Another clear night .....

[John]

My 12" dob is out again. What lies in store tonight I wonder ?

(shows that I don't plan my sessions much )

 

[happy-kat]

I can see Venus but it's way too light for me too stay up late enough for dark.

Enjoy your session

 

[David Levi]

Apart from the nova V392 in Perseus and obviously Jupiter (how can you ignore it) I didn't plan much last night either but from my dark sky site I had a general idea of catching some low elevation Messier objects. Which I did.

[John]

I found last night lacked a bit of the transparency of the previous one so DSO's were not quite sparkling as much as they did. It got better after midnight but I'd bought the scope in by then (natrually ) so I used 11x70 binoculars to scan and had some very nice two-eye views.

While I had the scope out I did have a good view of the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) in Draco. This object takes high powers well and at 300x I was getting a clear "eye" form, slightly greenish blue in hue and with the magnitude 11.4 central star gleaming clearly in the centre of the "pupil". 

Jupiter showed 5 cloud bands but no GRS this time. The big festoon I observed the previous night was also out of view. I did look at Europa with renewed interest due to the latest reports of water detection in it's geysers and the potential for some form of life there.

Nice astists impression here:

[Dave1]

Excellent report. I didn't find transparency very good also last night. Some of the views last night of Jupiter were horrid, just washed out. After 11pm transparency improved, and seeing conditions weren't as variable. 

Really doesn't help that where I observe over looks Bournemouth and Poole. Two big heat sources. 

Dave

[Littleguy80]

2 hours ago, John said:

While I had the scope out I did have a good view of the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) in Draco. This object takes high powers well and at 300x I was getting a clear "eye" form, slightly greenish blue in hue and with the magnitude 11.4 central star gleaming clearly in the centre of the "pupil". 

One of the best things about your reports, John, is that they nearly always have me returning to targets. I’ve had a few visits to the cats eye nebula recently but I never thought to push the magnification that high and look for the central star! 

[F15Rules]

I got a 25minute look at Jupiter with my new (to me) Maxbright binoviewers and FS128. 

Good points:

- nice bright image, I could merge the images no problem

- got 3 moons at first (tiny disks) then a 4th as it (don't know which) came out from behind Jupiter

- 3 bands obvious with a 4th with averted vision

- bvs were very comfortable to use. I used a pair of 25mm Parks Gold series with eyeguards which really helped to keep out stray light. I couldn't get focus without a Barlow, about 20mm short I reckon. With a x1.6 Barlow I got good focus with c 25mm to spare..Maybe a 1.25x glass path corrector would do it. I think the 1.6x nosepiece Barlow was giving about 3x magnification, so at 25mm native EPs this would be c 8.33mm equivalent, giving me about x124 magnification in reality. I think that seems about right judging by the image size. On the night, my other bv pair (at 10mm focal length) were giving 3.33mm or x315, which was far too much for the poor seeing conditions, the x124 was about the most possible last night.

Bad points.

- Poor to mediocre seeing and transparency

I'm coming to the conclusion that my local conditions, although quite dark, suffer poor seeing in the first half of the night, with conditions often improving after midnight to 1am. That's going to make it difficult to get many good sessions until I can retire?..

But I can be patient now..I have the scope, the eyepieces, the binoviewers and darker skies, so roll on retirement, maybe this time next year with any luck?..

Dave