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Decent session under a dark sky with a foot of aperture


John

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Last night was a pretty dark night for these parts. With the naked eye I could see 8/9 stars in the Great Square of Pegasus down to around mag 5.9. A good expanse of the Milky Way was flowing through Cygnus and nearly across to Cassiopeia. As they rose higher, the double cluster in Persus and M31 in Andromeda were naked eye visible. This is about as good as it gets from my back yard :smiley:

I had put the 12" dobsonian out again earlier which was the right choice given the conditions. The only snag was that I felt a bit tired for some reason so I decided to stick to easy targets and enjoy the views without trying to push back the frontiers (so to speak !) of my observing.

- The galactic nova in Scutum, the catchily named ASASSN-17hx. It was still looking around magnitude 8.5 I'd say, by a small margin I thought the brightest of the little "diamond" pattern of 4 stars that it forms. 

- Some double stars to check that the scope was cooled and collimated: Pi Aquillae, Epsilon Lyrae and the old favorite of Alberio in Cygnus.

- Messier 57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra. It was pretty much fully dark by now and I observed M57 at high powers (200x - 300x) to see if I could catch it's central star. I couldn't as it happened but I did see the 13th and 14th mag stars close in either side of the Ring and the nebula itself was displayed wonderfully - about as close to the deep sky images as my visual observing can get. I much prefer the unfiltered view of this object.

- Messier 27, the Dumbbell Nebula in Vulpecula. Used lower power on this one to start with and then ramped up to 200x to catch the 12th magnitude central star, which popped out of the heart of the nebulosity obligingly along with some other faint foregound stars scattered across the face of the fat hour glass shaped nebula. I added an O-III filter to the eyepiece and the nebula grew it's "wings" of outer nebulosity and became shaped rather like a giant misty eye. 

- With the O-III filter now installed in the hyper-wide angle Ethos 21 eyepiece I moved on to Cygnus and my favouite deep sky object, the Veil Nebula. Both the east and west sections were very well shown with the western "witches broom" segment looking like it's namesake down to the "bristles" at one end which trailed of into space. The "handle" of the "broom" looked strongly 3-dimensional as a twisted pipe of nebulosity. The eastern "bridal veil" section was a huge graceful curve which crossed the entire 1.3 degree field of view. Pickerings Wisp looked complex and extended tonight and there were numerous other faint strands and patches of nebulosity showing in this massive target. You could spend a whole night just on this object :icon_biggrin:

- Another well known planetary nebula now with the "Blue Snowball" NGC 7662 in Andromeda. Again the good conditions allowed high powers to be used and this well defined object becomes even more intersting at 300x with the brighter, curved, internal structures becoming visible within the encircling disk of nebulosity. The best views of the Blue Snowball, for me, are without a filter.

- I also went back into Cygnus to find the delicate curve of the Crescent Nebula. Again the O-III filter bought this out nicely. Having read Gerry/Jetstream's piece on the Little Veil nebula in Cygnus I had a look for that with the O-III filter near the star just south of the star 12 Cygni. I may have seen some faint indications of this object but then again, maybe not. My skies even at their best can't compete with Gerry's Canadian dark site :smiley:

- Removing the O-III I moved to Messier 15, the splendid globular cluster in Pegasus. This object was looking superb last night and I was able to use really high magnification to delve into it's heart. At 318x the rich cluster of 100's of thousands of stars filled around half the field of view and the tightly packed central region seemed to almost "squrm" with resolved and unresolved points of light. These bright globulars really do respond to the aperture of the scope well and the views on show last night really did look like the images of these objects. The sense of scale is made when you realise that the stars in these objects, despite their densely packed appearance, are still light years apart.

- The fainter and more subtle globular cluster in Sagitta, Messier 71 was another stop last night. This is 27 light years across according to Wikipedia. Less condensed than M15 but still a very nice object.

- Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy and it's neighbours M32 and the fainter oval of M110 were nice and high by now and stood out well at 75x. I could just make out a dust lane on the M110 side of M31 and the extension of the main galaxy went way beyond the edges of the field. Dropping down into Andromeda a little, the fainter galaxy Mirach's Ghost (NGC 404) lived up to it's name close to it's namesake star and possible to mistake for a scrap of light reflected by the eye / eyepiece.

- By this time Neptune was well clear of the house rooftops so I turned the scope on that distant planet hoping to catch it's largest moon Triton again. I had to work quite a bit harder to catch the moon on this occasion with 500x (!) being used to help it "pop" in and out of the light haze around Neptune itself. The moon had moved a long way round it's retrograde orbit since I observed it a couple of nights ago and was also closer in to it's host planets disk, upping the challenge to tease it into view.

A this point the sky was still really dark and I could have gone on observing for hours I guess but I was feeling increasingly tired and I think it's best sometimes to call things to a close before fatigue causes you to do something silly :rolleyes2:

So I packed things away, had a cup-a-soup and then retired to bed :smiley:

No new objects during this session but many old favourites showing as well as they can from my back yard sky and with my largest and most powerful scope "on song" so very enjoyable. A bit like a "greatest hits of Summer" session :icon_biggrin:

 

 

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Lovely one John. Very jealous of your skies, sounds like you had a great session.  The views of the Veil must have been wonderful. I have had some lovely views of it but have never been able to combine a large aperture scope with a dark and transparent sky when viewing it. Something to look forward to! Thanks for the report.

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Good report! After reading this, I'm going to be kicking myself tonight for not having purchased that OIII filter earlier in the week. Weatherman is saying we're going to have a beautiful evening and now I feel like I'm going to be missing out on so much. Next time I suppose.

M57 is one of my favorites. It's just so bright and easy to see from just about anywhere that I normally view from. It's a good object to focus on for public viewings since it's so obvious.

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Great report John: I was not too far from you in a dark sky site in S Cornwall, but did catch a few of the above objects in my 15x70s. Interesting to see M31 completely filling the field of the bins, with M110 visible as well (first time for me with bins). Naked eye, M31 was a clear oval, the size of an index fingernail, M33 just at the limit of visibility.

Chris

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3 minutes ago, ImmortalBee said:

Great report. Sounds like you had a nice long session last night. 

Thanks. I packed in at around 12:45 am. I could have gone on for a lot longer but I felt that I was getting tired so thought that quitting while it was still enjoyable was a sensible plan :smiley:

 

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50 minutes ago, John said:

Thanks. I packed in at around 12:45 am. I could have gone on for a lot longer but I felt that I was getting tired so thought that quitting while it was still enjoyable was a sensible plan :smiley:

 

That's sensible. I lasted a bit longer, until 1:40AM but my fingers were getting too cold. Need new gloves!

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Absorbing read, very nice report John, Thursday was clearly this months defining night for many to go out observing. It can become a pleasant feeling of contentment, following a fairly lengthy period of observing, submitting to fatigue, yet knowing that the sky you are leaving behind is still tempting.  

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A great read John, thanks?.

Many of the objects you mentioned I have never seen, and probably won't unless I get a bigger scope at some point I guess.

But it's still fascinating to read about these sessions and I really like your way of getting across the sheer pleasure you get from a good night under the stars.

I've had a 55+ hour week, covering 1000 miles for work this week, so just too tired to take advantage of several decent night's skies. I wish it was possible to "bank" these good nights to be able to use them when we had the time to!

Roll on retirement and doing what I want, when I want!?..

Dave

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One of the best reports I have read this year, thanks John. Your right about retire, I stopped work in 2004 and have never done so much in life, my trouble is I am aways up at about 5.30 so often tired in the evening, my home made Rakia don't help though.

Alan

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