I got out last night too! Wonders will never cease

[JOC]

So about 6pm it was looking set clear here, I had time on my side and no ironing waiting so decided to take what was on offer and dumped the Dob outside.  The moon was already up so I used that whilst it was light to align the finder scope and dug the 'useful stuff' out from behind the cupboard - I even ran the extension lead and thought I'd have a try with mains power.  The only downside was I wanted to play with the WiFi dongle and the phone was only on 30% charge and I didn't notice until about 10 minutes before I needed it - 10 minutes charging only got me another 6% before I went out at about 21:15.

It's been ages since I had a astronomy evening.  What's that new large light in the sky in the South?  Don't need the goto for that so I swung it across to find a rather delicious looking peach coloured disk in the sky (the colour was very obvious which made a real change), 'it must be Mars'  Stellarium soon confirmed it was indeed Mars, but 'wow, what a view!'.  The last time I recall seeing mars it was a minor dot in the sky - this was a socking huge splodge in comparison verging on the current so Jupiter!  I tried at 8mm with the BST and it took some of the brightness away which was no bad thing, the Pentax 5mm also worked, brought it up nice and big, but what I actually settled on was my favourite Morpheus 14mm.  I'd never seen Mars like this before, it was def. coloured and large enough to be aware of patterns and colour shading - it was also verging on disappearing behind the house, trees etc.  The kids were disappeared somewhere, but my Bro came and looked to keep me happy and pronounced himself adequately impressed ? I then could also see Jupiter heading towards the West so we also had a quick look at that 4 moons up, but last night I think Mars stole the glory!  Stellarium said Saturn was around, but I reckon the house and trees were in the way which was a shame - I tried to move to see if I could find it manually later on, but all I got was Mars again which had moved relative to me quite a lot by then - a shame as I like Saturn, but it didn't happen last night. 

So then I ran the goto and had a go at the calibration - all appeared to work, but I noticed that it wasn't spot on - though I decided to live with it.  With it running I started looking through the named targets. I failed to find the Pinwheel galaxy - didn't know what I was looking for and with the goto a bit off this was a non-starter.  Andromeda was behind the garage as were a couple of other targets below Casseopia and the bulk of the targets in the plough were rotated behind the trees (waste of time - one day I shall have to plot what degrees I can see in each direction and it might stop these wild goose chases!).  Getting frustrated now.  I need somethings I can recognise.  Err....The Great Hercules Cluster said the app.  I've seen this previously I know what this looks like.  It still didn't goto spot on, but shove here and there and I found it.  Still lovely and quite bright enough for that Pentax 5mm nice view!   The blue snowball - I've seen this before - still a cute little object - again not goto spot on, but then findable again the Pentax latched on fine, but it was better with the Morpheus.  I tried the veil - surely the Goto can't miss such a big target - I used a the 32mm celestron and tried all the filters, but I can't see the nebulosity - mark this as a fail!  Then I finally found the link on the app to the ring nebula - I like that target and I've seen it before - again a goto miss, but, with Morpheus giving me  bit more sky there it was - such an amazing object from our angle on earth in the sky.  So it was still warm and the night was still clear - I could have gone on and maybe tried the calibration again, but it was 23:15 and phone finally gave the ghost and died.  So I called it a night and went to bed, but it was the best session for some time and Mars was fabulous - as I noted above I did shift the telescope and got another view before I went in.

[domstar]

 You really bring the report to life. A very nice read.

[Trikeflyer]

I also got out last night. Got back from Lanzarote on Mon afternoon. Had a treat there as Sagittarius was perfectly positioned outside my ground floor balcony. Took the Altair 80mm ED and star discovery mount. Got to see many objects not really visible from my UK base but that is another post. Back to last night. Decided to try the ETX 125 on the star discovery mount. Like JOC I had a little trouble setting up - the telrad was off and I hadn't got anything easy to align it with so after a bit of fiddling I got it aligned on Deneb and proceeded to do 2 star alignment. Used Shedar and Deneb for alignment and whilst not perfect, most objects were within the eyepiece FOV and could be centred.

Mostly used ES82 24mm eyepiece with occasional switch to BST 15mm. 

Started with Caroline's Rose, NGC7789. It was faint in my light polluted skies but I could vaguely make out the loops and dark lanes that Give this cluster its name. I think the lower contrast of the mak and the seeing took the edge off it tonight.  have seen it better in my 8 inch revelation dob and I think this one shines better from darker skies.  Took in some double stars next in Cassiopeia Achird - eta class SAO 21732 is a lovely coloured double near to Shedar -  the yellow primary contrasted with the more orange secondary. More doubles in Cepheus,  Alfirk - Beta Cephei - SAO 10057, a variable star and the second brightest in the constellation, as a double it is brilliant white and emerald combination.  There are three stars in the group but i could only see the main star and the outer of the other two 13'' apart. Finally, Delta Cephei, SAO 34508, nice and easy with a separation of 41''. 

One of my favourite open clusters is the owl cluster in Cass NGC 457. I just love this one, with the two very bright stars looking like owl eyes shining out like headlights in the dark.  Always gives me a sense of joy when i look at this one. If I'm having a bad night and cant find anything with the Dob, i always have a look at the good old Owl cluster.  Then to M52, nice open cluster in Cass - the 8th mag yellow star stands out in this compact cluster.

Another favourite of mine is the globular cluster M15 in Pegasus. Could just make out some stars in the outer structure with the 15mm eyepiece, Again this looks amazing in a large aperture scope.  

A first for me was the blue snowball NGC 7662 planetary nebula in andromeda.  Not great in this scope, again the contrast was a factor. I could tell it wasnt a star but could make out any structure so moved on quickly to more doubles in Vega.  

Zeta 1 Lyrae and Zeta 2 Lyrae - SAO 67321 - This may contain up to 7 stars but visually, it makes a nice change from the double double. With 44'' of separation, this is an easy double and with some nice brightness contrast between the two stars it was  a nice target.  This was followed by delta 1 lyrae and Delta 2 Lyrae, SAO 67537 - an optical double with nice colour contrast. 

Finished the night in Cygnus.  Disappointing M27 dumbbell nebula - this is generally another of my favourites but tonight it was dissapointing - poor contrast and poor seeing? Not sure but was only just able to make out a very very faint fuzz of nebulosity. Again, this is so much better in the 8 inch dob and amazing in the 12 inch dob. Lesson learned, the right scope for the job .... the Mak was great on Doubles and bright open clusters but poor on fainter clusters and nebulae.  Sadly all planets were behind trees or houses so i didnt get chance to use it for its intended purpose.  The main reason for starting out with it last night was to test it on the star discovery goto mount and it worked a treat eve though it was at the limit of the stated max weight.

Finally the omicron cygni group SAO 49337 - not physically related but beautiful colour contrast.  Confusing naming of these stars can cause problems with identification but the highlight is 31 omicron cygni an orange blue and white group with the Milky Way stars in the background. 

Need to get the Mak out on Mars next....

Hope others had a good night too and thanks for taking the time to read my report.

Steve