Iris, Uranus & Neptune

[Knighty2112]

After getting some further unexpected clear skies last night, I had two sessions to view objects; first one from just gone 10pm until around 11:45pm. Pleased to say that I got my wifi working first time last night, and for the first part of the session I used my AR90S f5.5 'frac on my goto mount. Did the three star alignment first time and it was working great, with most objects not far away from the centre of view OK. Cruised round the sky a little, looking at all the usual subjects. M27 Dumbbell was showing pretty good too, although some slight high altitude cloud kept skimming in the way occasionally. Bode's were easy to see in the wide field view of my EP using my 10mm Delos EP. 

After a break inside from about 11:45pm, I came back out at just gone 1am, and set up my C8 SCT on my goto mount which caused me issues last night when trying to use it on the mount. I had previously doubled up the dovetail bar to allow me to position the C8 a little further forward on the mount so that I could reach zenith OK when viewing objects. This I think caused balancing issues which manifested last night after initial alignment. I took off this extra dovetail bar I had fitted to the scope, and sat the scope back in the mount as far forward as it would allow with just the normal dovetail bar, and did a three star alignment OK first time also as well. After quickly checking that objects were lining up all OK again, I got down to viewing both Uranus & Neptune with my 18mm X-Cel EP in the SCT. Both planets were very easy to see, and even Neptune stood out even though it was small still, it was clear that it wasn't a star when looking at it through the EP. High altitude wispy cloud had built up a little more than earlier, so I knew my time was limited at the scope, so I had a quick look for a new object to see. After checking SkySafari, I found the asteroid Iris was in Aries, which was nicely placed for me to try to observe it. After tapping on Iris on SkySafari, the mount slewed across to its position, and after aligning things up and checking with SkySafari again to match up the stars etc with Iris in the FOV, there she was sitting at about the upper 2 o'clock position in my EP. My second asteroid ever seen! Woohoo!

The forecast again for tonight is looking pretty good, so hope to track Iris down again as it sails through the solar system. All in all even though seeing or sky conditions weren't at their best, I had two good sessions to observe with last night.   

[Piero]

Very nice session! 

Lots of rain here last night but hopefully the sky will clear up today.

[Littleguy80]

Good report, Gus. I've not gone asteroid hunting yet but definitely want to give it a go. I have friend who tracked an asteroid as part of his degree and got his data on that asteroid published on the NASA website! Saw Neptune and Uranus a few weeks back. Very fun to see the further out planets!

[Knighty2112]

16 minutes ago, Piero said:

Very nice session! 

Lots of rain here last night but hopefully the sky will clear up today.

Fingers crossed for you for clear skies  Piero. So far supposed to be good again where I live tonight, but you know how changeable the British weather can be so that's not always a given alas!  

[Knighty2112]

14 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

Good report, Gus. I've not gone asteroid hunting yet but definitely want to give it a go. I have friend who tracked an asteroid as part of his degree and got his data on that asteroid published on the NASA website! Saw Neptune and Uranus a few weeks back. Very fun to see the further out planets!

Thanks Neil. My brother and his wife have just gotten into astronomy, and my brother was convinced he'd seen Pluto about a week or so ago in his 5" SCT blazing away at about magnitude 5. When I told him I think that Pluto it at least 10 magnitudes less than this and that I doubt if I could see it in my C8 SCT at home which suffers the same amount of LP as he does he looked a little disheartened. He's now also getting the bug for Imaging too after getting a camera from RVO! 

[Littleguy80]

1 hour ago, Knighty2112 said:

my brother was convinced he'd seen Pluto about a week or so ago in his 5" SCT blazing away at about magnitude 5.

Hehe we've all been there. I thought I saw M51 about 2 months before I actually did!