Postcard from Wales

[Paz]

I have been to Wales many times over the last few years since starting observing but it has always been foiled by cloud apart from a few minutes on Saturn last summer before cloud rolled in.

I was in Wales again this last week and it was cloudy almost all week. However on Wednesday the cloud cleared a bit in the evening. I went out to have a try for Mercury at sunset (with a 10x25 monocular!) and had no luck spotting it but it did look worth setting up. I had my ST120 and Porta II mount plus a bag of bits and pieces. My dad was with me which made it an extra special occasion as we don't get the chance to observe very often. I had brought a 9x50 finder rather than a RDF as the 9x50 means I can find and aim at anything with the finder and I don't have to swap eyepieces in and out to aim through the main scope. I had a Baader semi apo filter in at first for the moon/planets. I also positioned the scope behind a chest-high hedge to block some of the wind as we were on the coast.

Aligning the finder using Jupiter it was quite low and featureless in the twilight with only 2 of the 4 moons visible at first (only viewed at 24x at this point)

Saturn was higher and clearer, but upping the magnification to 150x made it obvious that the wind was vibrating the scope. This added a constant blur to the image and also made it harder to find a good focus and these two things contrived to limit the quality of the views but I was so stoked to even have a chance to get out that I wasn't bothered. The A ring was dimmer than the B ring but no Cassini division was spotted. I saw 2 nearby objects - one I confirmed as Triton just below Saturn (Magnitude 9.1) the other was at 2 o'clock - it cold have been Iapetus but that was Magnitude 11.7. I saw Triton every time I looked but I never saw the other star or moon again and think I imagined it. My dad could not see Triton and nor could a visitor who came over to see what we were up to. He was from the Brecon Beacons and mentioned how dark the skies are there. He had a look at the Moon also and was very impressed.

Then a big group came up to us to see what we were looking at - a whole family from grand parents through to grandchildren. There followed lots of excitement when I said we were looking at Saturn, which to them just looked like a star near to the moon. They all had a look and had lots of questions - how far is it, what kind of telescope is that, how do you know that is saturn(!), the questions were literally non-stop! None of the group could see Triton although I explained where it was. They also had a look at the moon and that got more wows plus leading to the highly scientific conclusion that the moon is not made of cheese. I pointed out Jupiter low down and they were amazed(!). They asked what a star was higher up - all I said was its name (Arcturus) and they looked amazed that I knew(!!!). Then they left and it was just me and my dad again.

We had another look at Jupiter at 150x - all 4 moons were visible by now and 2 main equatorial belts but the quality was poor and we moved on.

I showed my Dad Antares - deep orange and wobbling/sparkling a bit with the atmosphere and I guess also CA from the scope. Defocussing turned it into a properly multicoloured ball. No sign of anything like M4 or NGC6144 I guess due to too much moonlight plus thin cloud hanging around plus scope-wind-vibe.

We had to pack up soon so we had a brief look at a few other things, all viewed at 60x...

We then had a look at M13 - I struggled to find the keystone naked eye but once I did I found M13 straight away as it has become familiar. A very nice sight at 60x not simply a fuzzy patch but structure was only soft/subtle.

Then we had a look at M57 - I found this even quicker as the launching point for hopping was Vega which needs no searching! This had shape but no structure.  

Lastly we had a look at Epsilon Lyra - E1 maybe looked extended but never split, E2 looked maybe split in the odd moment, but we did not look for long and did not have time to up the magnification.

We packed up and within 15 minutes the clouds were over and nothing was visible any more - so we had timed it well.

I realised afterwards that we had done the whole session without using maps or sky safari other than to check the positions of the moons around Saturn and Jupiter - this is a long way from when I used to spend many sessions searching for something like M57 using maps and phones before eventually finding it!

The highlight was sharing a session with my dad and entertaining the visitors who had come over out of curiosity - it is as rewarding to share simple sights with others as it is to look at more exotic things ones-self.

[cotterless45]

Lovely report, it's great when folk first look through a scope,

Nick.

[MarsG76]

Nice report... it's always a good feeling when initially you might think that the conditions are so poor that you might not see anything but that at the end of the session you realize that you actually saw quite a few objects.