Usual suspects plus a couple of nice extras

[John]

A nice stable night tonight using the Tak FC-100DL.

Jupiter was good with a GRS transit. GRS seemed colourful and stood out strongly. Lesser belts seemed to lack a little contrast though. Festoons hinted at rather than obvious.

Did the usual tour of familliar doubles: Epsilon Lyrae, Izar, Delta Cygni, Zeta Herculis (nicely split this challenging one), plus a few others. As the darkness grew I had a quick look at M57 and M13. Quite a lot of sparkle across the latter at 100x plus with deeper resolution of stars when averted vision was used.

Then noticed that Antares was showing. It's low here and just pops out for 30-40 minutes as it crosses between surrounding houses. I had split this tough binary with my 130mm triplet refractor some time ago and been well pleased with that but would it "go" with the Tak 100mm ?

Yep ! - at 225x and 257x I could make out the much dimmer secondary star just over 2 arc seconds away from the primary. It was positioned to the W of the primary and a touch N perhaps. The secondary was hard to hold for a long period but did consistently show itself separately from the primary as I observed. The atmosphere this low down makes the challenge harder of course but I think this was as steady as I've seen Antares for some time. Very pleased to get this with just 3.9 inches of aperture (good quality aperture though !)

Just to round off I put a lower power eyepiece in and panned the scope W to pick up M4, the globular cluster, gleaming rather shyly through the atmosphere.

Very enjoyable with the Antares split the highlight   

[johnfosteruk]

Nice report, I had a very similar session - Jupiter, doubles then M13. The difference being I saw very little colour in GRS.

[Red Dwarfer]

Great report - short observation here last night ( about an hour or so ) as sky didn`t clear till after midnight - Epsilon , Zeta and Delta Lyrae , Izar , Albirio and Alpha Herculis among those bagged - Alpha Herculis at X125 in the 4.8 Nagler the highlight ?