Observing report Belper 6.5.18

[Doc]

Sunday 6^th May 2018

Belper dark site

Skywatcher Esprit 120ED

Selection of Clave’ eyepieces

Very warm night

No wind

 

Started the night with a couple of hours of double star observing hoping to tick of as many double stars in Bootes as possible. I managed to star hop to all of these so pretty pleased at that.

 

Kappa Bootes – 4.5/6.6 – 14.2” split – 10mm Clave – x84 mag – Easy split – Yellow/White

Iota Bootes – 4.7/7.4 – 39.1” – 10mm Clave – x84 mag – Easy split – white/white

STF1825 – 6.8/8.4 – 4.4” – 8mm Clave – x105 mag – Medium split – white/white

STF1835 – 5.0/6.7 – 6.2” (AC) – 8mm Clave – x105 mag – Triple but could not split AB – blue/white

Pi Bootes – 4.8/5.7 – 5.4” – 8mm Clave – x105 mag – Easy split – lemon/white

Xi Bootes – 4.7/6.9 – 5.4” – 8mm Clave – x105 mag – Easy split – white/white

STF1879 – 7.4/8.4 – 1.7” – 4mm Clave – x210 mag – Hard split, very dim secondary – white/grey

STF1884 – 6.1/7.4 – 2.1” – 4mm Clave – x210 mag – Hard split – white/white

STF1886 – 7.5/9.7 – 7.4” – 10mm Clave – x84 mag – Medium split – Dim – White/grey

STT288 – 7.5/6.5 – 1.0” – 4mm Clave – x210 mag – Very hard managed a peanut split – white

 

I then observed Ganymede transiting Jupiter. It was 23.10 and you could see the shadow Ganymede cast on the surface of Jupiter, the best eyepiece for this was the 8mm Clave.

 

I then went on to observe the following galaxies and globular clusters. I star hopped to these by using the 20mm Clave.

 

M64, NGC4565, NGC4725, M104, M60, M59, M58, M57, M13, M12, M5, M3, M53 and Melotte 111

 

It was now 00.52 and once again I turned to Jupiter and using the 8mm Clave you could easily see the great red spot and just above it as I’m using an erecting diagonal there appeared to be a large festoon within the band.

 

I packed up at 01.30 very pleased indeed.

 

 

[Stu]

That’s a great session Doc, star hopping to so many targets is excellent going.

Which Mount were you using? The Doc special? 

[Doc]

Thanks Stu. Using my rocket mount.