Last nights giants

[Ignoro]

Dear friends,

last night my friend and I had a most enjoyable observing session, despite our dark site turned out to be not very dark. I'm not sure if it's due to moonlight or the light pollution, we've been there long after the moon left the skies. I think probably both factors contributed...

We've looked at the very faint Ring nebula, M3 and M13, M4 etc. then realized that there is no point searching for DSO as they were too faint...

But... The two giants saved the day (and the night)...

Jupiter was so great and calm I think we spent hours alternating between the 2 giants. There were 2 moons transitioning Jupiter last night, I'm not sure from which side

This is the first time I've looked at Saturn this year and was completely blown when I succesfully resolved the Cassini division last night...

We have started with Arvo Part whose music fits very nice with the DSO, but the DSO were too faint and Arvo is a bit too spiritual for planets. So after some experimenting with Octavian Nemescu and a few others which were too avantgarde, we found J.M. Jarre was the best background for planets, especially Saturn... 

This is the first time I was sorry not to have more mag eyepieces (162x) as I think I would have used them with no problems, there was no ripple at all...

We mostly used a TeleVue 11mm plossl which is super sharp with a BST 2x Barlow which added just a bit of false color. BST starguiders (8, 18) are noticably less sharp then TV pl, I'm not that much fascinated with these.

SW heritage 130 is great scope, I think I'll buy more plossls, I definitely need a low mag wide field 25-30mm... 

I'll observe tonight again definitely, although there are some clouds threatening...

Clear skies...

Edited June 8, 2019 by Ignoro

[ronl]

Nice report, you are lucky, it's wall to wall cloud here, it's good to hear that you are getting

clear and steady views, this time of year the sky never seems to be really dark, the gas giant's

are a great target though, keep enjoying.

Clear Sky's.

[Pete Presland]

Nicely reported, Jupiter and Saturn never fail even at this time of the year. 

[Kn4fty]

Great report! Thanks for posting. I really enjoyed reading. Yeah, I understand about the music. Some fits some objects, some others. Sometimes if I cant find some music that seems to fit, I'll put on an astronomy podcast that talks about the object currently being observed.

Rob