacular shinning through the eyepieces, but in all fairness not a patch on my old favourite planets of Saturn and Jupiter . After sometime observing this planet move across the sky , I then noticed the moon starting to come into show through the trees in a Southwest direction. Venus was moving out of site line now behind the trees. The 20mm nagler was placed in the diagonal again and the scope moved over to the partial edge of the moon which was on show. The 20mm is excellent I find for an overall framing type of effect on the moon. But more detail was wanted and therefore despite the Pentax XW being available the old faithful BGO were again in favour and in the eyepiece diagonal holder. For some reason I just prefer the Ortho in the refractor, they do have great optical ability, but I think it is the smaller field of view to which I find concentrates my eye when I am observing at high power. I think sometimes this restricted fov helps stop the eye getting distracted and you are able to concentrate more on a particular location or target. After taking in some of the craters and mountains of the moon in which were showing in particular good detail this evening, due to the seeing conditions there was very little of the shimmer effect of atmospheric conditions that I seem to of experience over the last few months. After about 30mins the moon also now was going behind the tree line , so observing was stopped and the scope started to be packed away, the old face and fingers were a bit numb so could do with a bit of warmth. So inside for a warm up .

Later in the evening the sky was still clear the stars out on full parade and the old favourite of the unmistakable Orion was in a great position in the South. It was cold with ice on the path, but I could not resist the temptation of the cloudless night and the relatively steady atmospheric conditions (compared to what we have had recently anyway). The shed door was unlocked and the 14" OOuk was slide onto the viewing Deck, the scope was turned 90 degrees so it was in the line of the great constellation of Orion. The telrad was employed and first was a warm up with Betelgeuse.The 20mm  nagler was employed initially and then the Pentax XW 10mm and 7mm were employed. This great red/orange star is unmistakable and always reminds me of our own great star next to us, the sun. I then went down to  Rigel to take a look at this great blue super giant which I understand is around 775 light years from us. It still is fascinating how what images we are seeing through our scopes at that particular time has left as a light source possibly hundreds, or thousands, or millions of years ago, mind boggling☺. It was time to do some star splitting  and therefore the scope went into the Struve 761 area and then to sigma Orionis A,B,C,DE  for the star multiple.  Now it was time to turn the telrad onto below the belt area ,and go down to Orion sword . The 20mm nagler was the opener for this spectacular Nebula, and what a sight is was with M42 and M43 . These nebula never fail to impress and tonight due to the clear and relatively crisp atmospheric conditions these nebula where looking mighty impressive. The mass and clarity is the best I have seen this Nebula M42 and M43 appear for  a long time. The 20mm nagler captured this so well. I decided to employ the Pentax 10mm for a closer look and again this eyepiece was just  full of a great clarity and detail of the Nebula . The Pentax XW 7mm was then employed to go further into the trapezium . As the temperature was now at about -4, I finished off with a quick look at Iota Orionis and then Struve 745 and 747.  The scope and eyepieces were then put away to bed and time for me to warm up with an old favourite glass of port(well it is Christmas)? 

[John]

Very nice report - enjoyable read