First light with Pan24, bathing in the moonlight

[parallaxerr]

Lovely clear skies last night, seemed very stable with very good seeing. Unfortunately the moon was at large though, looming on the Eastern horizon. I did however manage about an hour of decent observing before Luna stole the show and I put the new 24mm Panoptic to task.

I bought the eyepiece almost specifically for use on the Veil Nebula with UHC & OIII filters, having previously identified the favoured focal length/exit pupil with the Baader zoom. I checked out a few other targets before turning to Cygnus first though - Double cluster and Andromeda.

The double cluster was very nice but presents better with more contrast in the 16mm Nagler. More importantly though it gave me opportunity to test the edge correction of the Pan. All I can say is the hype is justified, it's better than the ES68° 24mm imo and I don't regret paying the extra 😀

Andromeda was somewhat washed out by the moonglow but I persevered and I could make out the extended disc with averted vision. I was convinced I could see a dark lane in the disc too, is this EP magic or is it just my brain playing tricks on me I wondered? M110 was also visible, quite pronounced with averted vision.

Time to turn to the Veil. 52Cyg is my go to starting point, easily captured in the FoV with my setting circle/wixey angle gauge push to system. Very high in the sky it highlighted how much better my setup is with the Orion 16" pier extension. Spinning the filter wheel through it's positions to the Astronomik OIII and the Witches Broom popped straight in to view. I could definitely make out more detail than the last time I looked at this target, whether that be the eyepiece or the conditions I don't know. Whilst still feint and grey, I could distinguish edge detail in both the Eastern and Western limbs and something caught my eye in the Northern rim, maybe Pickerings Triangle? More likely NGC6967 or 6974.

I switched to the Omega DGM NPB UHC filter which gave a slightly brighter image but reduced contrast, so the OIII wins for me on this target.

To finish off I turned to the Ring Nebula. Too small in the 24mm so I went straight for the 11mm Nagler. Averted vision revealed the central hole with both filters and also unfiltered, but the target was still relatively small. Just for fun I barlowed the 11mm up and to my surprise got very good views. At X130 mag, unfiltered was best with sky background very dark. Central hole easily visible with direct vision and I sensed the slight ovality and differing rim width often seen in astro images. The 11mm Nagler and Orion Shorty barlow look very handsome together!

All in all a very satisfying session. I look forward to visiting the same targets again on a moonless night of equal seeing, I should image the views will be even better again.

 

Edited September 18, 2019 by parallaxerr