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Just cruisin' ......


John

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After a couple of fairly intense sessions testing the Skywatcher ED150 I'm having a nice relaxed session tonight under a wonderfully clear sky.

I started out using the Tak FC100 to view the moons transiting Jupiter and then got some fantastic views of Saturn. Now I've switched to the Vixen 102mm F/6.5 and a 40mm SWA eyepiece showing 4 degrees of sky and I'm just cruising around Cygnus, down the milky way through Scutum and lower again then back over the zenith to Cassiopeia just hoovering up the nebulae and clusters with the help of some filters now and then.

So many stars !!! :icon_biggrin:

Seeing a great chunk of the sky like this gives a new perspective to famillar objects. You see them set amongst the stars and adjacent neighbours. Complex strings of stars, which go unnoticed at higher powers and smaller fields of view, seem to sprawl through Pegasus with the double cluster nestling amongst them. Red stars, blue stars, white stars, asterisms, pairs and triples. So much to see :grin:

Mars is calling so I'd better go and see if the dust storm has settled some more. Still a whopping 24 arc seconds of apparent disk to explore :icon_biggrin:

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I did something similar last week on the top of Pic Du Midi John ?  We'd been planetary imaging with the big SCTs, but before heading for bed I decided I just wanted to get lost in the stars (well opportunities like that are rare!)  So I got the little Borg 71 on alt az, and the Pan 24 and just wandered. I particularly explored the southern skies I don't see from home, but also just through the Milky Way.  A magical time ??

The science was great, but my abiding memory will be visual!

Helen 

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Sounds perfect John, i'm just about to shove a 31mm Panoptic into my 150ED and do the same, probably with a UHC filter.

Have just spent an hour or so on doubles, splitting Zeta Herculi, and Lambda Cygni with ease, good clean gap, but struggling (again) with gamma Cass. Going back out to it now for one more pop before dropping onto widefield.

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Likewise with my 12" Dob,all the usual Galaxies and clusters, but spent a long time on Saturn, really lovely tonight. I popped the Astronomik O111  in and had look at The Veil . The Moon is up now so a session there before I call it a day.:happy11:

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24 minutes ago, cotterless45 said:

Actual darkness ! Stars popped out everywhere , seeing was superb. So pleased you all enjoyed it , roll on more clear skies !

Nick.

Until the Moon appeared, the darkness was very welcome, and a great swathe of Milky Way was evident, so much so that I could once again pick out the beautiful Double Cluster with naked eye.

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Got some great views of Mars with the Vixen ED102SS last night. The disk still looks large at 150x and upwards. I could just start to trace the outlines of the darker areas on the planet and the poles had white patches, smaller at the south. We are getting there !

 

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1 minute ago, John said:

Got some great views of Mars with the Vixen ED102SS last night. The disk still looks large at 150x and upwards. I could just start to trace the outlines of the darker areas on the planet and the poles had white patches, smaller at the south. We are getting there !

 

That is certainly something to look forward to John, but I think I will have to take a scope out the fields to see much more than I do.

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