Rubbish Seeing In Twilight😁

[Paul73]

The title sums up my 1 hour outside with the Dob. So why am I smiling? The twilight robbed a good 10” off my aperture (16”), Jupiter looked like a wobbly jelly and there was a light haze. But, the colours / contrast was great! Jupiter showed fleeting glimpses of detail with good definition in the bands. So I tried a few wide coloured doubles. Lovely. This is unusual for me as I normally regard doubles with a mirror to be akin to taking a Land Rover round Bands Hatch. But It was fun and relaxed.

Next up was a low mag bright green Ring Nebula and a big Bow Tie. Then M13 filling the eyepiece at 150x and off to bed.

It was really nice to relax and enjoy observing, knowing that the conditions preclude straining for hours to tease out a galaxy on the edge of seeing, or squinting to split a sub second double.

Hope that others had a good evening.

Paul

[Stu]

Not far off my night too Paul. Had some reasonable views of Jupiter for a short while then it went to pot. Nice to be out though. Bed now!

[John]

I've given up and bought the scopes in as well Paul. Jupiter was poor from here with just 2 bands showing even with the 12 inch dob. I had a niceish view of M13 and M57 but the sky is quite milky so going deeper is really not on the cards. Too blowy here for close double stars with the 130 frac as well so gave up on that too.

Nice glass of aussie shiraz is going down well though !

 

 

[Star101]

It was forecast cloud here from 10pm after a clear blue sky day so I didnt expect any imaging tonight. But come 10pm, it was still blue sky and very clear.....So I slid the roof off the shed. Managed 5 x 5mins sub in Ha and 1 x 5min sub in O3 of part (NGC 6992) of the Viel Nebula. 00.15. clouds rolled in so I closed the lid.

I consider that a good session considering I was only expecting to be sat watching England vs Norway this evening.  

I read Friday night should be better!

[James]

I didn't pick a good night to test a couple of scopes did I?  One that had been dropped and one that has had a lens cell pilfered from another scope. Seeing was terrible so I feared the worst with the scopes but I've been reassured by others reports of bad seeing!!

But I'm getting a kick from being out just a week after the shortest night..

James

[Grant]

Snap - spent most of the night working out that I needed to use every extension supplied with the iOptron RC6 to reach focus and then struggled to get polar aligned due to the seeing / clouds rolling in.

On a positive - it does now focus and the ZWO EAF seemed to work a treat

Hoping tomorrow and / or Saturday is better!

[James]

Hope so!!

[AdeKing]

I was hoping for a nice night for a Jupiter session as it was clear all evening. 

I set up but it was so milky and wobbly that I could only just make out 2 bands on Jupiter with a bit of effort. 

I hopped to a couple of doubles but was inside within about 40 mins as I had an early start and conditions weren't worth being tired for. 

Fingers crossed for tonight and tomorrow. 

 

[James]

Hope you all, or at least some of you have been out tonight. Completely different, fantastic detail on Jupiter, Cassini vision in Saturn’s rings (just...).

 

[John]

35 minutes ago, James said:

Hope you all, or at least some of you have been out tonight. Completely different, fantastic detail on Jupiter, Cassini vision in Saturn’s rings (just...).

 

Yep - it's cleared up nicely here and I've had a grand time with my little 70mm refractor:

 

[Trikeflyer]

Yes what a good night. Had the 80ED set up to look at Jupiter and Saturn.  Nice to see the line up of moons all in a row on Jove.  Good detail too in the small scope.  Saturn was also nice and given its position not bad views. More importantly had the 120 equinox set up on the new ioptron az pro mount.  All I can say is AMAZING. The set up was so easy, switch it on, let it do its set up dance while finding gps data and then it slews to a bright object. Arcturus was dead centre in the 17.5mm Morpheus. Great start so easy! Tried to connect to iPad sky safari vis WiFi, initially couldn’t connect to iPad? Not sure why but after a couple of goes it connected... now I’m in play.  Had a combination of eyepieces, 17.5mm Morpheus, Pentax xw10 and vixen SLV 6mm. All performed exquisitely, not much between them and the Pentax and SLV were almost parfocal. Choosing targets using sky safari is effortless. There are times when finding objects can be fun if you have enough stars visible to navigate with but in my West Midlands light polluted skies, the fun soon fades away so this way of navigating removes a degree of frustration for me.

Highlights of the session for me were the planets. The amazing split of IZAR, best I’ve ever seen, two clear round diamonds separated by a nice clean gap. The same for the double double, best split I’ve seen seen. The equinox is a powerful scope and combined with this mount, it’s a lethal weapon 😂. Other highlights were m15, m11, m3 globs and NGC 457 the beautiful owl cluster. Had many other targets including m57, m56, m71, albireo, m39, m52, the Ste 1 open cluster in Lyra really stood out for me with the Pentax xw10.

if anyone is considering this mount, it will take your observing to another level of effortless (if that is what you want of course). Pull the trigger you won’t regret it. FLO were superb as a supplier and whilst I’ve invested a chunk of cash in this mount and the Morpheus and Pentax eyepieces, I can say for certain that based on last night, which is hopefully the first of many, it has been worth the investment in the hobby.

thanks for reading, hope you were out last night 🤔

Steve 

[wookie1965]

Seeing was awful here last night not even dark at 12 only got my binoculars out Jupiter was a hazy ball the stars I could see where twinkling for there lives, hoping tonight is better.

 

[wookie1965]

2 hours ago, Trikeflyer said:

Yes what a good night. Had the 80ED set up to look at Jupiter and Saturn.  Nice to see the line up of moons all in a row on Jove.  Good detail too in the small scope.  Saturn was also nice and given its position not bad views. More importantly had the 120 equinox set up on the new ioptron az pro mount.  All I can say is AMAZING. The set up was so easy, switch it on, let it do its set up dance while finding gps data and then it slews to a bright object. Arcturus was dead centre in the 17.5mm Morpheus. Great start so easy! Tried to connect to iPad sky safari vis WiFi, initially couldn’t connect to iPad? Not sure why but after a couple of goes it connected... now I’m in play.  Had a combination of eyepieces, 17.5mm Morpheus, Pentax xw10 and vixen SLV 6mm. All performed exquisitely, not much between them and the Pentax and SLV were almost parfocal. Choosing targets using sky safari is effortless. There are times when finding objects can be fun if you have enough stars visible to navigate with but in my West Midlands light polluted skies, the fun soon fades away so this way of navigating removes a degree of frustration for me.

Highlights of the session for me were the planets. The amazing split of IZAR, best I’ve ever seen, two clear round diamonds separated by a nice clean gap. The same for the double double, best split I’ve seen seen. The equinox is a powerful scope and combined with this mount, it’s a lethal weapon 😂. Other highlights were m15, m11, m3 globs and NGC 457 the beautiful owl cluster. Had many other targets including m57, m56, m71, albireo, m39, m52, the Ste 1 open cluster in Lyra really stood out for me with the Pentax xw10.

if anyone is considering this mount, it will take your observing to another level of effortless (if that is what you want of course). Pull the trigger you won’t regret it. FLO were superb as a supplier and whilst I’ve invested a chunk of cash in this mount and the Morpheus and Pentax eyepieces, I can say for certain that based on last night, which is hopefully the first of many, it has been worth the investment in the hobby.

thanks for reading, hope you were out last night 🤔

Steve 

Regarding the mount I really like the sound of these I have seen one before. First what is the load capacity and second as I use long fracs A Tal at F10 and a Meade 127 F9.3 I have to use a pier extension on a EQ5 would it be viable to use the mount with these please.

[Trikeflyer]

18 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

Regarding the mount I really like the sound of these I have seen one before. First what is the load capacity and second as I use long fracs A Tal at F10 and a Meade 127 F9.3 I have to use a pier extension on a EQ5 would it be viable to use the mount with these please.

Load capacity is 33 pounds so pretty good.  You will have to get the Ioptron pier extension which I have - long frac will be OK with the ioptron one, there is no mod that I could find for the SW extension to ioptron tripod.  FLO told me I needed the Ioptron one (which they stock).

Hope that helps.  its a great mount 

 

Steve

[James]

Obviously this image doesn't show the seeing, but it was a good night (I'm now paying for it!) The scope looking at Saturn is an old SW ED100. I broke the front lens a few months back but was able to swap it out with an equally old (10 years+) lens from another...

Pot Noodle and biscuits strategically hidden by the chair...

(Photo cropped to remove the glow of Exeter from the right...)

James