Italy - night three

[Piero]

Transparency: average

Seeing: very stable, 24C

 

M51. Light pollution is too bad over here for hunting galaxies. Still, I managed to spot the core, which appeared like a very faint cloudy, but nothing much really. Well, never mind there are other targets!  

Rasalgethi (alpha Her). A beautiful double star and a long term friend of my TV60! I like to spend time in the North of Ophiucus, and particularly following the route starting from Rasalgethi and moving East crossing Rasalague, IC4665 (Summer Beehive Cluster - now also called Poseidon's Trident Cluster in Stellarium), the pointers 71-72 Oph, NGC6633, and finally IC4756 (Graff's cluster). Sometimes, it is nice to continue towards Alya, a nice double star and NGC6755 in Aquila.

Moon. Nice first quarter showing a substantial amount of details along the terminator. I floated on the moon for about 1h from 34x to about 250x. Really beautiful sights. 

M13. A very common target, but always sublime to observe. As I'm not used to aperture, I'm always surprised to see how many stars form the complicate structure of this globular cluster. At 96x the image was already impressive and rather rich in detail to my eye even under this light polluted sky. At 192x, M13 was just stunning. The view was a bit dark of course, but the size of the all thing and the number of resolved stars gave me a beautiful memory.

M92. A beautiful target which is often forgotten because of its giant neighbour M13. I find this more impressive at high magnification. Very nice!

Double Double. While going through Lyra and it's main doubles, I stopped a bit on this famous pair of doubles. At 96x the split for both the doubles was very clear with a black line as separator.

M57. I observed this from 34x to 192x, filterless and using either an OIII or NPB filter. In my opinion it was gorgeous w/ or w/o filter. Without filter I could see the 13mag star above the nebula at 192x with direct vision.  

[Piero]

Some notes about eyepieces:

- the Docter works really well with the Zeiss Barlow (ZB) 2x. Very powerful combo on both planets and DSOs; 

- on this f6 dobson, I tend to use the groups: (35Pan, Docter, Docter+ZB) or (35Pan/20Lunt, Zeiss Zoom+VIP).

[chiltonstar]

Fantastic stuff Piero - how long are you back in Italy for?

Chris

[Astro Imp]

Great reports, seems like you're having a blast, thanks for taking the trouble to keep us updated.

[Davesellars]

Great report Piero! Some classic objects observed.  Don't you have a similar dob or something for use in Cambridge?

M13 I really love to observe at high power.  If you get a night with good seeing and transparency and dark...  it's truly spectacular at 200 to 250x really getting in to the core.

[Stu]

Very nice Piero. Glad you are enjoying the Docter and Zeiss combo, lovely kit  

Any sign of the propeller in M13?

[Piero]

Thank you, everybody!  

 

5 hours ago, chiltonstar said:

Fantastic stuff Piero - how long are you back in Italy for?

Chris

I am staying in Italy until 11 Sep, two weeks in total . So far the weather has been good but it might rain this weekend. I have a report #4 to post!  

 

 

38 minutes ago, Davesellars said:

Great report Piero! Some classic objects observed.  Don't you have a similar dob or something for use in Cambridge?

M13 I really love to observe at high power.  If you get a night with good seeing and transparency and dark...  it's truly spectacular at 200 to 250x really getting in to the core.

Unfortunately no dobsons in Cambridge, just refractors because of portability. These work very well though. I plan to get a dobson in the UK in the near future but there are other priorities to sort out first.

I believe a 12" like your should reveal a wonderful view for targets like M13 . With this 8", the exit pupil is rather small at 192x, but still good to reveal plenty of detail.  

 

 

 

29 minutes ago, Stu said:

Very nice Piero. Glad you are enjoying the Docter and Zeiss combo, lovely kit  

Any sign of the propeller in M13?

You know.. I was thinking about it while observing M13, and in particular looking for signs of the two propellers as indicated by you and John in another thread. In short, no I didn't spot it, but my suspect is that the exit pupil was just too small for it. I will certainly give it another go, using the zoom this time. Maybe there is a chance to detect something at around 150-160x.  

[Stu]

39 minutes ago, Piero said:

Thank you, everybody!  

 

I am staying in Italy until 11 Sep, two weeks in total . So far the weather has been good but it might rain this weekend. I have a report #4 to post!  

 

 

Unfortunately no dobsons in Cambridge, just refractors because of portability. These work very well though. I plan to get a dobson in the UK in the near future but there are other priorities to sort out first.

I believe a 12" like your should reveal a wonderful view for targets like M13 . With this 8", the exit pupil is rather small at 192x, but still good to reveal plenty of detail.  

 

 

 

You know.. I was thinking about it while observing M13, and in particular looking for signs of the two propellers as indicated by you and John in another thread. In short, no I didn't spot it, but my suspect is that the exit pupil was just too small for it. I will certainly give it another go, using the zoom this time. Maybe there is a chance to detect something at around 150-160x.  

I think I've seen it in a C8 before and 'perhaps' in the Tak in very good conditions. I think you suggested mag is probably better so give it a go!