70mm Skies - July 14-15 2018

[iPeace]

Filters...I've got the obligatory ones, but I never seem to get around to using them. Not dark enough, not enough aperture in use, whatever the excuse, it hardly ever seems to happen. Recently though, I did finally point my 8" newt at The Veil with an O-III filter in place and it was certainly worth it. So on this clear, dark night away from Starbase Newt, I was ready to go all-out with the filters and see just what was possible with the 71mm Borg. I did also take the time to check in with the planetary procession, visiting with Jupiter, Saturn, and...Mars. That big, bright, sharp orange globe...if only the dust storm would cease - but that's been covered, so moving on.

Filters are fiddly. I'm bound to drop one in the dark some night during an eyepiece change. It hasn't happened yet, but it's just a matter of time. I thought I'd get around this by just screwing it into the diagonal scope-side, but...no threads seemed to be there. Hm. I settled on putting the 1.25" filter on the Baader Zoom, while using a 24mm Panoptic to find the target area before the switch. Worked quite well. Started off with the UHC and these are the highlights:

• Lagoon
• Trifid
• Omega
• Eagle
• Ring

Switched to the O-III to try for the Veil, and it was surprisingly good. I would have preferred to use the 24mm Panoptic with its wider field, but sadly its threads don't seem to match those of the filter - or maybe I'm just faffing about, but in any case, the narrower field of the Baader Zoom meant I had to do the Veil in sections, but this was most worthwhile and I could use the zoom to get a darker background.

It wasn't all nebulae, though - I left the filters out to check on M22 and M28, both of which showed up nicely. One of my favourite bits of sky remains the starry bit where the Sagittarius Star Cloud is said to be - whatever cloud there may or may not be there, the arrangement of stars, cluster or not, to be seen there is just so nice, always uplifting.

The ISS came shooting over, and I managed to track it for a good few seconds, and even zoom in a bit.

A very satisfying haul with just 71mm. Aperture wins, but, all things being equal, a dark sky makes the most difference.

[JeremyS]

Nice report. You had me worried about the OIII not fitting the Pan 24. Just tried my brand new Astronomik OIII on my Pan 24 and relieved to find it fits 

[iPeace]

6 hours ago, JeremyS said:

Nice report. You had me worried about the OIII not fitting the Pan 24. Just tried my brand new Astronomik OIII on my Pan 24 and relieved to find it fits 

Glad to read. My Panoptics are likely of widely varying ages; I haven't sat them down together to see which one takes a filter best. I can get it to stay on, but can't turn it far enough to get it flush to the nosepiece.

[iPeace]

On 17/07/2018 at 01:25, JeremyS said:

You had me worried about the OIII not fitting the Pan 24. Just tried my brand new Astronomik OIII on my Pan 24 and relieved to find it fits 

Glad to mention now that I managed to get a filter properly screwed on the Pan 24 tonight, so it definitely was just me.