Very Nice Summer Dobsonian Session

[John]

Just finishing a very nice session with my 12" dobsonian. Lots of nice targets covered including:

- Saturn showing all the usual stuff plus 6 moons. A bit unsteady to be honest but it's nice to get the big dob onto it even though it's low.

- NGC 6811 - the "Hole in the Cluster" cluster in Cygnus. And yes, there is a patch of sky in the centre which does not appear to have any stars in it.

- The Veil Nebula, Pickerings Wisp and other wonders in that patch of sky.

- The Blinking Planetary Nebula NGC 6826 and it's central star. Quite steady tonight - had to move my eye about to force the blinking !

- The Crescent Nebula NGC 6888

- The Dumbell Nebula M27 and it's central star

- M57, the Ring Nebula. No central star tonight despite using 500x on the thing !

- M15, the magnificent globular cluster in Pegasus. What a treat at 300x - an eyefull of stars.

- The distant (ie: 50,000+ light years) globular clusters NGC 6934 in Delphinius and M72 in Aquarius

- Mars - not too good in the dob. The planet was just above the boundary wall of the garden and partially obscured by it so not conducive to seeing subtle details let alone Phobos or Deimos. Can't win em all !

- NGC 7009 - the Saturn Nebula with it's central white dwarf. Did actually look like a slightly out of focus Saturn as seen through very small scope.

- M73 - vague cluster of 4 stars that turn out not to be associated with each other after all.

- Old favourites of M31, M32 and M110 with one of M31's dust lanes showing.

- Other favourites such as the double cluster, some binaries and open clusters just panning about Perseus and Cassiopeia.

- To round the session off very nicely, Neptune in Aquarius showing a clean, though tiny, 2.5 arc second pale blue disk and, when I pressed the power up to a dizzy 500x, it's largest moon Triton gleaming at magnitude 13.5 around 16 arc seconds to the SW of the planet. Very nice to see this pairing again

Hope others had some fun under dark skies too

 

[cotterless45]

Lovely report John, some showpieces there . Great to get some decent skies ,

Nick.

[Stu]

Lovely session John, the trusty 12” delivering as usual.

Was too tired after a weekend of garden and house chores, but popped out to have 5 mins ‘looking up’ and the skies did look very nice, well as good as they get round here. It was probably cloud, but I’m sure I saw a hint of the MW!

[RobertI]

Great haul John, a couple of targets I might try myself. I’ve never owned anything larger than 8”, I imagine the brighter globs must look awesome in a 12”. 

[Owmuchonomy]

Looks like you were blessed with good skies. That was some Grand Tour. Here the sky was lacking transparency but I did carry on and I will report it later.

[David Levi]

Nice report John. I viewed the Saturn Nebula and M73 last night as well. I could just about make out the slight bulges on NGC 7009 that give it its moniker.  I viewed them at 59x magnification but neither seemed to take more magnification very well. Not sure if that was the viewing conditions though.

[wookie1965]

Great report I will be lucky see two or three of them, tried Neptune and Uranus last night but behind houses ?