ST80 fun

[kilix]

Hello

I think I need to share this session, even thou it's really nothing groundbreaking, but still.
So, my "better-than-average" observation site is located about a 1km up a really steep hill through the forest, where a nice meadow opens up on top of the hill. This way I merge astronomy with a bit of much needed movement. My back garden is terribly light polluted with all those new LED streetlights purchased with Eurofounds, so no point staying there and trying to spot anything else besides the Moon and planets. This is the reason I have only the ST80 and a 127SkyMax.
Yesterday I took the SkyWatcher ST80 for a spin, first time to this meadow. The scope fits in a small backpack with all accessories, tripod carried in hand, nothing terribly difficult.

So, I started with obvious M42, I could see the trapezium being not a single star even at 13x mag, with increase to 27x mag just barely resolving 4 stars of the trapezium. Barlowing that showed the nebula nicely in the FOV and a clear separation of the trapezium stars, a pleasant sight. I was kinda surprised how much nebular detail I could see in the ST80, maybe the seeing/darkness/transparency combo was really in my favour?

Then I spent some time "hunting" the M35, M36, M37, M38 clusters in/near Auriga. Auriga was quite high, so it was a bit difficult to point the scope where I wanted, but eventually I managed to see all of them (well, I could see them all with naked eye, the challenge was to point the scope accurately). Not much to write home about thou, in the 127Mak they are a "WOW" moment, not so much with the ST80.

Then obvious M44, which is a nice sight in a widefield scope like the ST80, and unobtainable in the Mak and afterwards I went quickly to M67, which I 'discovered' during my last observing session with ST80 from a different observing location. That was a big moment, I am sure most of you know the feeling, when you just faintly see something in the finder, you don't know what it is, you don't go for anything particular and bam - a nice star cluster, of which you know nothing, you feel like you are the first human who ever discovered it. Only later you confirm what you've seen in stellarium. This was the case with M67 and yesterday I went and tried to see some detail with this recent 'discovery' of mine. It was a nice sight in the 15mm eyepiece. Barlowing it did not improve the sights, the sky got dimmer, but I could not resolve more stars even after several minutes under blanket.

The pinnacle of the evening was the Leo triplet. I was curious if I could see that in a really small and cheap ST80, or if such objects are reserved only to bigger apertures. The funniest thing was how I found it - I moved the scope roughly by hand somewhere below leo's tail roughly along the line Zosma-Chort (as I remembered the location roughly from the planisphere), did not even look in the finder thinking 'I would not see anything there anyway' and there it was
Three small fuzzies, one of them blinking in and out of existence, only barely visible with averted vision, but there was no mistake - leo's triplet found at first try by roughly moving the scope, weird stuff.
I spent several minutes under the blanket. The best view was -again- with my much loved cheap 15mm ES70 eyepiece, barlowing it (2x) dimmed the background a lot, but also the third galaxy became invisible. 10mm ES70 eyepiece yielded no improvement on the image, only made it more difficult to use with tighter eye relief, so I kept the 15mm EP there and observed those three wisps of smoke at 27x mag. What is weird thou, is the fact, that the more I kept staring into the eyepiece the more they started disappearing. NGC3628 disappeared first ofc, but also M66 and M65 seemed to vanish the more I stared. So I had to take breaks, like 3min observing, then 15sec looking away from the EP and again 3min observing, etc. Staring intermittently did not improve my view. That is contrary to my previous experience with planets, nebulae, or doubles. I do not know how much time I spent there, but suddenly it was 22:00, time really flies by when you enjoy the sky.

That's it, I am really pleasantly surprised with the ST80, backpackable scope, lightweight, but still able to provide tons of fun. I really did not expect to see all three leo triplet galaxies, so pleasant surprise there. I also like the challenge of actually seeing some of the more difficult objects with an 'underdog' type of scope.

[Chris]

Nice session The ST80 is a mighty little scope, I've never seen the triplet without imaging it. what kind of tripod/tripod head did you use?

[laudropb]

Very nice report of a very productive session. I often just use a ST 102 scope on an AZ 3 mount. So easy and quick to set up and the views are surprisingly good.

[andrew63]

Great report - and seeing the leo triplet is groundbreaking in an ST80 - especially the the 'slender one'  These and the family of fast achro. really excel under the fine conditions that you have. I also find sometimes blinking, or closing your eye for a few moments can make faint objects suddenly come in to few briefly.  

andrew

[happy-kat]

Lovely observing report

[Ags]

Well done! Under city skies my ST80 can't even show the Auriga clusters which are at the edge of visibility with my now-sold 102mm mak. But I did take the ST80 into the himalayas and I got pretty good skies there! The Orion neb was like an astrophoto and clusters sparkled in the eyepiece. 

[kilix]

2 hours ago, Chris Lock said:

Nice session The ST80 is a mighty little scope, I've never seen the triplet without imaging it. what kind of tripod/tripod head did you use?

SW AZ3 head+tripod with homemade counterweight and a bit better locknut for ALT movement.

2 hours ago, laudropb said:

Very nice report of a very productive session. I often just use a ST 102 scope on an AZ 3 mount. So easy and quick to set up and the views are surprisingly good.

Yeah, the ST102 is in my sights as a logical improvement over ST80. Twice as expensive, but may be well worth it. But I won't order it, I must see it in person, because I am concerned about portability. Portability is the reason ST80 gets so much light. It gets actually used more than the SkyMax because of ease of use&ease of setup and ofc portability.

Ags - I believe himalayan skies are jaw dropping even with naked eye

[cloudsweeper]

Good session!  The widefield views with that 'scope must be great.

And just "aiming" your 'scope in the right region is often quite effective - I recently had good results with two nice clusters just by getting the red dot in the region between two well-separated stars.  Of course, the widefield 'scope comes into its own for this sort of approach!

Doug.

[Size9Hex]

Nice one! There's much to be said for kit that's easy to use and easy to transport to darker skies! Hope you continue to get many good views from it. The Astro League have a few good observing programs on their website for binocular users - bino Messier, bino DSOs and bino double stars. These make for great inspiration when the skies are dark but aperture is limited! 

[alan potts]

Very nice report, I was looking at the Leo triplet last night myself though with a slightly larger scope, know what you mean about those lights though, gone mad with them in town which is 4 and a bit miles away, not too much of a problem but once I never saw any light from here.

Alan

[Stu]

21 hours ago, kilix said:

even thou it's really nothing groundbreaking, but still.

Most of my reports are nothing groundbreaking either, but still it is great to read about your session and achievements.

Getting the triplet in the ST80 is an excellent job though!! Your skies at the dark site have been fairly decent. I got this in the 4" at DIYPSP last weekend, but as you found, NGC3628 was pretty tough. There, but needing averted vision most of the time.

Regarding finding things, much of the time I do like you, and just point the scope at the right area of sky using the Rigel or Telrad, then pan from there. It works very well. I do sometimes star hop if the LP kills off any naked eye stars in the vicinity meaning I can't get close enough by 'dead reckoning!'

Looking forward to the next ST80 report!  

[John]

Great report !

I had a lot of fun with an ST80 a few years back. I managed to get nice wide views of the Veil Nebula with a UHC filter

I then aquired an ST102 which had better light grasp but quite a bit more CA and didn't quite have the charm of the ST80. Didn't keep that one for long