Brighter galaxy views.

[cotterless45]

Short shift session , set up at 10 and away about midnight as the sky grew ever brighter with the moon. I'm not a great fan of eq mounted Newts, so I set up just to view north and east . This also enabled handy ep height at the zenith . 

The OO has a single secondary vane , it gives fairly clean diffraction rings. I cut a cardboard aperture mask , this covered the focus tube and whole secondary vane. This gave some razor sharp views, starting with Alkalurops. The companion split obviously even at lower power . "La Superba" gave stunning colour , really worth finding (Y CNv), much improved with aperture reduction. 

Went through to some views in Hercules , Marsic, Eltanin,Sarin and Rasalgethi. Lifting up the aperture cardboard, over to NGC 6229, a lovely bright core on this globular cluster. A very fine view of Bode's. Some views of Canes Venatici area, 

NGC 4490 ("cocoon"),.NGC 4449,NGC 5005,even the streak of NGC 4631 ("whale "), M106 and M94 .

Great to be out temperature about 15 degrees and sqm 19.14 mag. Clear skies ! Nick.

 

[FenlandPaul]

Nice report Nick, and good idea on the aperture mask for crisp stars.

I was out for a couple of hours starting with some Leo doubles before a galaxy hunt before moonrise, but the deep blue sky of the afternoon seemed to give way to a light haze and even showpieces like the Leo Triplet and M51 struggled to punch through with much gusto. 

Paul

[chiltonstar]

Good to see that someone had a decent sky; haze and cloud here, although the brighter stars were visible, even a galaxy or two in Virgo.

Chris

[wookie1965]

Great report Nick some great targets there and that 00 really does perform really well on doubles and galaxies.

[RobertI]

Nice report Nick. Just been finding out about aperture masks as a result, very interesting, and useable on SCTs too (wondering if an aperture mask could reduce the hairy stars issue in SCTs?). What effective aperture did the aperture mask give you Nick?

[cotterless45]

Cutting off half gave 4", but with a single secondary and focus tube out of the way , this was a light path with no obstruction. Gave frac type contrasty view, controlled those spikes and glare from bright stars. A bit of black card is no great investment to try !

Nick.