My best session yet...st80

[mark81]

Just came in from 45 minutes of very enjoyable observing with my st80.  I had only previously spotted m103 and 659 in Cassiopeia but with a little more patience I picked out the nice arch of 654, 663 and 659, all great viewing with the BST 15mm.  With the red dot finder perfect, I picked out m52 and then 7789.  I say m52, but this appeared as a small smudge rather than a nice cluster... Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place?

I then decided to try and pick out some of the faint clusters between beta and kappa, there's a bunch of about 5 there, all around mag 8, I picked out at least 4 of them , one with averted vision.  They only came up very small but certainly cluster like and from moving back and forth from scope to atlas I'm taking them as NGC 189, 136, 225 and 103, I will check the mags and decide, but here on the west Norfolk coast, with fields behind me and the wash Infront, these skies are nice and black at this time so seeing is spot on.   I could have stayed out for hours but decided to quit while I was ahead.... Spent the last few minutes trawling around the rich fields around this great part of the sky.

Thanks for reading 

[Demonperformer]

Sounds like a very productive 45 mins. There are a lot of little clusters scattered around the Cassiopeia region.

[Paul67]

Nice one Mark, Ive been scanning around Cassiopeia too, tried to find M33 but no luck and moon rising now. Going back out for half hour Luna now.

[Eastman]

18 hours ago, mark81 said:

Cassiopeia

Home of the starclusters, nice report Mark

[Special K]

Those small cluster in Cass can be a lot of fun. I’m with you on M52.....it’s a very faint bunch. With averted you’d never miss it as a fuzzy but doesn’t yield many stand out points of light when looking directly at it. 

[Stu]

Great session Mark, you are really getting the most out of that ST80 ?.

Loads of lovely clusters in that area. Have you caught NGC457 yet? Great fun cluster.

Caroline's Rose is also nearby, not sure if you need more aperture to make that one stand out, but worth a try.

EDIT I see after re-reading that you did get it, NGC7789. How did it look in the 80mm?

[mark81]

12 hours ago, Stu said:

Great session Mark, you are really getting the most out of that ST80 ?.

Loads of lovely clusters in that area. Have you caught NGC457 yet? Great fun cluster.

Caroline's Rose is also nearby, not sure if you need more aperture to make that one stand out, but worth a try.

EDIT I see after re-reading that you did get it, NGC7789. How did it look in the 80mm?

Thanks, As its my only scope, I am really trying to push it to its limits with those little clusters - it seems to struggle with Galaxies..

As far as I can remember 7789 showed much better than M52, it spread across the 15mm quite nicely rather like 752 in Andromeda - but not as impressive.

I haven't seen 457 yet, but next chance I get I will have a go - but with Auriga rising, those M Clusters are very tempting...

 

[Stu]

6 hours ago, mark81 said:

Thanks, As its my only scope, I am really trying to push it to its limits with those little clusters - it seems to struggle with Galaxies..

As far as I can remember 7789 showed much better than M52, it spread across the 15mm quite nicely rather like 752 in Andromeda - but not as impressive.

I haven't seen 457 yet, but next chance I get I will have a go - but with Auriga rising, those M Clusters are very tempting...

 

Much of my time is spent with a 4” scope, so I know well the challenges of working with limited aperture! Bigger aperture does blow open some of these smaller clusters, turning them from grey smudges to lovely Star groupings. That said, gettingvthe most out of a small scope is just as challenging as getting the most out of a large scope! Certainly helps to refine your observing techniques.