Frustrating, but eventually rewarding nights viewing

[Knighty2112]

Last night was the best chance to be had to do some observing unhindered by any cloud cover, so got my Celestron SE goto mount and C8 SCT outside just after 10pm. Planned to use my wifi connection on the mount with my iPad Air, but after 4 failures to do the 3 star alignment required by Sky Safari, I then just used the hand controller on the mount to align things up. Sadly with the C8 scope still the alignment was not bringing any objects in the FOV correctly, so I decided to take the C8 off the mount and use my Opticstar AR90S f5.5 'frac to see how that performed. After alignment with the handcontroller again, I slewed around to Vega, M57 and M13, all of which fell into the centre FOV pretty much spot on, so looks like the was a balancing issue with the C8 I need to sort out. Strange, 'cos I've never had an issue with the C8 on the mount before.

Either way, after an initial 45 minutes wasted time faffing around with the C8 I eventually got my observing session underway. I had planned on looking at some objects in Sagittarius, but this was now behind my house mostly, and didn't fancy moving the scope and mount, and then setting up from scratch again in the back garden, plus there are too many street lamps shedding their light into the back garden anyway, so that makes it much harder to observe from. After cruising round the old favourites (M57, M13, M92, NGC7662,  NGC6543 etc etc) I then tried M27 (Dumbell nebula) in Vulpedula with my Celestron 18 X-Cel EP in the small 'frac. This normally gives me a good indication of the sky conditions, and sure enough M27 was easy to make out and observe. Not far away in Pegasus, the globular cluster M15 was again easy enough to spot. I then upped my EP to my 10mm Tele Vue Delos and resolved things a little more on the glob. Hopping around the sky a whole on some other globs and open clusters, I then decided to see what Bode's nubulea were looking like (M81 & M82). With both fitting nicely in the FOV in my EP the where very easy to make out, even with the yucky LP where I live. I tried M101 in Ursa Major too, but couldn't make this galaxy out, but could just make out M51 lower down in Ursa Major. 

After this I thought I'd try for some new planetary nebula's I'd not seen yet, so headed over to NGC7009 (Saturn nebula) in Aquarius. Although I couldn't see much of a resemblence to Saturn it was easy to make out as a planetary nebula. Next came M74 (Little Dumbbell nebula) in Perseus. This was small and faint, but after observing for a while became much easier to see, especially with averted vision. It had now  just gone past midnight, and alas I was getting tired, so I had a look at another planetary in Cygnus to finish off with which I'd seen a few times before, NGC6829 (Blinking Planetary). This was again very easy to see in the scope & EP, and finished off a rewarding session where I saw two new objects (M74 & NGC7009).

I had also hoped to observe Uranus last night too, but it would not come into a favourable position to observe for another hour or so, so feeling chuffed after finally getting the mount and second scope to work well I headed off to Zedland for some sleep.  

[John]

Some good targets there Gus - nice report

M101 is awkward I find. It's face on and the surface brightness is faint. Superb under a really dark sky and a large aperture but I've never found it that good from home even with my 12".

Planetary nebs are really interesting - each has it's own character

 

[Knighty2112]

2 hours ago, John said:

Some good targets there Gus - nice report

M101 is awkward I find. It's face on and the surface brightness is faint. Superb under a really dark sky and a large aperture but I've never found it that good from home even with my 12".

Planetary nebs are really interesting - each has it's own character

 

M101 sounds as elusive as M33 unless under dark skies then John.