I wish they all went like this...

[Davesellars]

Well, it's been a busy and chaotic week starting with the arrival of our 3rd daughter and so it was nice to see a clear night to end the week on just to relax a bit. So on Sunday night (Monday morning) after getting the kids to bed etc it was about midnight by the time I started the first observation after lugging myself to my site and setting up.

Of course a night with no Moon and clear deserves to use the big guns so to speak so the 12" dob was used.  I started out checking the collimation, by some miracle it was still bang on and didn't need changing (that's a first...).  I didn't have a big plan for the night's objects but I wanted to get round a few galaxies in Pegasus and just have a fairly chilled out session visiting some known targets...

It looked good.  Nice and bright stars and plenty of 'em...  Double cluster naked eye and the Milky Way easily visible and later would show some really nice structure one my eyes had properly dark adapted.

First a bit of a whistle-stop tour of some nice easy objects that I could just point and shoot to:  M13 and NGC 6207 which showed nice and bright so a reasonable tick there for transparency.  Double Cluster and then quickly on to M31, M32 showing really quite bright this time with the care and a reasonable amount extra to the core.  M110 showed brighter than I can remember it before.

While it's summer I'm checking out the Veil nebula at every opportunity.   This time I used the 17.3mm Delos with the Astronomik OIII filter.  The extra contrast given by the focal length over the 24mm Panoptic used the previous time was a real winner.  OK, I sacrificed a bit of FOV but the clarity of the nebula was staggering.  Only the central area was more difficult I felt with not having the wider view but the Eastern and Western sections were amazing and full of detail with little wisps and tendrils everywhere.

Right. time for a challenge...

M33 - The position is easy enough to find and so many times I have failed with M33 it's such an irksome object to see with being so darn large and diffuse...  Certainly the best view I've had was one spectuclarly transparent night was with my 120ST.  This is not an easy object with such low FOV.  The core at least was immediately visible with the 24mm Panoptic and some very diffuse patches around it.  Moving to the 17.3mm Delos things got a touch easier with the core quite distinct and more interestingly the nebulous patch NGC 604 was very clear and bright.  With the ES Hbeta it seemed almost like there was a proper shape to the galaxy with further patches of light perhaps illuminating or showing the arms better   NGC 604 was certainly quite larger as well as I think the nebulous patch NGC 595.

After that I thought I'd step up the challenge a notch further and go for perhaps one of the toughest objects (IMHO) on the Herschel 400:

NGC 6946 - The Fireworks galaxy.  Man, even with the extra aperture this is one tough nut to crack  Very easy at least to see the position of the galaxy - This shows as only very diffuse patch of light only helped by averted vision.  There was no real core at all but the area of light was of a reasonable size.  Certainly not spirals visible.  I was happy that I could at least see something this time though.

NGC 6936 Open Cluster - This was in very close proximity to the above and showed quite a nice cluster of decent size.

Not too far away was the Iris nebula. Very bright stellar appearance with a touch "extra" around it.

OK, so on to some galaxies in Pegasus which is now perfectly positioned.

NGC 7814 Mag 10.6 Edge-on spiral galaxy. Trying to see the dark lane that runs through it with some success but it's difficult to hold it's a touch fatter and brighter in the centre.  Using the 14 and then the 10mm Delos to hone in on the detail.

NGC 7331 - Mag 9.3 Spiral Galaxy - Nice and bright particularly in the centre but a fair extension around the core best viewed with the 17.3mm Delos, higher power not really serving much this time.

Stephan's Quintet (Galaxy group in Pegasus) - I'd only had the mearest of glimpses before with my 8" SCT so I was pretty keen to give this a go with the extra aperture!  The group is small in size and certainly difficult to resolve in to distinct galaxies without some power.  This time however, I managed 4 distinct patches of light.  They are actually of reasonable brightness and so the 10mm Delos for 150x helped considerably after the 17.3mm Delos just to resolve these light patches of which were quite small.

NGC 7479 Mag 10.97 Barred spiral galaxy - Certainly easy to see the bright bar running through the galaxy core giving a good length to the galaxy but could distinguish and spiral coming from this.

Reasonably close by was a group of 3 galaxies on the H2 list:
NGC 7626 mag 11.13 elliptical, NGC 7619 mag 11.1 elliptical and NGC 7623 mag 12.8 spiral.  The two ellipticals were very easy and quite oblong although small. The spiral was much more difficult although averted vision helped.

After that I switched over to the other side of the sky to M81 and M82.
M81: massive bright core.  I can never see any damn spirals on this though!
M82: Great detail!  Went to 200x with the Pentax XW 7mm showing a riot of mottled-ness and central area cut distinctly.
NGC 3077 - A really decent area surrounding the core was shown (mostly this has previously shown just a stellar appearance)
NGC 2976 Mag 10 spiral galaxy.- Of reasonable brightness but nothing distinct.

NGC 772 mag 10.3 spiral galaxy in Pisces - I chose this one because I hadn't seen it before and on my list... also it seems an interesting shape!  Certainly it did not disappoint with the galaxy showing quite non-uniform almost like a comma.

So that was it.  Last observation was around 3.30am more or less... My stuff was now totally soaked in dew to boot.  Some light high cloud has started to drift in.  Orion was now up just about now up which was nice to see.  Certainly it had been quite productive and at the same time a very relaxed session.  Mostly everything had been easy to find and a frustration free night which is always nice even if the sound of something pouncing on something else quite close by made me jump a bit while at the eyepiece.

Thanks for reading and hope the next session is not too far away!

[harrym]

Congratulations on the birth of your daughter!

Wonderful report, sounds like the aperture fever has paid off. The Fireworks is indeed a tough one; we had the LX200 on it at a society observing night in May when the supernova was near its brightest, and while most people could see the SN which was about mag 12.5, only the most experienced observers claimed to have seen the galaxy. The SN is still about mag 13.5 so you probably saw it even if you didn't realise it.

Well done with Stephan's Quintet. Given that 150x was the highest magnification you used, I'm guessing you didn't split the pair NGC 7318A/B - they do need magnification. 300x certainly does it but it's probably possible with less.

I definitely need to give the M33 nebulae a proper go this autumn!

[alan potts]

Lovely report and congratulations on the birth of your daughter.

Alan

[niallk]

Congrats on the new little bundle of joy, and great report!

I've found with my smallies that the average time between feeds/nappy changes/waking/crying/needing a cuddle was just about equal to dark adaption time...!  

[John]

Excellent report Dave and some superb targets acquired

I got a few of those with my 12" dob last night as well  - when you get "in the groove" with a scope of that aperture it's amazing how many galaxies and other faint fuzzies that you can pull out of the sky