Mixed Bag - Poor Start, Ended Well With A Galaxy

[cloudsweeper]

8SE again.  I had a few things planned, and started later than in recent sessions, but it was one of those occasions when things just don't work out so well.  GoTo is great, but unless an object is very clearly what I want (like a cluster), I still like to have confirmation from Stellarium, and that is not always certain.  So of the planned targets, I only managed:

RS Cnc - a pulsating variable star - slightly orange - better colour when I went from x56 to x113 (contrast).

X Cnc - a carbon star - clearly orange.

Then I went for a couple of old favourites, just to actually see something:

M67 - OC, Cancer - very nice - tight, dense, stars not too bright (which I like!) - sharp at x56, well framed, although increased mag revealed a bit more detail.

M48 - OC, Hydra - also pleasing - bigger, looser, and less dense than the above, stars brighter.  

Been out about two hours by now, cold, fed up, and plagued by lights from a number of houses, but I wanted a decent finale, and decided to try for a fuzzy, since I've been concentrating on doubles, carbons, and clusters lately.  I noticed on Stellarium:

NGC 2841 - spiral galaxy, Ursa Major, magnitude about 9 (so manageable in poor skies) - and Bingo! there it was in AV at x56.  Clearer at x85 - an elongated smudge, but what a delight!  And to end this 2.5 hour session, I noticed a nice double in the same FOV (at x56 that is):

HD 80606/7 - matched binary, which I estimated to have a separation of about 25 seconds.  (HD 80606 has an exoplanet in a highly elliptical orbit.)

A very satisfying variety after all! 

Doug.

 

[Knighty2112]

Nice work Doug. I was out testing my scope and mount earlier after a mod to the mount. Although clear, the sky conditions weren’t that great. In fact it reminded like the conditions you get when the moon is out, except of course it wasn’t. Did some manual star hoping for a change, and realised just how easy the goto mount makes for observing! Hehe!  

[Stu]

Sorry to hear of your targeting troubles Doug, but you still pulled a successful session out of the bag. Lovely sky out there right now, but no observing for me tonight.