Observing with my new goto mount

[GavStar]

I've just received a new goto mount, the skywatcher AZ-GTi. Tonight was my first proper session with it and the goto made it a very different (in a good way) experience. I used my Tak FC100DF and only one eyepiece all evening - 17mm 92 ES. 

In my light polluted skies of SW London it can be a real challenge to find objects manually due to the washed out skies and lack of stars visible. However the goto changes that completely. The goto was not super accurate but did generally put the objects into the eyepiece fov and this enabled me to view many more objects than I normally would in an evening. 

In future, I will spend more time on each one but tonight I just enjoyed whizzing around seeing objects I haven't seen before and also old favourites. I also used my lumicon oiii filter on the ring and dumbell nebulas and the astronomik uhc on the omega Nebula. The oiii really improved the view for the planetary nebulas and the uhc turned the omega nebula from an invisible object into one that was pretty impressive. I targeted several double stars that were really quite beautiful as well.

So objects viewed tonight were M31, eta cas,Almaak, double cluster, M34,  Cor Caroli, Mizar, m3, m13, m92, double double, m57, albireo, m71, m17, m27, m29, m15, m39, m2, m30, m52.

[John]

Good haul for a semi-urban sky Gavin

 

 

[Stu]

Nice one Gavin. As you know I was doing very similar things not too far from you; same mount, same scope (except a C not an F  ) and either a 24mm Panoptic, 3 to 6 Nag zoom or my lovely BGOs.

I thought the  seeing was fairly poor last night. Saturn looked very wobbly, although Cassini was readily visible due to the lovely contrast.

I managed an overlapping but different set of objects:

M57, M13, M11, M8, M20, M21, M16, M17, Alberio and Double Double. The add still looked lovely at x123 despite the poor seeing.

I also caught Pi Aquilae and Delta Cygnus, two nice tight doubles.

I only had  Baader 8nm OIII filter to hand, a bit aggressive for this scope but it still allowed me to see the nebulosity in the Sagittarius nebulae despite the bright conditions.

[GavStar]

Sounds good Stu. I think with our full feathertouch focusers our scopes are more like an FC-100DZ than a DF or DL ?

For the only time I can remember I just stayed with the one eyepiece and it made a nice change not swapping out eyepieces regularly. Also showed me how much more comfortable the ES 92 is than my E17 even though you lose quite a bit of fov.

Its the second time the oiii has worked wonders for me (previous time was the Veil on iow). Also first time I've used my astronomik uhc and was very impressed with the transformation on m17. First impressions are that I prefer it to my dgm ngb. I'm getting into this filter lark!

On the double stars I really enjoyed those doubles that had one bright and one much less bright star - very pretty and not something I've seen much before.

[PeterW]

Goto... :-) like shooting fish in a barrel! Had a good session once jumping between globs and comparing them. Of course if you mess up the initial alignment it turns into an infernal pain! (I have since got kit to eliminate this risk).

I was "lying down on the job" last night (to escape the streetlights and allow me the best chance of seeing any Perseids (total 3... 20 satellites as well). Was using much smaller kit (homebrew 2x54bins). Of double stars I found I could split epsilon Lyra naked eye which seems like it's a challenge and omincon1 Cygni has nice colours.

Filters (and copious straylight baffling) can make quite a difference.

 

Cheers

 

Peter

[Stu]

5 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Goto... :-) like shooting fish in a barrel!

I don't really need it under a dark sky, but finding stuff in the kind of LP we put up with is time consuming so it does make a big difference to how much you get to see.

Your eyes must be good, I don't think I can split Epsilon Lyrae with the naked eye.

Hopefully more Persieds soon, 3 is better than my 1, but still a bit pants!  

[Piero]

Congratulations for your new mount! It seems to work very well given the number of observed targets under light polluted skies! Super! 

Last night the sky was clear and steady here too. The Tak gave me really wonderful views. What a telescope!