Report 7 Oct 08

[thing]

Raining heavily here at 6pm so I had no thoughts of going out. I went to the garage at around 8pm and noticed a few gaps in the cloud, so on the off chance I took out the mount and put the scope on for a few minutes of manual scoping. From heavy cloud to completely clear took around 5 minutes, and it was absolutely crystal clear. I decided to power the mount up and try out the new 33mil 2" Swan eyepiece I had received from FLO. This is my first 2" and I was wondering how it would cope with the scope being F5.

I motored around to the Double which I thought would be nicely framed in the 2.6 degree FOV at x33 mag and took a peek. It was probably like the first view of Saturn, absolutely amazing. I gave an audible 'wow' and started grinning . The clarity was outstanding, there was colour in the stars and an almost 3D effect. There was obviously some loss at the edges but with 72 degrees to look at you have to make an effort to look at the edge.

Next up was M31 and I certainly got the impression that I was seeing more than the central core fuzz. There was a definite but very faint extension from the core using averted imagination. Even at 2.6 degrees you're not getting it all in and I felt that the wispiness extended beyond the FOV. M110 was clearly visible with direct vision.

Then onto The Pinwheel. I saw nothing at all but it was fairly low in my most LP part of the sky. Just goes to show that LP kills off the fuzzies.

I went to the zenith to avoid the LP and had a good look around the Cygnus area and thereabouts. M27 and 57 were visible, obviously small at x33 but clearly there. Although having said that M27 is quite big for a planetary. Around Deneb the Milky Way was showing up well with Mk1 eyeball and through the Swan there were plenty of stars visible although not as many as I thought there would be. It's not dark enough here I suppose, I'll have to get the old blanket over he head again.

Next up was Jupiter which was a boiling mess although changing to a 13 mil Hyp showed up two bands in the atmosphere and 5 moons. The Moon was quite close by, I put the Swan back in and although it was boiling away the clarity and definition through the eyepiece was amazing in the odd still moment. I then had a go at Uranus, I pushed up to x400 with a 5 mil Hyp and Barlow just to see if I could get a disc which I did. A very fuzzy and bubbly one but nonetheless a sort of muddy turquoise disc, definitely a planet. Going back down to the 13mil showed the colour better .

I then had an attempt at seeing Neptune. I went to the right place, kept going back up to M2 which was quite close to check the centering but I couldn't see anything of Neptune, or rather I should say nothing that distinguished itself as a planet. I undoubtedly saw it but I didn't recognise it which was quite disappointing, I thought at mag 7.5 it would be quite easy to pick out, but then it is extremely low when it comes into my view so I think that one's best left for when it's higher. It's my last planet to nail, I must have seen it tonight but I'm not counting it.

Next up was Albireo and I thought I would try an experiment as it was very clear. It's easily split with the Swan at x33 so I pushed up the mag until it became what I would consider to be unfocused. I went up to x400 but the best view by far was in the 13mil at x77. Very crisp and defined, beautiful colours. I left the 13mil in and had a look at Eta Cass which is one of my favourites, again the small red companion showed up brilliantly against it's partner.

The clouds started to roll in by this time but I had managed a couple of hours of good visual rather than standing with a bulb remote in my hand taking images, it made quite a refreshing change actually!

[Andrew*]

Nice report, Thing.

Really enjoyed reading that. You clearly had some great views with that ubiquitous scope. Gotta get a view through one of those C8s at some point.

Andrew

[mahone1978]

What a lovely well written report, sounds like a brilliant session you had there. I will take inspiration from that and try and improve my own accounts in future...

John

[glennbech]

averted imagination

LOL :-) I saw M51 in my 8" from a very light pollutet location last year using the same technique.